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Palmyra New York

Donald L. Enders

In 1816 the family of Joseph Smith, Sr., moved from Vermont to western New York and settled at Palmyra, a promising village located on the proposed route of the Erie Canal.

The Smith Farm. About 1818 the Smiths moved into a log home two miles south of Palmyra Village down Stafford Road toward Manchester. Two years later they purchased 100 acres of heavily forested land just over the line in Manchester Township. During the next decade they fenced the land, cleared 60 acres, built a barn, a cooper's shop, and animal shelters, planted a garden, started a large apple orchard, and developed meadows and fields. They also built a one-and-one-half-story frame home, which was sufficiently finished to occupy during the spring of 1825.

Unable to make the last payment on the farm, the Smiths lost title to the land in late 1825, but remained on it as renters until spring 1829, when they returned to their log home. The Smiths moved from the Palmyra-Manchester area in late 1830, leaving a farm known for its "good order and industry" and assessed in tax records one of the better farms in Manchester Township.

The Sacred Grove and the First Vision. This farm was the setting for the experiences of Joseph Smith, Jr., that Latter-day Saints accept as the divine manifestations that inaugurated the restoration of the gospel. In early spring 1820, while prayerfully seeking forgiveness and divine direction, fourteen-year-old Joseph received a visitation from God the Father and Jesus Christ wherein he was told to join no existing church. This vision occurred in a wood near the Smiths' log home. A beautiful woodland of substantial age at the west end of the farm is reverenced as this site. For almost a century, it has been known among Latter-day Saints as the Sacred Grove.

The Smith Log Home and the Angel Moroni Visitations. On the evening of September 21-22, 1823, seventeen-year-old Joseph received an angelic visitation in the garret of his family's log home. The messenger, named Moroni, first described a record of ancient America that contained "the fulness of Christ's gospel," instructed him to obtain it, and then promised that he would translate the record. In published form this record is the Book of Mormon. It was also in this house that the printer's copy of the Book of Mormon was copied, in 1829 and 1830, and where early preaching and worship services were held before the formal organization of the Church in 1830.