CHAPTER II

THE SMITH FAMILY

AMONG the families who settled in Ontario County, New York, in 1816, was that of one Joseph Smith. It consisted of himself, his wife, and nine children. The fourth of these children, Joseph Smith, Jr., became the Mormon prophet.

It was

The Smiths are said to have been of Scotch ancestry. the mother, however, who exercised the larger influence on her son's life, and she has left very minute details of her own and her father's family. Her father, Solomon Mack, was a native of Lyme, Connecticut. The daughter Lucy, who became Mrs. Joseph Smith, Sr., was born in Gilsum, Cheshire County, New Hampshire, on July 8, 1776. Mr. Mack was remembered as a feeble old man, who rode around the country on horseback, using a woman's saddle, and selling his own autobiography. The "tramp" of those early days often offered an autobiography, or what passed for one, and, as books were then rare, if he could say that it contained an account of actual adventures in the recent wars, he was certain to find purchasers.

One of the few copies of this book in existence lies before me. It was printed at the author's expense about the year 1810. It is wholly without interest as a narrative, telling of the poverty of his parents, how he was bound, when four years old, to a farmer who gave him no education and worked him like a slave; gives some of his experiences in the campaigns against the French and Indians in northern New York and in the war of the Revolution, when he was in turn teamster, sutler, and privateer; describes with minute detail many ordinary illnesses and accidents that befell him; and closes with a recital of his religious awakening, which was deferred until his seventy-sixth year, while he was suffering 1 "Biographical Sketches of Joseph Smith and his Progenitors for Many Generations," Lucy Smith.

with rheumatism.

At that time it seemed to him that he several times "saw a bright light in a dark night," and thought he heard a voice calling to him. Twenty-two of the forty-eight duodecimo pages that the book contains are devoted to hymns "composed," the title-page says, "on the death of several of his relatives," not all by himself. One of these may be quoted entire :

"My friends, I am on the ocean,

So sweetly do I sail;

Jesus is my portion,

He's given me a pleasant gale.

"The bruises sore,

In harbor soon I'll be,

And see my redeemer there
That died for you and me."

Mrs. Smith's family seem to have had a natural tendency to belief in revelations. Her eldest brother, Jason, became "Seeker"; the "Seekers" of that day believed that the devout of their times could, through prayer and faith, secure the "gifts" of the Gospel which were granted to the ancient apostles.1 He was one of the early believers in faith-cure, and was, we are told, himself cured by that means in 1835. a miraculous recovery from illness. two years she was "borne away to the saw the Saviour and received a message from Him for her earthly friends.

One of Lucy's sisters had After being an invalid for world of spirits," where she

Lucy herself came very exactly under the description given by Ruth McEnery Stuart of one of her negro characters: "Duke's mother was of the slighter intelligences, and hence much given to convictions. Knowing few things, she believed in a great many." Lucy Smith had neither education nor natural intelligence that would interfere with such "beliefs" as came to her from family tradition, from her own literal interpretations of the Bible, or from the workings of her imagination. She tells us that after her marriage, when very ill, she made a covenant with God that she would serve him if her recovery was granted; thereupon she heard a voice giving her assurance that her prayer would be answered, and she was better the next morning. Later, when

1 A sect called "Seekers," who arose in 1645, taught, like the Mormons, that the Scriptures are defective, the true church lost, and miracles necessary to faith.

anxious for the safety of her husband's soul, she prayed in a grove (most of the early Mormons' prayers were made in the woods), and saw a vision indicating his coming conversion; later still, in Vermont, a daughter was restored to health by her parent's prayers.

According to Mrs. Smith's account of their life in Vermont, they were married on January 24, 1796, at Tunbridge, but soon moved to Randolph, where Smith was engaged in "merchandise," keeping a store. Learning of the demand for crystallized ginseng in China, he invested money in that product and made a shipment, but it proved unprofitable, and, having in this way lost most of his money, they moved back to a farm at Tunbridge. Thence they moved to Royalton, and in a few months to Sharon, where, on December 23, 1805, Joseph Smith, Jr., their fourth child, was born. Again they moved to Tunbridge, and then back to Royalton (all these places in Vermont). From there they went to Lebanon, New Hampshire, thence to Norwich, Vermont, still "farming" without success, until, after three years of crop failure, they decided to move to New York State, arriving there in the summer of 1816.

Less prejudiced testimony gives an even less favorable view than this of the elder Smith's business career in Vermont. Judge Daniel Woodward, of the county court of Windsor, Vermont, near whose father's farm the Smiths lived, says that the elder Smith while living there was a hunter for Captain Kidd's treasure, and that "he also became implicated with one Jack Downing in counterfeiting money, but turned state's evidence and escaped the penalty." He had in earlier life been a Universalist, but afterward became a Methodist. His spiritual welfare gave his wife much concern, but although he had "two visions" while living in Vermont, she did not accept his change of heart. She admits, however, that after their removal to New York her husband obeyed the scriptural injunction, "your old men shall dream dreams," and she mentions several of these dreams, the latest in 1819, giving the particulars of some of them. One sample of these will suffice: The dreamer found himself in a beautiful garden, with wide walks and a main walk running through the centre. "On each side of

1 There is equally good authority for placing the house in which Smith was born across the line in Royalton. 2 Historical Magazine, 1870.

this was a richly carved seat, and on each seat were placed six wooden images, each of which was the size of a very large man. When I came to the first image on the right side it arose, bowed to me with much deference. I then turned to the one which sat opposite to me, on the left side, and it arose and bowed to me in the same manner as the first. I continued turning first to the right and then to the left until the whole twelve had made the obeisance, after which I was entirely healed [of a lameness from which he then was suffering]. I then asked my guide the meaning of all this, but I awoke before I received an answer."

A similar wakefulness always manifested itself at the critical moment in these dreams. What the world lost by this insomnia of the dreamer the world will never know.

The Smiths' first residence in New York State was in the village of Palmyra. There the father displayed a sign, “Cake and Beer Shop," selling "gingerbread, pies, boiled eggs, root beer, and other like notions," and he and his sons did odd jobs, gardening, harvesting, and well-digging, when they could get them.1

They were very poor, and Mrs. Smith added to their income by painting oil-cloth table covers. After a residence of three years and a half in Palmyra, the family took possession of a piece of land two miles south of that place, on the border of Manchester. They had no title to it, but as the owners were non-resident minors they were not disturbed. There they put up a little log house, with two rooms on the ground floor and two in the attic, which sheltered them all. Later, the elder Smith contracted to buy the property and erected a farmhouse on it; but he never completed his title to it.

While classing themselves as farmers, the Smiths were regarded by their neighbors as shiftless and untrustworthy. They sold cordwood, vegetables, brooms of their own manufacture, and maple sugar, continuing to vend cakes in the village when any special occasion attracted a crowd. It may be remarked here that, while Ontario County, New York, was regarded as "out West" by seaboard and New England people in 1830, its population was then almost as large as it is to-day (having 40,288 inhabitants according to the census of 1830 and 48,453 according to the census of 1890). The father and several of the boys could not read, and a good 1 Tucker's "Origin, Rise, and Progress of Mormonism," p. 12.

deal of the time of the younger sons was spent in hunting, fishing, and lounging around the village.

The son Joseph did not rise above the social standing of his brothers. The best that a Mormon biographer, Orson Pratt, could say of him as a youth was that "He could read without much difficulty, and write a very imperfect hand, and had a very limited understanding of the elementary rules of arithmetic. These were his highest and only attainments, while the rest of those branches so universally taught in the common schools throughout the United States were entirely unknown to him." He was "Joe Smith" to every one. Among the younger people he served as a butt for jokes, and we are told that the boys who bought the cakes that he peddled used to pay him in pewter two-shilling pieces, and that when he called at the Palmyra Register office for his father's weekly paper, the youngsters in the press room thought it fun to blacken his face with the ink balls.

Here are two pictures of the young man drawn by persons who saw him constantly in the days of his vagabondage. The first is from Mr. Tucker's book:

"At this period in the life and career of Joseph Smith, Jr., or 'Joe Smith,' as he was universally named, and the Smith family, they were popularly regarded as an illiterate, whiskey-drinking, shiftless, irreligious race of people the first named, the chief subject of this biography, being unanimously voted the laziest and most worthless of the generation. From the age of twelve to twenty years he is distinctly remembered as a dull-eyed, flaxen-haired, prevaricating boynoted only for his indolent and vagabondish character, and his habits of exaggeration and untruthfulness. Taciturnity was among his characteristic idiosyncrasies, and he seldom spoke to any one outside of his intimate associates, except when first addressed by another; and then, by reason of his extravagancies of statement, his word was received with the least confidence by those who knew him best. He could utter the most palpable exaggeration or marvellous absurdity with the utmost apparent gravity. He nevertheless evidenced the rapid development of a thinking, plodding, evil-brewing mental composition - largely given to inventions of low cunning, schemes of mischief and deception, and false and mysterious pretensions. In his moral phrenology the professor might have marked the organ of secretiveness as very large, and that of conscientiousness omitted. He was, however, proverbially good natured, very rarely, if ever, indulging in any combative spirit toward any one, whatever might be the provocation, and yet was never known to laugh. Albeit, he seemed to be the pride of his indulgent father, who has been heard to boast of him as the 'genus of the family,' quoting his own expression."

1 "Remarkable Visions."

2

2 "Origin, Rise, and Progress of Mormonism," p. 16.