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Boyhood of a Prophet
I was born in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and five, on the twenty-third day of December, in the town of Sharon, Windsor County, state of Vermont . . . My father, Joseph Smith, Sr., left the state of Vermont and moved to Palmyra, Ontario (now Wayne) County, in the state of New York, when I was in my tenth year, or thereabout [s]
As Joseph Smith commenced dictating a history of the restoration movement in 1838, he discussed the earliest events in his life, including his birth in Vermont and his move to New York. Since this history included an account of the appearance of God, the Father, and His son, Jesus Christ, to a nineteenth-century prophet, the appearance of angels to this prophet and his close associates, and of the coming forth of a book that was a modern witness for Christ, inquirers might ask, "Was Joseph Smith a trustworthy individual?" "Was he a reliable historian?" and "How accurate are the historical writings which he (with the assistance of scribes) produced?" As this volume unfolds, these questions will be considered from different avenues of investigation. The initial approach will be to consider the reliability of Joseph Smith's writings concerning the earliest events in his life, events that transpired before his First Vision of 1820.
Most of the information available concerning the boyhood of Joseph Smith is located in the writings of the Prophet and his mother, Lucy Mack Smith. On four different occasions Joseph Smith wrote or dictated to scribes accounts of his religious experiences of the 1820's, and in three of these histories the Prophet briefly described events in his life that occurred before his First Vision in the spring of 1820. The first of these three accounts was an autobiography which was partly written by the Prophet and partly dictated to Frederick G. Williams in the fall of 1832. Although this autobiography was never completed, it included a few details not found elsewhere concerning his early activities in New England, and his move to New York. Another history (mentioned in the Preface) was commenced by the Prophet in 1838 and was initially published in Nauvoo in the Times and Seasons in serial form beginning in March 1842. Included at the end of this history (as Note A) is a description of Joseph's leg operation which occurred while the Smiths were living in New Hampshire. Another brief history was prepared by the Prophet (with the probable assistance of others) at the request of John Wentworth, editor of the Chicago Democrat, and this account was also initially published in the Times and Seasons in 1842. Although the Wentworth Letter was the last known history written by the Prophet, this account was the first of the Prophet's histories to be published. Primary sources relating to Joseph Smith's First Vision (plus other contemporary accounts) have previously been published in Milton V. Backman, Jr.'s Joseph Smith's First Vision (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1980).