He sought to bring out

the very best that his family had taught him,

which means that the environment of the family did have continuity with Joseph.

Coming up next, Joseph Smith's New England beginnings.

K-Jazz Television, in cooperation with the Church History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, presents this weekly series highlighting the research of scholars and historians as they prepare for the publication of the Joseph Smith Papers. And now your host, Glenn Rossen.

Before Palmyra and the First Vision, before Moroni in the Book of Mormon, there were Joseph Smith’s beginnings in New England. It was a difficult time at the beginning of the 19th century, and it made for rugged people.

Joseph Smith's ancestry began in America as early as the Mayflower, and it carried forward through the date of his birth, December the twenty third,

1805, in Sharon, Vermont. Now.

Did Joseph Smith’s ancestry and his upbringing—

Did they have any impact on the man he would later become?

They most certainly did.

Was Joseph Smith honest, in a word?

Did he tell the truth when he told about his early visions?

The important thing to remember is that Joseph Smith was highly respected in his family,

and his younger brother said at one time when he was challenged about whether the family believed Joseph,

he said, “Joseph was a truthful boy.

Why shouldn't we have believed him?

Father, Mother, every one of us accepted his story.”

There is a path to Joseph Smith's character when you begin to ask how he was raised and by what influence,

and that path leads through the family.

And so to study Joseph Smith’s family is to study Joseph Smith's integrity and his honesty, as I said.

Joseph Smith's grandparents had an influence on the young lad that was felt by him and acknowledged throughout his life.

He made a statement in Nauvoo when he was talking about liberty, and he said, “I have a love of liberty.

My grandfathers instilled that into me as they dangled me on

on their knees.” Each one of those grandfathers had fought in the revolution, and they were evidently proud of their duty and their patriotic contribution to the independence of the country. And you have to realize that that family,

going back to the grandfathers, was post-revolutionary.

They imbibed a very intense feeling about independence and the victory of the Americans. And it was a young nation. And they were filled with adolescent pride in what had actually happened to the country and their contribution to it.

It has been said that a person's actions over time reflect their character.

Well, that being said,

what do the actions then of Joseph Smith's forebears say about them? What kind of people were they?

Honesty and morality are interrelated.

And I use that word in the sense of personal integrity.

And I think Joseph's parents and grandparents actually had that to a marked degree.

And also, there is a deep sense of religion. Now, somebody can be religious in an outward sense. He can go to a church, he can subscribe to the social elements of religion so that he goes along with the crowd.

But Joseph's parents and grandparents all had such a deep conviction about their responsibility that they wanted

to find the best religion.

They were personal seekers in the sense that they wanted to find a true church.

Joseph Smith’s paternal grandfather, Asael,

was born in 1744 in Topsfield, Massachusetts, and he died— now, note the year— 1830 in Vermont.

And yes, he did hear about some of his

grandson's early accomplishments.

Asael Smith was the son of a very prominent family in Topsfield, Massachusetts. They'd been there for several generations.

And a part of his life hinges upon understanding his father. His father had been a legislator

in the Massachusetts General Assembly and had been

a selectman, one of the town governors, repeatedly.

And after the revolution, there was a major depression

with a very great devaluation of money.

And Samuel Smith owed— who is Asael’s father— owed a number of debts. And it looked like

his estate was just going to have to default on those debts.

And Asael Smith said, “No. “My father had a reputation in this community,

and I’m going to see that those debts are paid.”

And he ran that farm until he had paid the debts.

Joseph Smith’s paternal grandmother was Mary Duty Smith. She was born in 1743

and she died in 1836 in Kirtland.

But Mary Duty was a pretty hale and hearty wife.

That’s probably a good name for a wife.

At least she lived up to her name by taking care of

a lot of stock and John Smith.

John Smith, who was Asael’s brother, said, “My mother was a first-rate dairy woman.” Joseph Smith’s brothers.

Most of them migrated to Kirtland, Ohio,

and the last group came in 1836, bringing Grandmother Mary Duty with them.

And Mary Duty said she wanted

her son, which would be Joseph Smith Senior, to baptize her because she did believe in the message of Restoration of Joseph Smith Jr.

In late 1791, Asael Smith, along with others,

moved his family to a new land that was just opening up in the state of Vermont. It was called the Tunbridge Gore.

So the Smith family had developed hundreds of acres, cleared them,

built them up, made them arable land, and, of course, left a lot of the maple trees up for the maple harvest.

This was in the area of Tunbridge, Vermont,

adjacent to the birthplace of Joseph Smith. We think of these towns that the Smith family lived in as being far from each other. They were really, really side by side.

And Tunbridge is in the neighborhood of Sharon, Vermont, where Joseph was born.

They made their home in the Tunbridge Gore for six years.

The Gore sounds like a strange name or title with an unsurveyed area and claimed by three states:

New Hampshire, Vermont, and New York.

In 1796, Asael Smith became ill,

and he believed that he might die.

Accordingly, he wrote a letter to his family in which he revealed his

innermost thoughts. He, first of all, expresses his love for his family and his hope that they will get together every year.

And then he talks about the diligent—their diligence, and he says to them, reflecting on his own life,

“Persevere in the way of well doing, and you may hope for success.

If I was discouraged and did not believe I could do a thing, I never could. Therefore, when you think anything is too hard for you,

do not undertake it.” He wants the family to consider deeply

the mission of Christ.

Now, Asael, as a religionist, was independent.

He had some sort of a defect in his neck and

one of the family, one of the histories of Topsfield, where he started before he moved to Vermont,

calls him Crick Neck Smith and says that his opinions were as crooked as his neck.

So Asael was a religious man, but not a conformist.

And when you read this address to his family,

Asael is talking about the breadth of Jesus’ Atonement.

George A. Smith remembers his grandfather Asael believing that, quote,

“something would turn up in his family that would revolutionize the world.” Well, Asael lived long enough to believe that that was fulfilled in his grandson, Joseph Jr.

As a matter of fact, Joseph Smith Senior and Don Carlos Smith, Joseph's younger brother,

took the Book of Mormon to Asael in 1830,

and he died later that year. But George A. Smith, who lived in in the neighboring community, said that Asael read the Book of Mormon completely through and believed it.

Asael Smith, yes, read the Book of Mormon.

But he never lived long enough to get baptized.

His wife, Mary Duty, on the other hand, she did.

She was baptized in Kirtland in 1836.

The Macks, Solomon and Lydia,

they were Joseph’s maternal grandparents,

and they, too, were a tough, hardy, frontier people in early New Hampshire.

And Solomon Mack actually wrote a book about his life. Solomon

was the original enterpriser of enterprisers, he was a ship builder, he was a dam builder, his brothers were engineers. He was a millwright,

he took up farming. As I said, both grandfathers were in the revolution. And Solomon Mack first was in the French and Indian War.

And then he opened a settler’s post, meaning that he was selling goods to the army, and he had a seafaring career, was away from his family for years at a time in one or two cases.

So Solomon’s industry, willingness to go up again against fate,

time and again, is the story of this book.

And Solomon says, I always thought if I worked harder, I’d get more. And I learned that if the Lord didn’t prosper your life, you didn't have prosperity.

And so toward the end of Solomon's life,

as he tells about helping other people,

saving a man’s life in a famous French and Indian War battle,

he went out of his way, time and again, to be socially responsible and helpful to others.

But at the end of his life, he became severely sick.

And before he wrote that pamphlet, he was converted to the Christian faith.

And I want to add Lydia Gates Mack, who is Solomon’s wife,

to that theme of religion as they pioneered in New Hampshire. They had their own story comparable to the Smiths going to turn Tunbridge, Vermont.

There were not very many homes in the neighborhood. And of course, everybody in that day in that situation would have to be homeschooled. And Lydia Gates Mack had a fairly good education.

She was the daughter of a Connecticut deacon and a devout member of the

Presbyterian Congregational faith.

Later in life, Lucy Mack Smith recorded an event that occurred in 1816.

She was preparing to take her family to go to western New York and join her husband there.

This touching farewell bespeaks the faith of Lucy's mother,

Lydia Mack.

And the mother, according to Lucy, said—the mother died two years later, so

this is really her deathbed wish to her daughter—

“I’m as soon as exchange the things of earth for another state of existence,” she said to Lucy Smith,

“where I hope to enjoy the society of the blessed.

And now, as my last admonition, I beseech you to continue faithful in the exercise of every religious duty to the end of your days,

that I may have the pleasure of embracing you in another fair world above.” So the deep religious commitment of both grandmothers is on record.

Joseph Smith Senior met Lucy Mack when she came from New Hampshire to live with her brother Steven in the Tunbridge area. A romance developed,

and they were married in 1796. While they lived there in the Tunbridge Gore,

two children were born to them:

Alvin in 1798 and Hyrum in 1800.

She tells in her history how her brother Steven Mack,

who owned much property and several businesses, said to his—talked with his partner and his partner said Lucy ought to have something for her marriage. What do you suggest? And Steven

Mack said, I hadn't thought of it,

but the partner, who really liked Lucy, said,

I'm going to give her five hundred dollars if you'll match it. And so her dowry was a thousand dollars given by her enterprising brother and

the partner. Joseph Smith Senior had, with the family system of cooperative farming, inherited land worth eight hundred dollars,

and they decided to open a store in Randolph and next door town to Tunbridge.

Lucy Smith described her husband's involvement in the ginseng trade. He therefore concluded to embark in a traffic of his own article and consequently made an investment of all his means, which he commanded in that way, in a manner which was necessary to carry on a business of this kind, namely crystallising and exporting the route.

When he had obtained a quantity of the same, a merchant by the name of Stephens of Royalton

offered him three thousand dollars for what he had. But my husband refused his offer,

as it was only about two thirds of its real value,

and told the gentleman he would rather venture shipping it himself. He made the

arrangement with the ship’s captain.

And the father, Stevens, went down with his son.

He had ginseng for sale, and then made arrangements for his son to be on board the ship the father Smith shipped his containment. Somewhere in the process, though, there was collusion.

Young Stevens returned from the Orient and claimed that the market for ginseng had fallen off. As a reward for the thousands of dollars worth of cargo that Father Smith had shipped, Stevens gave him a chest of tea

and then took off for Canada.

When Father Smith was tipped off that it was a fraud, he set out to find him, but he never did.

Joseph Smith in Nauvoo later stated,

“My father was swindled out of the entire proceeds by the ship's master and agent,

and he was consequently obliged to sell his farm and all his effects to pay the debt.”

They could have been dishonest and started over again,

or taken their money and started well someplace else instead.

Joseph Smith Senior

sold his portion of the farm and Lucy gave her dowry.

And for eighteen hundred dollars,

they became honest people.

And the value of that to their character and their own example in the family was well worth eighteen hundred dollars in retrospect. But the money—

that was a huge amount of money for those days.

With these devastating financial reverses,

Father Smith was required to take his family

and move in with his Maak in-laws.

It was in a place called Dary Hill near Sharon, Vermont.

And it was here that Joseph Smith Jr. was born.

In August of 1804, Solomon Mack acquired

the property up in this area.

His farm was comprised of three previous farms

And—supposedly around one hundred acres.

The best data that we have suggests that

the birth place home, as well as a home down over the turnpike,

probably were built prior to Solomon's acquisition of this property. We don't know that for sure.

I would surmise that at least by the

the spring of 1805,

Joseph and Lucy and family were on site. Because that’s a

standard time for folks involved in agriculture to commence getting their crops in and working the land.

Joseph Smith Senior

was a school teacher there in the regular term.

He was a farmer when school was out.

Both Joseph Smith Senior and his wife, Lucy, were deeply religious people.

But while Joseph Smith Senior tended to remain aloof from organized religion, Lucy’s experiences on their hand drew her toward it. About six years after her marriage,

Lucy Mack Smith became seriously ill,

and it turned out to be a life changing experience.

She

felt she was failing and slipping away, and her husband, in tears beside her, said essentially, Don't leave me. We don't have a doctor. But I don't know what to do without you.

And Lucy pleaded with the Lord that if He would let her live,

she would serve Him all the days of her life and serve her family.

And she heard a voice that said, “Ask and ye shall receive.”

She received assurance that she would live.

Upon recovering from her protracted illness,

Lucy endeavored to fulfill that covenant.

She stated that she went from place to place for the purpose of getting information and finding, if it were possible, “some congenial spirit who could enter into my feeling and thus be able to strengthen and assist me in carrying out my resolution.”

Not finding the congenial spirit she sought, Lucy nevertheless concluded that it was her duty to be baptized. “Finding a minister who is willing to baptize me

and leave me free in regard to joining any religious denominations, I stepped forward and yielded obedience to this ordinance.”

Lucy didn’t identify the minister or the

the denomination.

Then, in December of 1805,

Joseph and Lucy's fourth child was born a son.

They named him Joseph Smith Junior.

We can think of his birth as—you would think, an extraordinary

event in, kind of, heaven’s view of earth’s history,

Providentially speaking, it's a great moment when the prophet of the Restoration is sent to earth in this humble little cottage.

It's sitting right here behind us.

But as Lucy described it, it was not such an important event, after all. She gives just two sentences to Joseph Smith's birth.

“In the meantime, we had a son whom we called Joseph.

I will speak of him more particularly by and by.”

And that was all. And then she went on.

The home where Joseph Smith was born—that no longer stands.

But scholars and historians have been able to piece together what it may have looked like.

It was not a log home. It was a frame home.

That would be typical of many New England farmhouses of that time.

This rendering that you see here pretty well depicts what

we conclude this little frame home where Joseph the Prophet was born looked like.

A one and a half story frame structure.

Again, measuring twenty-two feet across the front,

twenty-four feet to the rear.

The home’s orientation was kind of a south southeast direction. But basically, we are looking south.

We would have walked in through the

front door, if you were a visitor or a family member

If you would have turned right into the home,

you would have gone into the hall or parlor,

to the rear of which we sense, based on the dimensions, that there would have been a bedroom,

perhaps we would call it today a master bedroom,

probably the space where parents slept. And probably

the place where young Joseph was born. But in this humble little frame home is where young Joseph

got his start, where he breathed his first.

You can take the boy out of the hills, but you can't take the hills out of the boy.

And Joseph commenced his mortal journey in a rigorous, demanding situation. So almost from the start, he would be schooled and formed and tool for the great responsibilities that lay ahead.

Joseph Smith Junior was not born to wealth and ease. From the very beginning.

Life was hard scrabble for him and his family.

This birth occurred at a moment of considerable tension in the Smith family; history has been made very clear here today.

Because in 1803,

the family fortunes had really descended,

plummeted, suddenly from being property holders,

running a store, having a reserve of cash, to suddenly, in order to pay their debts— and they were very honest about paying their debts—

They are become tenant farmers.

So what does this tell us about

the Smiths that they didn't live out the American dream in terms of wealth?

They simply did not become wealthy in the course of their lives.

I think that it gives us pause to reflect about the nature of human existence, as our Heavenly Father has sent us to this earth,

and that is, there is no one who can be guaranteed a shield, who will be shielded against life adversities.

It simply does not happen.

And in the case of his prophet,

he was not protected against trouble, against sickness, against the death of children,

against hardship and suffering and pain.

But the other side of that story is that this family never despaired. They never had the despair because of the deep assurance that God was with them and that they had a mission and that this father, Joseph Senior—

whose life was in many ways a series of heartaches and troubles and defeats from time to time—

nonetheless was glorious in his son’s eyes

and was able to achieve great things as a patriarch and as a high priest. And so I think it means the same for all of us, that adversities will certainly come to us.

Everyone here, no matter what their worldly circumstances, has suffered adversity.

But none of us need despair, because of what we know is true.

Next week on the Joseph Smith Papers, Joseph Smith’s America.

Joseph is very much a man of his times.

He’s a man on the frontier, always—from the day he’s born—

he’s always living on the frontier, which helps him.

He’s living in a time where people know how to build something from almost nothing.