English

Early Mormon Documents: Volume 4

Today when we think of Joseph Smith as a young man, we tend to picture him in a Palmyra, New York, setting. He also spent three years in Harmony, Pennsylvania. When he first arrived there, he boarded with Isaac Hale and worked for Josiah Stowell. Later, after he married Hale’s daughter Emma, he became a permanent resident and property owner. He also spent about six months across the border in South Bainbridge, New York, where Stowell lived, and in neighboring Colesville, where he was employed by Joseph Knight. During this period, he made brief visits back to Palmyra and Fayette to monitor the typesetting and printing of the Book of Mormon and to organize the Church of Christ. In September 1830 he and Emma left Hamony for good, moving first to Fayette, then to Ohio. The documentary record relating to the Smiths’ experiences in Harmony, Colesville, and South Bainbridge is fairly extensive. From tax assessments, we learn that the young couple owned thirteen acres of land, a cow worth ten dollars, and a house worth ten dollars. The small house, an outbuilding provided by Emma’s father, was where her brother Jesse lived when the house was not being used to dress deer skins. Joseph and E

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