joseph smith and oliver cowdery said they were visited by john the baptist, who laid his hands on their head and gave them the aaronic priesthood; smith described the event in detail and gave an exact date when it happened. in contrast, he never gave a description of any vision in which he saw an angel separately confer the melchizedek priesthood. however, by the turn of the 20th century, latter day saint theologians believed that such a separate ordination by angels had occurred prior to the organization of the church of christ on april 6, 1830. this was largely because the early church organization contained the office of elder, which at least by 1835 was considered an office of the melchizedek priesthood. as evidence for such a pre-organization angellc conferral, writers referred to a revelation in which smith said he heard "the voice of peter, james, and john in the wilderness between harmony, susquehanna county, and colesville, broome county, on the susquehanna river, declaring themselves as possessing the keys of the kingdom, and of the dispensation of the fulness of times!" smith and cowdery were visited by the three angels in 1829 and that they conferred the melchizedek priesthood in the same way john the baptist had conferred the aaronic priesthood. however, the official church history, supervised or written by smith, states that "the authority of the melchizedek priesthood was manifested and conferred for the first time upon several of the elders" during a general conference in early june 1831. when smith's official history was first published in 1902, the compiler b.h. roberts thought that this was a mistake, because it would not be consistent with the common mormon belief that the priesthood had been conferred prior to the church's founding in 1830.