MORMONISM had its origin in
Ontario County. The natural credulity of the ignorant has ever made, them the
dupes of design, and there has never been a creed promulgated so fallacious or
so monstrous but that it has found followers. Indignant citizens have ejected
the contaminating influence from their midst, and, glorified by persecution,
the evil has grown and perpetuated itself. Time hallows the past, custom
sanctions usage, and the usurper in the course of events becomes authority. The
society of Jemima Wilkinson soon dissolved, but the new religion with active
workers drew proselytes from every quarter, and numbers thousands of firm believers.
It is of interest, then, to place on record here a brief outline of its
founder. The father of Joseph Smith was from near the Merrimac river, New
Hampshire. His first settlement was in or near Palmyra village, but in 1819 he
became the occupant of new land on Stafford street, Manchester, near the
Palmyra line. His cabin was of the rudest, and a small tract about it was
underbrushed as a clearing. He had been a Universalist, but had changed to
Methodism. His character was that of a weak, credulous, litigious man.
Mrs. Smith, originally designing
profit and notoriety, was the source from which the religion of the Latter-Day
Saints was to originate. The Smiths had two sons. The elder, Alvah, sickened
and died, and Joseph was designated as the coming prophet,—a subject the most
unpromising in appearance and ability. Legends of hidden treasure had pointed
to Mormon Hill as the depository. Father and son had visited the place and dug
for buried wealth by midnight, and it seemed natural that the Smiths should in
time connect themselves with the plan of a new creed, with Joseph Smith as the
founder. As the scheme developed, Oliver Cowdery and Martin Harris gave it
their support, and Sydney Rigdon joined the movement later. Cowdery was a
school-teacher in the district, and intimate with the Smiths. Harris was owner
of a good farm two miles north of Palmyra village. The farm went to pay for the
publication of the Mormon Bible. Harris was an honest, worthy man, but a
religious enthusiast. Rigdon came from Ohio, and attached himself to the scheme
of imposture. He had been a Baptist preacher, but had forfeited his standing by
disreputable action. His character was that of a designing, dishonest,
disreputable man. In him the Smiths found an able manager, and he found them
fit agents of his schemes. Joseph Smith, Jr., had in his possession a
miraculous stone, opaque to others, luminous and transparent to himself. It was
of the common hornblende variety, and was kept in a box, carefully wrapped in
cotton. Placed in a hat, and looked upon, Smith alleged ability to locate
hidden treasure. Mrs. Smith made and sold oil-cloths, and, while so engaged,
prophesied a new religion, of which her son should be the prophet. One morning
as the settlers went to their work a rumor circulated that the Smiths, in a
midnight expedition, had commenced digging on the northwest spur of Mormon
Hill, and had unearthed several heavy golden tablets covered with
hieroglyphics. It was stated that Joseph was able to translate this record, and
was engaged upon the work. To make money and indulge a love of notoriety was
the first plan, and to found a new religion a later thought, ' The mysterious
symbols were to be translated and published in book-form. Money was wanted, and
Harris mortgaged his farm for two thousand five hundred dollars, which was to
secure him half the proceeds of the sales of the Gold Bible. Joseph Smith told
Harris that an angel had directed where on Mormon Hill the golden plates lay
buried, and he himself unwillingly must interpret and publish the sacred
writing, which was alleged to contain a record of the ancients of America,
engraved by Mormon, the son of Neephi. Upon the box in which were the plates
had been found large spectacles, whose glasses were transparent only to the
prophet. None save Smith were to see the plates, on pain of death. Harris and
Cowdery were the amanuenses, who wrote as Smith, screened from their view,
dictated. Days passed, and the work proceeded. Harris took his copy home, to
place in the hands of the type-setters. His wife was a woman of sense and
energy. She seized one hundred pages of the new 'revelation, and they were
burned or concealed. This portion was not again written, lest the first being
found, the versions should not agree. The author of the manuscript pages from
which the book was published is unknown. One theory gives them as the work of a
Mr. Spaulding, of Ohio, who wrote it as a religious novel, left the manuscript
with a printer, and, being appropriated by Rigdon, was brought to Manchester
and turned to account. The general and most probable opinion is that Smith and
Cowdery were the authors, from these reasons: it is a poor attempt at
counterfeiting the Scriptures ; modern language is inconsistently blended, and
chronology and geography are at variance. It is a strange medley of Scripture,
to which is appended a " Book of Commandments," the work of Rigdon,
perhaps assisted by Spaulding's papers. The date of the Gold Bible is fixed as
the fall of 1827. The first edition of the Book of Mormon was printed by E. B.
Grandin, of Palmyra, New York, and consisted of five thousand copies. The work
of printing began June 29. It was completed in 1830, and offered for sale at one
dollar and twenty-five cents per copy, but it would not sell. Smith went to
Pennsylvania, clad in a new suit from funds provided by Harris; here he married
a daughter of Isaac Hale, and both were baptized by Rigdon after the Mormon
ritual. This wife is living near Nauvoo, Illinois, in comfortable
circumstances. The original edition of the book has this preface: "The
Book of Mormon; an account written by the hand of Mormon upon plates taken from
the plates of Nephi," and concludes with " By Joseph Smith, Jr.,
Author and Proprietor." Later editions designate Smith "
translator." The contents give fifteen " Books," and the edition
contains five hundred and eighty-eight pages, common duodecimo, small pica
letter. A formal organization was desirable. A meeting was held at the house of
Joseph Smith, Sr., in June, 1830. The exercises consisted of readings and
interpretations of the new Bible. Smith, Sr., was installed " Patriarch
and President of Latter-Day Saints." Cowdery and Harris were given limited
and conditional offices. From the house the party adjourned to a brook near by,
where a pool had been made by the construction of a small dam. Harris and
Cowdery were first baptized at their own request. The latter, now qualified,
administered the same rite to Joseph Smith, Sr., Mrs. Smith, his wife, Hiram
Page, Mrs. Rockwell, Dolly Proper, and some of the Whitemer brothers. Calvin
Stoddard, a neighbor, early believed in Mormonism, and was possessed with the
notion that he should go out and preach the gospel. While in a state of doubt,
two men, Stephen S. Harding and Abner Tucker, played a practical joke, which
confirmed his faith. At midnight they repaired to his house, struck three heavy
blows with a stone upon his door, awaking him ; then one solemnly spoke, "
Calvin Stoddard! the angel of the Lord commands that before another going down
of the sun thou shalt go forth among the people and preach the gospel of Nephi,
or thy wife shall be a widow, thy children orphans, and thy ashes scattered to
the four winds of heaven."
Next day the first Mormon
missionary, in full faith, began to preach from house to house, and so began
that missionary system so successful and so potential to this new sect. Soon
after organizing, the Mormons migrated to Kirtland, Ohio, thence to Independence,
Missouri, then to Nauvoo, where Smith fell a martyr to the cause, and where a
temple long stood to mark the sudden energy of the growing sect. Away to Utah
the people traveled, and far beyond the pale of civilization established a new
city and grew in power. The creed of polygamy engrafted by a later prophet has
been a distinctive and repellent feature, at variance with law and morality. To
its existence may be attributed the decline and ultimate death of the system.
While Mormonism originated with the ignorant, and was perpetuated in knavery,
among its adherents are ranked many good people whose devotion to the religion
entitles them to honor. The career of a Mohammed had like points in the origin
of Mohammedanism, and age has deepened the faith of its votaries. Mormonism,
originating in Ontario, and the subject of ridicule, furnishes yet another
evidence of human frailty, superstition, credulity, and faith. (W. H. McIntosh,
History
of Ontario Co., New York [Philadelphia: Everts, Ensign & Everts,
1876], 42-43)
