The Smith Family Farm

Joseph Smith’s family lived on a farm in Palmyra, New York, when he experienced his First Vision, and during the events pertaining to the translation of the Book of Mormon. Understanding more about the circumstances of Joseph’s life can help us to better appreciate his experiences.

Places hold great meaning

We can develop emotional attachment to places where we live, work, attend school, or experience other events. These places become more than just places. They become symbols for past events and emotions.

The people of Alma were baptized in the waters of Mormon, and that place became sacred to all those who shared in that experience: “all this was done in Mormon, yea, by the waters of Mormon, in the forest that was near the waters of Mormon; yea, the place of Mormon, the waters of Mormon, the forest of Mormon, how beautiful are they to the eyes of them who there came to the knowledge of their Redeemer.”¹

A significant portion of Isaiah’s writing makes reference to places, and it can be very challenging to understand Isaiah’s writings without knowing about those places. Nephi acknowledged this when he said it was hard for his people to understand Isaiah, but he said, “I, of myself, have dwelt at Jerusalem, wherefore I know concerning the regions round about.”² Nephi’s knowledge of those places helped him to understand Isaiah’s writings.

As we ponder the early events of the restoration, it is helpful to have a knowledge of the areas where the events occurred.

Palmyra and Manchester

I like to try and understand locations and geographic boundaries, but there does not appear to be much distinction between Palmyra and Manchester in the Joseph Smith story. In his history, Joseph Smith said that when he was about 10, his father “left the State of Vermont, and moved to Palmyra . . . . In about four years after my father’s arrival in Palmyra, he moved with his family into Manchester.”

Currently, the distance between the city offices of the two towns of Palmyra and Manchester is 8 miles, or about a 10 minute drive. Palmyra was founded in 1789,³ and the census of 1800 shows 986 residents. A significant event in the history of Palmyra was the building of the Erie Canal. It provided work for residents as they built the canal, but it also provided a means of shipping goods to increase the economic vitality of the region.

The website for the Town of Manchester⁴ reveals that it is comprised of four distinct villages, one of which is also named Manchester. The current addresses for the church history sites refer to certain locations being in Manchester, but having a postal address in Palmyra. This is consistent with the website for the Town of Palmyra, which also refers to various church history sites being in Manchester, but having an address in Palymra: “Of most interest to us in Palmyra, was the founding of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the Mormons. Although the church was founded in Fayette, Seneca County, most of the spiritual experiences underlying the foundation occurred in the Palmyra area. Among the significant locations are the Sacred Grove, Hill Cumorah, The Joseph Smith Home; all of which are located in the Town of Manchester, Ontario County. In Palmyra are the Martin Harris farm, the Grandin Building in which the first edition of the Book of Mormon was published, the gravesite of Alvin Smith and sites of business locations which played a role in the lives of the Smith family while in our area.”⁵ Although Palmyra’s website states that the Sacred Grove and Joseph Smith home are located in Manchester (and Joseph Smith said his family moved to Manchester), the address for the Sacred Grove and the Smith Family Farm is Palmyra.⁶ As a result of all this, I’m not too clear where Manchester ends and Palmyra begins. The Church’s website of Church History Topics lists Palmyra and Manchester under one topic.⁷

A map of the area shows their close proximity, and from this map it appears that the Smith family farm was on the border of Wayne County and Ontario County, and between Manchester and Palmyra:

Perhaps the best explanation I’ve found is by Donald Enders, a curator at the Museum of Church History and Art, who said, “The Joseph Smith, Sr. family lived in the Palmyra, New York, area for 14 years—from 1816 through 1830. They spent 12 of those 14 years on a farm in a ‘sequestered neighborhood’ two miles south of the village near the Palmyra-Manchester town line.”⁸

The Log Home

The Smith family moved to Palmyra between 1816 and 1817, where they worked for approximately two years before purchasing farm land pursuant to a contract that required installment payments.⁹ At that time, their family was comprised of the parents Joseph Sr. and Lucy, and the children Alvin, Hyrum, Sophronia, Joseph Jr., Samuel Harrison, William, Katharine, and Don Carlos.¹⁰ After purchasing the land, they constructed a 1,000-square-foot log home, which was completed in 1818 or 1819. That makes 2 adults and 8 children living in a small log cabin. The Church has constructed a replica of the log home, which my family and I visited in 2018.

The log cabin is a replica, but historians are certain that it is in the exact location of the original log home.¹¹ Larry C. Porter, a professor of Church history at BYU,¹² explained how the location was discovered: “In 1969 I visited the Palmyra Town Hall. As I was reading along in the Old Town Record Book, I saw something that made me take a second look. It was the minutes of a highway survey. . . . [O]n the thirteenth day of June, 1820, Isaac Durfee and Luman Harrison, commissioners of the highways, came down with the old town compass and laid out a line for a road from the south line of Palmyra Township back to the village of Palmyra. And they shot an azimuth on the Joseph Smith dwelling house! I did a double take as I read that, realizing I could virtually find the exact location of the Smith house.”¹³ Based on that survey, the BYU Anthropology Department started a dig in 1982, which enabled them to find the foundation and place the exact location of the log home.¹⁴

Working on the farm

When the Smith family acquired their farm, it was untamed land. Donald Enders describes the likely experience in agriculture that the Smith family had when they came to Palmyra, and that they likely looked for specific land to match their abilities:

“According to the Smiths’ accounts, Joseph Sr. had worked on and improved farms in Vermont. Skills that Yankee farmers routinely acquired included clearing land; constructing fences; raising fruit; making maple sugar; planting, tending, and harvesting crops; threshing grain; and mowing and putting up hay. Joseph Sr. could also lay stone walls, dig and rock up wells, construct simple buildings, and make barrels. When the Smiths moved to the Genesee, the oldest sons, Alvin and Hyrum, likely had a working knowledge of these trades as well.

“It seems probable that the Smiths looked for land that met specific criteria based not only on their practical experience in working the land, but also on established agricultural models. For example, Tench Coxe, Supervisor of the Revenue during the Presidency of George Washington, published widely read recommendations about agricultural settlement types during the years following the Revolution. Coxe suggested that emigrants to Western New York purchase ‘one hundred acres of sugar maple land.’ If these acres were developed to standards of ‘ordinary American improvement,’ ‘two thirds’ should be cleared for the ‘culture of grass and grain,’ and ‘one third’ should be left in ‘wood and timber.’ The timber should include about 1,200 maple trees, which, when tapped, would ‘make one thousand pounds of weight of sugar.’ The Smith family followed Coxe’s recommendation in almost exact detail.”¹⁵

This demonstrates that the Smith family, although uneducated, had significant experience in the agricultural practices of their time.

Using tax and other historical records, Donald Enders estimates that the Smiths cleared 60 acres of land and left the remaining 40 wooded, and of those 60 acres of land that they cleared, “the Smiths cut down about 6,000 trees. A large percentage measured from four to six feet in diameter, and grew to heights of one hundred feet or more.”¹⁵

In addition to the work on the farm, the Smiths also sought other employment. “Sources document over two dozen kinds of labor the Smiths performed for hire, including digging and rocking up wells, mowing, coopering, constructing cisterns, hunting and trapping, teaching school, providing domestic service, and making split-wood chairs, brooks and baskets. The Smiths also harvested, did modest carpentry work, dug for salt, constructed stone walls and fireplaces, flailed grain, cut and sold cordwood, carted, made cider, and ‘witched’ for water. They sold garden produce, made bee-gums, washed clothes, painted oil-cloth coverings, butchered, dug coal, painted chairs, hauled stone, and made maple syrup and sugar.”¹⁵

The Smith family was incredibly hard working. Not only did they work on their own farm, but they also sought other employment to provide for themselves.

The Frame Home

Joseph’s oldest brother Alvin passed away in November 1823.¹⁶ Before his death, he began construction on a frame home located on the farm not far from the log home. As the oldest, Alvin brought in most of the income for the family from “hiring out” his labor to other farmers.¹⁷ On his deathbed, Alvin made a dying request to Hyrum to finish the frame home.¹⁷ The home was completed in about 1825, but the work and cost to finish the home, without Alvin to provide additional labor and income, caused the family to over-extend themselves and led to their loss of the farm. Although they lost ownership, they were able to remain as tenant farmers. They lived in the frame home until about 1830, when they were required to move back into the log home. But by 1831, the family left permanently when they moved to Ohio.

Events while the Smith family lived in these two homes

Several significant events occurred while the Smith family lived in these two homes. The First Vision and Moroni’s visit to Joseph occurred while the family lived in the log home. After thy moved into the frame home, Joseph met and married Emma, he retrieved the golden plates from the Hill Cumorah, he hid the plates in various spots in the frame home to protect them, and it was while he was in the frame home in 1828 that he learned that Martin Harris had lost the 116 manuscript pages of the Book of Mormon translation.¹⁸

This location teaches us much about Joseph Smith. He came from a close family who taught him hard work. Although uneducated, he knew the value of hard manual labor, and he would have had experience in agricultural practices. The log home is very small, especially considering 10, then 11 people lived in it (after Joseph’s youngest sister, Lucy, was born in 1821). The frame home is larger, but it is still modest for such a large family. The Smith Family Farm is a testament to an industrious family who worked for nothing more than to just keep living. They could never get ahead, they often struggled, but they kept going.

References

1. Mosiah 18:30.
2. 2 Nephi 25:6.
3. Palmyra Website, “A Brief History of Palmyra,” https://www.palmyrany.com/history.
4. https://manchesterny.org/.
5. Palmyra Website, “A Brief History of Palmyra,” https://www.palmyrany.com/history.
6. “Sacred Grove,” https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/learn/locations/sacred-grove; “Hill Cumorah,” https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/learn/locations/hill-cumorah.
7. Church History Topics, “Palmyra and Manchester,” https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/history/topics/palmyra-and-manchester?lang=eng.
8. Donald L. Enders, “The Joseph Smith, Sr., Family: Farmers of the Genesee,” in Joseph Smith: The Prophet, The Man, ed. Susan Easton Black and Charles D. Tate Jr. (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1993), 213–225, https://rsc.byu.edu/joseph-smith-prophet-man/joseph-smith-sr-family-farmers-genesee#.
9. Church History Topics, “Palmyra and Manchester,” and “Sacred Grove and Smith Family Farm,” https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/history/topics/sacred-grove-and-smith-family-farm?lang=eng; see also Enders, “The Joseph Smith, Sr., Family: Farmers of the Genesee.”
10. “Family of Joseph Smith Sr. and Lucy Mack Smith: The First Family of the Restoration,” Ensign, December 2005, https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/2005/12/family-of-joseph-smith-sr-and-lucy-mack-smith-the-first-family-of-the-restoration?lang=eng. The Smiths had one more daughter, Lucy, born in July, 1821.
11. Richard Neitzel Hholzapfel, Donald L. Enders, Larry C. Porter, “Return to the Joseph Smith Family Farm,” Religious Educator11, no. 3 (2010): 29–37, https://rsc.byu.edu/joseph-smith-prophet-man/joseph-smith-sr-family-farmers-genesee#.
12. BYU Religious Studies Center, “Larry C. Porter,” https://rsc.byu.edu/author/porter-larry-c.
13. Richard Neitzel Hholzapfel, Donald L. Enders, Larry C. Porter, “Return to the Joseph Smith Family Farm,” Religious Educator11, no. 3 (2010): 29–37, https://rsc.byu.edu/vol-11-no-3-2010/return-joseph-smith-family-farm.
14. Enders, “The Joseph Smith, Sr., Family: Farmers of the Genesee,” https://rsc.byu.edu/joseph-smith-prophet-man/joseph-smith-sr-family-farmers-genesee#.
15. Enders, “The Joseph Smith, Sr., Family: Farmers of the Genesee.”
16. Church History Topics, “Sacred Grove and Smith Family Farm,” https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/history/topics/sacred-grove-and-smith-family-farm?lang=eng&id=title1#title1.
17. Jacob W. Olmstead, “Life on the Smith Family Farm,” Church History website, Feb. 22, 2019, https://history.churchofjesuschrist.org/content/historic-sites/palmyra/life-on-the-smith-farm?lang=eng.
18. Church History Topics, “Sacred Grove and Smith Family Farm,” https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/history/topics/sacred-grove-and-smith-family-farm?lang=eng&id=title1#title1.