David, though I don’t plan to return to the subject anytime soon, I’d very much appreciate your notes on British Mormons and Methodists. Pass anything along that you’d like to share to chris DOT jones13 AT hotmail DOT com.

I initially envisioned something much larger that what the finished product reflects, but time and length constraints limited what I was able to accomplish. There is still much to be explored, and I’d like to someday return to the subject and flesh out some of the ideas.

Clean Cut, I started research my first semester in the MA program (Fall 2007), which primarily consisted of reading a lot of secondary literature on anything and everything I could that related to my topic in some way. Winter semester 2008 I began to really get into the primary sources on the Mormon side, and summer 2008 was spent in Methodist sources (including a delightful week at the UMC archives in Madison, NJ). By the end of Fall semester 2008, I’d finished a solid draft of one of the chapters, and had outlines of two others. I wasted more time than I should have during Winter semester 2009, and by April, realized I still had 2 chapters to flesh out and write and about a month to write them. I accomplished that goal and finished a draft of all chapters by early May. The rest of May was spent revising the chapters based on my committee’s feedback, formatting the whole thing, etc. I defended the thesis in early June, passed, and then put the finishing touches on and was completely finished by the first week of July.

I’ve always just assumed a connection between Mormonism and Methodism, given Joseph’s early leanings and the emphasis on free will, but now I’m looking forward to looking at this in depth. Very nice!

(On a side note, I’m curious how long it took to complete this impressive piece of work, including research and actual writing.)