On Sunday, March 27, 1836, the Latter-day Saints in Kirtland, Ohio, dedicated their impressive temple for use. “I canot Begin to Discribe the Buty of this Fine Bilding,” raved Clarissa Bicknell Orton. When they first planned it, some leaders argued they could only afford to build their temple out of logs. A year before its completion, members expected “the whole cost, when finished, will probably be from twenty to thirty thousand” dollars. By the time they finished the temple, it had probably cost forty thousand dollars or more. Members and their friends donated substantial resources toward the building—clearly paying for most costs—although the Church still had some modest debts from building it as well as from printing the scriptures, land purchases, and other activities. Two days after the last dedicatory service, Oliver Cowdery met with other members of Frederick G. Williams & Co., a business organized to finance some of their activities, and sought “to devise ways & means to discharge the debts.” Before the meeting ended, they reorganized and partially divided company stock with William W. Phelps and John Whitmer, who were then released from the firm.

Company members Joseph Smith and Oliver were appointed as “a board or committee whose duty it shall be to raise all the money they can in righteousness for the mutual benefit of the said company or firm” to redeem Zion. At the same time, Frederick G. Williams and Sidney Rigdon, the two remaining members, were made debt collectors to bring in “outstanding claims of the firm and such other means as they may deem most proper to discharge the company debts.” They set out on that same day to help raise this money by asking members personally for contributions. Despite recent generous donations given at the temple dedication, their requests met with immediate success. “As soon as the above plan was settled, he [Joseph] and O. Cowdery set out together, and their success was such in one half day, as to give them pleasing anticipations.”

Following initial optimism, however, donations did not come from everyone who could give. During May and June, this led to a series of cases brought primarily by Oliver Cowdery before Kirtland’s high council, where the stingy were confronted for not helping their own families, the poor, and the Church in general. In one case brought forward by Joseph, Bishop Newel K. Whitney noted that not bearing one’s portion of the burden of helping the poor was a complaint “pretty general in the Church.” Several individuals at the meeting noted in various ways that they “could more easily get two dollars from a poor man than one from the rich” to help build the kingdom. As these cases continued, perhaps in response to such attitudes, Church leaders opened several stores to bring in additional income rather than just seek donations. To open these enterprises, Hyrum Smith and Bishop Whitney bought goods on credit from merchants in Buffalo, New York, worth somewhere between twenty and forty thousand dollars—doubling or tripling their debt. Leaders also bought more land on credit. It was these actions rather than temple construction costs that created a large debt burden bringing them “in debt for their farms and for goods bought in New York.” Joseph opened a store in Kirtland with part of the goods, and he, Oliver, and others opened another in neighboring Chester with the rest.[

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In the wake of the Kirtland experience, “the committee on Church revinue” in Far West, Missouri, met on December 7, 1837, “for the purpose of adopting a plan whereby the church of Latter Day Saints may voluntarily raise means by tithing themselves to be a fund ready at all times to assist the poor with. and also to compensate the Servents of the Lord for their services in attending to the business of the church. and for other necessary purposes.” This committee proposed a plan of tithing members two percent of their worth, excluding “widows generally and all other families not worth over seventy five dollars each.” The following summer Joseph Smith received revelation on the subject, clarifying that members were to contribute their surplus property, after which “those who have thus been tithed shall pay one-tenth of all their interest annually” (Doctrine and Covenants 119:4). This revelation gave a clear direction and provided the method maintained today for raising money in righteousness.

Although Oliver Cowdery had played a central role in Kirtland’s attempts to raise money in righteousness, his relationship with other Latter-day Saints would never be the same after the closure of the Kirtland Safety Society. Exactly one year to the day after Joseph Smith was forced to flee Kirtland, Loll Thompson and Lyman Pitcher, as Kirtland’s overseers for the poor, requested on January 12, 1839, that constable Jason Markell warn “O Cowdery + family” to leave town. Such warnings rarely led to actual expulsions, but they reflected a concern by town officials that Oliver Cowdery and his family were poor enough they would require community support. This turn of events reflect the changing circumstances of a man who had once been a bank vice president and director of two different banks who set out to help the poor and to build Zion.