russ@dadla-b.UUCP (08/11/83)
In response to John White's statement (quoted from Walter R. Martin) I
recently came across the following which I thought might be interesting:
This is from a typescript interview with a Presbyterian lady (Mrs. Palmer)
who grew up on a farm close to Joseph Smith's:
[she] . . . said her father loved young Joseph Smith
and often hired him to work with his boys. She was
about six years old, she said, when he first came to
their home . . .
She stated that one of their church leaders came to her
father to remonstrate against his allowing such close
friendship between his family and the "Smith boy," as
he called him. Her father, she said, defended his own
position by saying that the boy was the best help he
had ever found . . . when Joseph Smith worked with them
the work went steadily forward and he got the full
worth of the wages he paid.
Not until Joseph had had a second vision, she averred,
and began to write a book . . . did her parents cut off
their friendship for all the Smiths, for all the family
followed Joseph. Even the father, intelligent man that
he was, could not discern the evil he was helping to
promote . . .
I will quote further from the article in which this is located:
"This is one of the 'finds' of the researchers enlisted during recent
years to pursue Mormon origins in New York. It is the only document
yet discovered in which someone outside the Church has recorded hearing
of Joseph Smith's First Vision at the time he had it."
"The document has raised many questions and brought to the surface
many differing philosophies of history when shown to prefessionals. In
general they agree that we do not know enough about it to rely on its
complete authenticity. We can summarize our knowledge of it by saying
this is a late recollection of a Mrs. Palmer and that it is apparently
not in her words but someone else's (unknown) who recorded it."
[Madsen, Truman G., Guest Editor's Prolog, (BYU Studies, Spring 1969) p.235]
Also in reference to the affidavit refered to by John White that was
signed by 62 residents of Palmyra and Manchester; non-Mormon historian
Whitney Cross made the following statement: "Every circumstance seems
to invalidate the obviously prejudiced testimonials of unsympathetic
neighbors (collected by one hostile individual whose style of composition
stereotypes the language of numerous witnesses) that the Smiths were either
squatters or shiftless 'frontier drifters.' Many an honest and industrious
farmer followed their identical experience, pursued by bad luck or poor
judgment, and sought a new fling at fortune farther west. No doubt the
Smiths, like many of their fellows, wasted valuable time hunting gold at
the proper turn of the moon. One of the potent sources of Joseph's
local ill repute may well have been the jealousy of other persons who
failed to discover golden plates in the glacial sands of the drumlins."
Whitney R. Cross, THE BURNED-OVER DISTRICT, (Ithaca, 1950), pp. 141-142