“Cradle of the Restoration,” Liahona, Sept. 2001, 11

Cradle of the Restoration

The Joseph Smith Sr. family farm, with its grove of trees and log home, is sacred ground where the restored gospel of Jesus Christ was nurtured.

Here, beginning in the spring of 1820, just south of Palmyra, New York, the 40 hectares of the Joseph Smith Sr. farm became sacred space—holy ground.

Here in a grove of trees, Heavenly Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, appeared to 14-year-old Joseph Smith Jr. Here the Smith family, who were the first to hear of the heavenly appearance, believed their son and brother Joseph. Here the angel Moroni appeared to the young prophet on numerous occasions and told him of a book written upon gold plates, which gave “an account of the former inhabitants of this continent” (JS—H 1:34).

After 21-year-old Joseph received the plates in 1827, it was here—in the frame home and the cooper shop—that he hid the sacred records to protect them until he could translate their inscriptions and publish them as the Book of Mormon.

And so it was that in the dawning of the dispensation of the fulness of times, the Smith family farm became the cradle where the restored gospel of Jesus Christ was placed, protected, and nurtured. Today the log home, frame home, cooper shop (a place where wooden casks are made and repaired), and barn have been restored to their original state, making it easier for us to envision the events that took place here. The Sacred Grove is a short walk away, and on a small hill overlooking the farm is a new house of the Lord—the Palmyra New York Temple.

Following are photographs of the Joseph Smith Sr. farm with a brief review of some events that took place here during the early years of the Restoration.

The newly restored cooper shop, frame home, and barn look as they did when the Smiths lived here.

In 1820 this “beautiful grove [was] sufficiently dense and removed from the road to give the necessary seclusion [young Joseph] desired; and here on the morning of a beautiful, clear day in that early spring time, he knelt for the first time in all his life to make a personal, direct, verbal appeal to God in prayer.”¹

Of the evening of 21 September 1823, Lucy Mack Smith, the Prophet’s mother, noted, Joseph “retired to his bed in quite a serious and contemplative state of mind.”² Joseph later wrote of that night: “While I was thus in the act of calling upon God, I discovered a light appearing in my room. … A personage appeared at my bedside. … He called me by name, and said unto me that he was a messenger sent from the presence of God to me, and that his name was Moroni.”³

“We had a snug log-house, neatly furnished,”⁴ wrote Lucy Mack Smith of the log home with its two rooms on the ground floor and two sleeping rooms upstairs.

The kitchen in the log house was likely the site of many intimate family discussions and much enjoyable time spent together. After the Smiths were unable to make the last payment on the frame home, they eventually moved back into the log house in 1829.

A few years after the Smith family moved into the log home, 24-year-old Alvin, the oldest son, planned and began construction on a frame house. “To the neighbors who watched the progress of the new house, he often said: ‘I am going to have a nice, pleasant room for father and mother to sit in, and everything arranged for their comfort. They shall not work any more as they have done.’ But Alvin never lived to see the house completed.”⁵ In the middle of November 1823, he became ill and died.

In the frame home (left) and its kitchen (right), family prayers and Bible study were a regular part of life. Son William remembered, “Father used to carry his spectacles in his vest pocket, and when we boys saw him feel for his ‘specs,’ we knew that was a signal to get ready for prayer, and if we did not notice it mother would say, … ‘get ready for prayers.’ After the prayer we had a song.”⁶

Here, one evening, Joseph’s sisters Catherine and Sophronia were snuggled in the off-kitchen bedroom when someone noticed a group of men coming toward the house. Joseph sprang to action, took the plates wrapped in cloth, and hid them in bed between the girls, saying, “Be as if you are asleep.” Two men came into the room, one with a lantern, saw the sleeping girls, looked under the bed, and left.⁷

The parlor of the frame home, with its windows facing west toward the Sacred Grove, was a favorite place for the Smith family to talk. Here Joseph often shared what he was learning. His mother recorded that following Moroni’s visit, “Joseph continued to receive instructions from the Lord, and we continued to get the children together every evening for the purpose of listening while he gave us a relation of the same.”⁸

The bedroom of Joseph Sr. and Lucy Mack Smith on the main floor of the frame home.

The 40 hectares of the Smith farm include the Sacred Grove, log home, frame home, barn, and cooper shop. The recently dedicated Palmyra New York Temple is located in the northeast corner of the Smiths’ original farm. The village of Palmyra is north of the Smith farm, and the Hill Cumorah is nearly five kilometers southeast of the farm site. (Map by Tadd R. Peterson.)

The Palmyra New York Temple was dedicated by President Gordon B. Hinckley on 6 April 2000, exactly 170 years after the Church was organized in nearby Fayette, New York, and 180 years after young Joseph Smith knelt in the grove of trees near where the temple now stands. In dedicating the temple, President Hinckley asked our Heavenly Father: “Wilt Thou accept of this Thy holy house. It represents the efforts of those who love Thee and who love Thy Son. It carries on its entablature the words ‘Holiness to the Lord, The House of the Lord.’ It is Thine, dear Father. We would be so grateful if Thou were to visit it with Thy presence in commemoration of Thine earlier appearance in the nearby Sacred Grove 180 years ago. Let Thy Holy Spirit abide here.” (Photograph by Matthew Reier.)

Barn and cooper shop.

Joseph Smith Sr. and his sons worked hard to clear their forested land so they would have tillable farmland. They managed to clear 12 hectares while living in the log home and 12 more while living in the frame home. They also had up to 1,500 maple trees, from which they gathered sap in the spring and converted it into molasses and sugar. The barn was the center of these activities in addition to the daily caring for crops and animals.

Joseph moved the wooden box and gold plates from beneath the hearth in the frame home. He hid the plates in the loft of the cooper shop and buried the empty chest under the floorboards. That night a mob tore up the floor and smashed the empty chest but failed to search the loft just above their heads.

Photography by Craig Dimond, except as noted