Smith–History is the product of the 1839 attempt undertaken by Smith and other early Latter Day Saint leaders to record the history of the church. Smith's motivation for creating this history was twofold: to adhere to God's direction to record his experiences, and to respond to critics of his story. The paranoia that led up to the 1838 Mormon War may have had an effect on the opening passage of Joseph Smith–History, when Smith states: "Owing to the many reports which have been put in circulation ... I have been induced to write this history, to disabuse the public mind." Work on the history began in Nauvoo, Illinois on June 11, 1839. Because he had never received formal education, Smith mostly dictated his history verbally to scribes instead of writing it himself. The passages the scribes recorded were later rewritten in the first person, so as to be from Smith's point of view. The first scribe to work on the history was James Mulholland. Smith drew on material from his incomplete history (begun in 1838) while dictating to Mulholland. After scribing 59 pages, Mulholland abruptly died on November 3, 1839, halting the project for a time until Robert B. Thompson picked it up again. However, Thompson was only able to scribe 16 pages due to his untimely death on August 27, 1841. William W. Phelps then became Smith's scribe. Progress on the record was slow due to the task of building up the city of Nauvoo.It wasn't until December 1842, when Willard Richards—Smith's personal secretary and editor of the Times and Seasons—became scribe that a substantial amount of the history was recorded. In 1844, Richards wrote: "It is now seven years since I have laid my head one night in my own house during that time I have been in England, near four years and the remainder of the time have spent in writing the History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which, of course will afford no income until it is completed and printed which cannot possibly be done for one or two years. It is a great work and all important to the Church and the world." The history was one of Smith's main priorities in Nauvoo. Richards and Phelps remembered that he once asked the schoolmaster of a nearby class to change locations because noise from the students was distracting those tasked with