For the first time in 170 years, the very first hymnbook of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is now available in print, with the original words and music.

    Early in 1836, Frederick G. Williams and William W. Phelps completed publication of the first hymnal of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at Kirtland, Ohio. That tiny, leather-bound book contained ninety hymns, but only the words were included - the Saints were expected to know the tunes by heart.  Now, after more than a century and a half,  those original lyrics have been reunited with their early 19th-century tunes.  

   Since 1836, the LDS Church has produced a number of hymnals, culminating in the splendid 1985 edition, Hymns of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Of the ninety hymns included in the 1835 edition, twenty-six still survive in some form in the current hymnal. However, only about five of the original hymns may still  possibly be sung to their original tunes. 

    What happened to the other eighty-five or so tunes that the Saints sang in 1836?  With a few rare exceptions, they were never printed by the Church.  The first official LDS hymnal to include both the words and music was the Latter-day Saints' Psalmody,  printed in 1889.  By that time, most of the tunes sung in 1836 had been replaced by more "up to date" tunes, and the earlier tunes were quickly forgotten.

    Fortunately, the early history of the Church includes references to many of the tunes the Saints sang.  About one-third of the 1835 hymn texts were written by LDS authors, but  in some cases there is no record at all of the tunes these lyrics were associated with. These forgotten LDS lyrics have now been paired with suitable tunes from that time.  About half of the hymns were of non-LDS origin and can still be found in early hymnbooks from that era.  The result is a unique and priceless collection of hymns not known by the Church for over a century and a half.