Table of Content
Thus, in early October 1827, they moved to Harmony, with the glass box reportedly holding the plates hidden during the trip in a barrel of beans. An 1841 engraving of "Mormon Hill" , where Smith said he found the golden plates on the west side, near the peak. After the messenger departed, Smith said he had two more encounters with him that night and an additional one the next morning, after which he told his father and soon thereafter the rest of his family, who believed his story, but generally kept it within the family. He said there was a book deposited, written upon gold plates, giving an account of the former inhabitants of this continent, and the source from whence they sprang. He also said that the fulness of the everlasting Gospel was contained in it, as delivered by the Savior to the ancient inhabitants; also that there were two stones in silver bows—and these stones, fastened to a breastplate, constituted what is called the Urim and Thummim—deposited with the plates". From about 1819, Smith regularly practiced scrying, a form of divination in which a "seer" looked into a seer stone to receive supernatural knowledge.
Smith usually practiced crystal gazing by putting a stone at the bottom of a white stovepipe hat, putting his face over the hat to block the light, then divining information from the stone. Smith and his father achieved "something of a mysterious local reputation in the profession—mysterious because there is no record that they ever found anything despite the readiness of some local residents to pay for their efforts." Smith said he had become concerned about religion "at about the age of twelve years," although later he seems to have wondered whether "a Supreme being did exist." Smith apparently attended the Presbyterian Sunday school as a child, and later as an adolescent, he displayed interest in Methodism. One of Smith's acquaintances said that Smith had caught "a spark of Methodism" at camp meetings "away down in the woods, on the Vienna road." He even reportedly spoke during some of these meetings, and the acquaintance described Smith as a "very passable exhorter." The artists visited Palmyra in December 2019 to experience the sites and capture details they wanted to reflect in the paintings. In order to begin to understand and properly appreciate Joseph Smith’s First Vision, it is advisable to first explore some of its background and underlying themes.
Smith Family Farm
The exact details of the First Vision vary somewhat depending upon who is recounting the story and when. Smith's first account in 1832 dated the vision to 1821 and stated that he saw "a piller of fire light above the brightness of the sun at noon day", and that "the Lord opened the heavens upon me and I saw the Lord and he spake unto me saying Joseph my son thy sins are forgiven thee". Joseph Smith's ancestors had an eclectic variety of religious views and affiliations. For instance, Joseph Smith's paternal grandfather, Asael, was a Universalist who opposed evangelical religion. Joseph Smith had little formal schooling, but may have attended school briefly in Palmyra and received instruction in his home. Young Joseph worked on his family farm and perhaps took an occasional odd job or worked for nearby farmers.
In the family room, the Smiths kept the plates in a chest, shown on the dresser to the right. No names peculiar to the Book of Mormon have ever been found in New World inscriptions. No genuine inscriptions have ever been found in Egyptian or anything similar which could correspond to the "reformed Egyptian tongue." No ancient copies of the Book of Mormon have ever been found.
RELIGIOUS CLIMATE
The Smith family built the original 1½-story hewn-log home not long after they arrived in Palmyra. During the time that the Prophet Joseph Smith lived in the family log home in Palmyra, New York, events transpired that greatly influenced the young boy and prepared the way for the restoration of the gospel. Remembrances from the Smith family reveal their concerns and activities while living in the log home.
Illinois authorities revoke Nauvoo's city charter and ask the Mormon community to leave. In February 1845, emerging church head Brigham Young leads thousands of Saints out of Illinois, heading west to Mexican territory. On October 27, 1838, Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs takes a dramatic stand to end violence. His executive order calls for the expulsion or extermination of all Mormons from the state.
Treasure hunting
The era when Joseph Smith Jr. was living in the Palmyra, New York, area has come to be known in history as the Second Great Awakening, which flourished in the United States between the 1790s and the 1840s. The farm was purchased by the LDS Church in 1907 and passed into its care in 1915. The grove of trees on the site where Joseph Smith was assumed to have had his First Vision became a pilgrimage site, and centennial celebrations were held there in 1920.
The economic order, like those of many communistic societies of the era, requires church members to give their property to the church for redistribution. Shortly after the Erie Canal opens in 1825, upstate New York is still a sparsely populated, rugged frontier. The area will later be called the "Burned-Over District" -- burned over by endless religious revivals during this era of spiritual seeking.
Lucy Mack Smith's Account of the Angel Moroni's Visit and Subsequent Events
A number of family members fell ill, and Joseph experienced a common complication whereby typhoid bacteria infected bone, in Smith's case, the shin bone. After the typically horrific early nineteenth-century surgery without either anesthetic or antiseptic, Smith eventually recovered, though he used crutches for several years and had a slight limp for the remainder of his life. The painting of Joseph Smith bringing home the gold plates from the Hill Cumorah portrays the involvement of his family, West said.
Joseph Smith Sr., his wife Lucy Mack Smith, and some of their children moved from Norwich, Vermont, to Palmyra, New York, in 1816. In 1818 or 1819, the family built a log home near property owned by the estate of Nicholas Evertson of New York City, but did not enter a purchase agreement for the land until a land agent had been appointed in 1820. Smith, Sr. agreed to pay the Evertson estate between $600 and 700 for the 100-acre (0.4 km2) farm. In 1825, the family moved into a larger and more comfortable frame home that they had built on the property but were unable to make payments on the land. A carpenter who had completed the house sued the Smiths for his costs in February 1825.
We decided to stop so that I could take a few photos of the reproduction log cabin, a home similar to the original in which Joseph Smith, a teenaged boy, lived with his parents and passel of siblings. A wooden fence running the perimeter of a field on the Smith family farm in Palmyra, New York. This log home, built on the site of the original, is a replica of the Joseph Smith Sr., and Lucy Mack Smith family home. In April 1829, the Joseph Smith Sr. and Lucy, along with their younger children, moved back into the original log home to live with Hyrum, Jerusha, and their two small daughters.
The Smith family first built a log home, then in 1822, under the supervision of Joseph Smith's oldest brother Alvin, they began building a larger frame house. Alvin died in November 1823, possibly as a result of being given calomel for "bilious fever", and the house remained uncompleted for a year. By this time Joseph Smith Sr. may have partially abdicated family leadership to Alvin, and in 1825, the Smiths were unable to make their mortgage payments.
The first convoy to arrive at the place that will become Winter Quarters divides the camp into wards, plants crops and builds log cabins. By 1844, the dynamic settlement's population has grown to 12,000, rivaling the size of Chicago. Smith has himself appointed chief justice of the city court and lieutenant general of a Nauvoo militia, merging church and state in a thriving theocracy, where Mormons wield political and military might. In the summer of 1833, an angry mob storms the newspaper's offices, destroys the press, and tars and feathers two Mormon leaders. The tensions and skirmishes escalate, forcing the Missouri Mormons to relocate several times over the next few years.
The Smith family lived here for less than five years, from 1825 to the spring of 1829. During that time the Prophet Joseph Smith continued to be tutored and prepared to receive the Book of Mormon plates. It was to this home that the Prophet brought the Book of Mormon plates after he received them on from the Hill Cumorah on September 22, 1827. Months after settling in Ohio, Joseph Smith declares that Independence Missouri was the site of the Garden of Eden and will become a "New Jerusalem." Missionaries there establish a printing press and publish the westernmost American newspaper,The Evening and Morning Star. Smith's revelations -- many printed in the paper -- stress that Mormons are entitled to their land and should secure it by force if necessary. The money provided by Harris was enough to pay all of Smith's debts in Palmyra, and for him to travel with Emma and all of their belongings to Harmony Township, Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, where they would be able to avoid the public commotion in Palmyra over the plates.
Thus, at Lucy Smith's request, Harris went to the Smith home, heard the story from Smith, and hefted a glass box that Smith said contained the plates. Smith convinced Harris that he had the plates, and that the angel had told him to "quit the company of the money-diggers". Convinced, Harris immediately gave Smith $50 (equivalent to $1,200 in 2021), and committed to sponsor the translation of the plates. Around 1820 Smith is said to have experienced a theophany, now known as his First Vision among adherents. Around this time he, along with other male members of his family, was hired to assist in searching for buried treasure. In 1823, Smith said an angel directed him to a nearby hill where he said was buried a book of golden plates containing a Christian history of ancient American civilizations.
Thus, on September 22, 1823, a day listed in local almanacs as the autumn equinox, Smith said that he went to a prominent hill near his home, and found the location of the artifacts. There are varying accounts as to how Smith reportedly found the precise location of the golden plates. In 1838, Smith stated that this location was shown to him in a vision while he conversed with Moroni. This conforms to an account by Smith's friend Joseph Knight Sr., though he refers to Smith's guide only as "the personage." However, according to a Palmyra resident Henry Harris, Smith told him he located the plates using his seer stone. In yet another account, the angel required Smith to follow a sequence of landmarks until he arrived at the correct location.
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