Know Your Moroni: A field Guide to Angel Moroni Statues

Know Your Moroni

A Field guide to Angel Moroni Statues

Compiled and Written by Brian A. Olson
Based on original research by Marvin D. Quist

Thanks:

A Special thanks to Elise Reynolds and the staff at the Church History Library for their help in finding the missing dates for the placement of Angel Moroni Statues, as well as helping identify other details.

Thanks to the following for their editing, for their extensive knowledge, and for their assistance:

Marvin D. Quist – Your research started this, your enthusiasm drove it, and your attention to the details finished it.
Rick Satterfield of churchofjesuschristtemples.com – Your work inspires, your site provides.
J. Markham of newtempleinprovo.blogspot.com – thanks for catching the mistakes I missed.
D. Dorff – Keep asking questions, keep seeking answers.
M. Olson – Thanks for the corrections. I wouldn’t be here without you. Literally.
N. Wanlass – You know why you are on here.

Special thanks to P. Olson, for your editing and for putting up with my hobbies

Why This Book?

A few years back, I suddenly got it into my head that I could model well enough to do representations of all the different angel Moroni Statues for my different Temple models.

I was wrong.

But in my attempts to learn, I dove into trying to at least determine who had sculpted which statue on which temple, naively thinking that a custom statue was made for each temple. With a little digging, I found one article that said there were only 5 different statues. But then I found another article stating there were 6. In the comments of one article, I found a comment by Marvin D. Quist stating that there were in fact 8, and that he had, essentially, done all the research I was intending to do.

I contacted Marvin about his research, and in back and forth emails we discussed the annoyance of traditions that held not just the wrong number of statues, but getting things wrong about who sculpted which, and why they face the way the do, and oh so many other topics related to the statues.

In the end, I began to realize, I don’t like seeing the wrong information continue to be bandied about.

And I decided I was in a position to do something about it.

So I did.

Contents