to create a reorganization of the church, designated the Church of Christ. McLellin called on David Whitmer to assume the presidency, claiming that Whitmer had been ordained by Smith as his successor on July 8, 1834. This organization was short lived. McLellin later associated with churches led by George M. Hinkle, James J. Strang, and Granville Hedrick. By 1869, McLellin had broken completely with "all organized religion," though he expressed a firm belief in the Book of Mormon in 1880: I have set to my seal that the Book of Mormon is a true, divine record and it will require more evidence than I have ever seen to ever shake me relative to its purity. […] When a man goes at the Book of M. he touches the apple of my eye. He fights against truth—against purity—against light—against the purist, or one of the truest, purist books on earth. […] Fight the wrongs of L.D.S.ism as much as you please, but let that unique, that inimitable book alone. McLellin died on April 24, 1883, in Independence, Missouri. Personal writings McLellin kept journals and notebooks during and after his time in the Latter Day Saint church. Because he was a prominent insider in the early church, these were of great interest to Latter Day Saint historians. In the early 1980s, collector Mark Hofmann claimed to have obtained the McLellin collection, which he described as embarrassing to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). This generated interest that allowed Hofmann to sell it to two simultaneous buyers before being exposed as a counterfeiter when he killed two people to cover his crimes. In the aftermath of these crimes, the LDS Church discovered McLellin's writings were already in the church's possession, having been acquired and forgotten in 1908. These were later published in two works, The Journals of William E. McLellin, 1831–1836, edited by Jan Shipps and John W. Welch in 1994, and The William E. McLellin Papers, 1854–1880, edited by Stan Larson and Samuel J. Passey in 2007. However, these collections were missing a notebook, known because of photographs in a 1920s newspaper published by the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. In January 2009, this notebook was located and acquired by Brent Ashworth, one of the original collectors interested in Hofmann's supposed McLellin collection. Notes References . Jenson, Andrew. editor. Latter-day Saint Biographical Encyclopedia. Ludlow,