Dean Jessee, a longtime historian for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who published two volumes of “The Papers of Joseph Smith” and helped lay the groundwork for “The Joseph Smith Papers”’ 27 volumes, died at his home in Murray, Utah, on Wednesday, Dec. 31, 2025. He was 96.
Jessee “had the vision that we ought to have the documents of Joseph Smith in the hands of the Saints,” Ronald Esplin, Jessee’s colleague and a longtime church historian, told the Deseret News Monday.
Having worked at the late church historian’s side since 1972, Esplin said Jessee was deeply admired by all of his colleagues. “He had a master’s degree. Some of them had PhDs, but they viewed him as their mentor,” he said.
“All of those who worked with (Jessee) loved him as a quiet, humble, dedicated disciple of Christ,” he continued. He was one “whose goal in life was to understand Joseph, not to defend him, but to understand (him), and to make that understanding in those documents available to the world, so that the world might come to understand Joseph.”
Born in Springville, Utah, on Aug. 29, 1929, Jessee first worked as a seminary teacher within the Church Educational System for several years. When his contract was not renewed in early 1964, however, Jessee looked for job opportunities within the Church History Department, then known as the Church Historian’s Office.
Jessee was “overqualified” for a position there, Esplin said. The office at the time “hired clerks, not scholars,” he explained, adding that this became a reason the department did not hire Jessee his first couple of tries. Eventually, a position opened up and, persisting, Jessee was hired to work as a clerk in late 1964.
“I don’t think we need any help, but they tell me, we can use one person,” Esplin said the office’s church historian told Jessee when he was first hired. “We just don’t have a place for you. We’ll have to put you in ‘the cage.’”
The cage referred to a “big wire mesh partition” that protected the church’s “important documents,” Esplin said. Working there, Esplin said Jessee was able to see the “wonderful Joseph Smith documents” for the first time — documents he eventually “came to master and help make available to the world.”
In the nearly 40 years Jessee then proceeded to work in the office and Church History Department, he published several works including a series of journal articles for BYU Studies, a book titled “The Personal Writings of Joseph Smith,” and two volumes of “The Papers of Joseph Smith.” These scholarly works were among the first published on Joseph Smith’s documents, Esplin said. And Jessee’s work on them, along with his desire to make the documents accessible to others around the world, helped position him as the “founding father” and “intellectual head” of the 27 volumes that were later published as part of “The Joseph Smith Papers” project.
Jessee “was a seminary teacher who believed,” Esplin said. “He was an employee of the Church Historian’s Office who wanted to see it professionalized and… thought we ought to make available these founding documents, so Latter-day Saints would have access to them.”
Outside of his work, Jessee was a family man. He was born in 1929 to Phillip Cornell and Minerva Boss Jessee, and was the oldest of eight children.
In 1953, he married Margaret June Wood; they are the parents of nine children: Lyle, David, Jeanine, Ronald, Teresa, Gordon, Merrill, Jonathan and Douglas.
The “pride and joy of his life” was his family, states his obituary on Legacy.com. “Home was a happy workshop,” it reads, stating that Jessee enjoyed the outdoors, painting with oils, and studying history and art, among other things.
Jessee was preceded in death by his wife and youngest son Douglas. He is survived by his remaining eight children, 40 grandchildren and numerous great-grandchildren.
A public viewing will be held Friday, Jan. 9, from 6-8 p.m. at the Jenkins-Soffe Mortuary on 4760 S. State Street in Murray, as well as on Saturday, Jan. 10, from 10-10:45 a.m., preceding his funeral service at the Chevy Chase Ward on 5235 S. Wesley Road in Murray, according to his obituary.
Jessee’s journey to ‘The Joseph Smith Papers’
Jessee’s desire to unveil Joseph Smith’s documents developed quickly as he worked to organize and catalog manuscripts at the Church Historian’s office. Seeing his dream come to life, however, took years and several efforts. Below is a short, bullet point history of the process, according to Esplin.
- Beginning in 1964, Jessee worked as a clerk, organizing and cataloging manuscripts at the Church Historian’s office. At the time, the church historian was President Joseph Fielding Smith, who later became the 10th President of the Church.
- In the late 1960s, BYU professor Truman Madsen asked Jessee — the only scholar in the Church Historian’s Office at the time — to produce several journal articles for BYU Studies. These articles became “really the first time that there was scholarly work on Joseph Smith’s history,” Esplin said.
- In the early 1970s, Jessee felt inspired to compile and publish Joseph Smith’s documents in volumes. He felt inspired to do so after seeing “The Papers of Thomas Jefferson” at the University of Utah’s library. But the newly called church historian Leonard Arrington advised Jessee not to do so then.
- In 1980, the church’s history division was transferred to BYU. There, Jessee began to “realize his long-term dream to publish the personal writings of Joseph Smith,” Esplin said.
- Jessee’s first book on Joseph Smith, titled “The Personal Writings of Joseph Smith,” was published in 1984 by Deseret Book. It became an “immediate bestseller for a scholarly book,” Esplin said, and eventually sold 20,000 copies in two editions.
- From there, Jessee conceived a plan to publish between nine and 12 volumes of Joseph Smith’s documents. His plan materialized into two volumes of “The Papers of Joseph Smith.” One volume was published in 1989 and the other was published in 1992.
- Jessee then drafted a third volume, but its publishing stalled.
- Even so, this third volume became the catalyst for conceiving a “much larger project,” Esplin said, when years later, the First Presidency reviewed the third volume and eventually approved the publication of all of Joseph Smith’s documents.
- Their approval, along with the funding and support of the Larry H. and Gail Miller family — who through a separate experience grew fond of the documents and wanted to support Jessee’s work in publishing them — transformed the breadth of the project.
- In 2001, the project was reconceived as a new, multi-volume project known as “The Joseph Smith Papers.” And unlike the first, this new project would involve the help of 600-700 people to produce over the course of more than 20 years.
Speaking with the Deseret News eight years after his retirement in 2000, Jessee explained he kept going into the office in the Church Office Building in Salt Lake City because he liked it.
“I’m sticking around because they keep putting up with me,” he said then. “I don’t see that what I’m doing is indispensable…. (And) it’s important for me because I have a strong testimony of Joseph Smith and what he did.
“I’m convinced.”
