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Rising from humble beginnings in the 1830s, the church now counts twelve million members worldwide. The story of the polio crusade pays tribute to a time when Americans banded together to conquer a terrible disease. The medical breakthrough saved countless lives and had a pervasive impact on American philanthropy that continues to be felt today.
Near the log cabin is a very large building– a “temple.” The place was totally devoid of any people. The cabin was obviously decorated to imitate a typical family dwelling in the early 1800s. The Smith log home in Palmyra, NY is a Church Historical Site, owned and operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It is open seven days a week and may be entered when accompanied by missionary hosts during posted hours. Shortly after Joseph’s experience, tragedy struck the Smith family with the death of Joseph’s elder brother Alvin.
Joseph Sr. and Lucy Smith Log Home: Palmyra, New York
Following the Missouri Compromise of 1820, slavery is legal in the state, but the dispute over extending slavery to new territories is intense. "They came, men, women, and children, in every conceivable manner," according to one history of the area, "some with horses, oxen and vehicles rough and rude. while others had walked..." Soon after publishingThe Book of Mormonin 1830, Joseph Smith left his home in Palmyra, New York with several dozen followers. Over the next fifteen years, Smith's Latter-day Saints would travel beyond the boundaries of the United States as they searched for a permanent place to call home. By the time church faithful laid down the foundation for a temple in the valley of the Great Salt Lake, in Mexican territory, Smith was dead and his followers, though now more numerous, had been forced out of communities across the American continent. Bushman (2005, pp. 40–41) "The preacher reacted quickly and negatively, not because of the strangeness of the story but because of its familiarity. Subjects of revivals all to often claimed to have seen visions."
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.
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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.
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.
Swathed in the rustic smells of old pine wood, take a journey through time in the beautiful Smith Family Log Home.
Before he died, Alvin told Joseph to “be a good boy, and do everything that lies in your power to obtain the Record. Be faithful in receiving instruction, and in keeping every commandment that is given you.”5 Joseph eventually received the record on September 22, 1827. Another significant event occurred in the log home three years later when the Angel Moroni appeared to Joseph multiple times during the night of September 21-22, 1823. It was while living in this home in 1820 that young Joseph Smith, Jr. retired into a grove of trees to petition God which church he should join, and experienced the First Vision where God the Father and Jesus Christ appeared to him.
Biographer Fawn Brodie wrote, "He was a gregarious, cheerful, imaginative youth, born to leadership, but hampered by meager education and grinding poverty." When Smith arrived at the place where the plates were supposed to be, he reportedly took the plates from the stone box they were in and set them down on the ground nearby, looking to see if there were other items in the box that would "be of some pecuniary advantage to him". When he turned around, however, the plates were said to have disappeared into the box, which was then closed. When Smith attempted to get the plates back out of the box, the angel hurled him back to the ground with a violent force (id.). After three failed attempts to retrieve the plates, the angel told him that he could not have them then, because he "had been tempted of the advisary and saught the Plates to obtain riches and kept not the commandments that I should have".
During the temple's consecration, hundreds report seeing angels and other miraculous visions. As Smith's Church of Christ grows, he finds himself under greater scrutiny from local authorities and residents. Sidney Rigdon, an Ohio preacher who learns of Smith's religion through missionaries, embraces Smith as a new prophet and urges the New York group to migrate to Ohio. In January 1831, Smith leads his family and about seventy-five followers west to Kirtland, Ohio. ; Smith (1853, p. 82)); however, Lucy's history also indicates that after the appearance of the angel, Joseph had made two annual visits to the hill Cumorah before the 1823 death of her son Alvin (Smith 1853, p. 85), which Lucy incorrectly dated to 1824 (Smith 1853, p. 87).
Smith's close friend Joseph Knight Sr. corroborates the requirement that Smith was to "take the Book and go right away". According to Smith's mother, the angel forbade him to put the plates on the ground until they were under lock and key. He was, however, according to a retelling of an account by Smith Sr., allowed to put down the plates on a napkin he was to bring with him for that purpose.
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.
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.
It is unclear who, if anyone, Smith told about his vision prior to his reported discovery of the golden plates in 1823. According to Smith, he told his mother at the time that he had "learned for self that Presbyterianism is not true"; however, mention of this conversation is omitted from Lucy's own history, and Joseph never stated that he described the details of the vision to his family in 1820 or soon thereafter. He did say that he spoke about the vision with "one of the Methodist preachers, who was very active in the before-mentioned religious excitement". Many have presumed this to be the Rev. Lane, but there is no record of Lane visiting the Palmyra vicinity in 1820.
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