; Smith and his father boarded with Isaac Hale in 1825 while working on Josiah Stowell's mining project. A Heart Full of Love and Faith: The Prophets Letters to His Family, in Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2007), 23847. When Smith asked for Emma's hand, her father, Isaac, objected because Smith was "a stranger" and had . After his mother died and his father remarried, Hale joined his maternal grandparents Phebe and "the enterprising Arah Ward, mill-builder and pioneer," in Waterbury, Connecticut. Smith's polygamy exploded in the 1840s. Emily Austin noted Emma was a school teacher, a fine girl, of good repute and respectable, though poor parentage. Emily M. Austin,Mormonism, or, Life Among the Mormons(Madison, Wisc. On November 17, 1844, she gave birth to David Hyrum Smith, the last child that she and Joseph had together. . These roads would open trade to the Genesee Valley where men like Joseph Knight Sr. and Josiah Stowell could purchase large supplies of grain inexpensively and take their loads down to the river destined for the higher priced urban markets in Pennsylvania. Vogel, Hiel Lewis Reply, 6 August 1879,Early Mormon Documents, 4:316. The following year, when Isaac Hale and John Hilborn were assessors, the Hale sugar house was dropped from the assessment and Isaac was taxed for 300 pounds of sugarsignificantly more than any other individual in the township. The only means of getting from here [at the log church house eight miles downriver from the Hales] was by canoes. ), his question mark after the date expressing some uncertainty as to when Buck was replaced. In June1844, immediately preceding her husbands death, Emma wrote, I desire with all my heart to honor and respect my husband as my head, ever to live in his confidence and by acting in unison with him retain the place which God has given me by his side.7. 37. 224. The Stow Cemetery is also known as Lyons Farm Cemetery and North Windsor Cemetery. Stonemasons work in a distinctive style that makes it possible to identify headstones as coming from a particular individual as is done with other works of art. 13. Blackman,History of Susquehanna County,101, 103. Although a large, level valley in the center of the township became Wells village, the Lewis family settled away from the village on inexpensive land on a rocky mountain top near the northeastern township line. Bushman,Refinement of America,3060. 77. Blackman,History of Susquehanna County,52, quoted a local resident who described the setting as far above the reach of man, was [located] the painted figure of an Indian Chief. She would eventually bear nine children and adopt two others, four of whom died at birth or shortly after, and two who died as toddlers. 190. . Emma's father, Isaac Hale died 11 January 1839. 133. When the Lewis family arrived in Vermont, they settled in Wells Township. The wealthy family lived on a 90-acre farm in the Susquehanna River Valley, where Isaac shipped meat and other merchandise downriver to Philadelphia and Baltimore. John Comfort, letter to Silas Comfort, July 11, 1839, punctuation added for clarity. This did not happen quickly. Emma Smith, wife of the Prophet Joseph Smith, served as the first president of the Relief Society and one of the Book of Mormon scribes, and she curated the Church's first hymnbook. Provo, UT: Center for Family History and Genealogy, Brigham Young University, 2002. 151. When Emma decided to marry Joseph in 1827, her parents disowned her, but did allow their daughter and son-in-law back for a time while Emma was pregnant with their first child and as Joseph continued translating the . Hale traveled from Connecticut along the newly opened turnpike to southwestern New York until he arrived at Ouaquaga village or Old Oquago,which straddled the Susquehanna River four miles south of what would eventually become Colesville, New York.30 Major General John Sullivans soldiers had already burned Ouaquaga to the ground and massacred hundreds of Onondaga tribal members and recently settled Tuscarora families before Hale arrived, leaving corn in the fields, apples in the orchards, and tools scattered about the ground. I dont know how but he followed me into the house . 255. Just another site. Isaac believed that Joseph was a treasure seeker and con artist. Upham,Life of Timothy Pickering,3641. 268. 81. He was taxed that year as a single man, while he courted thirteen-year-old Mary (Polly) McKune who lived next door.250 In preparation for marriage, Jesse began building his own house on the southeastern edge of his fathers farm between his parents home and that of the McKunes (on what became the Joseph and Emma Smith property). This local awakening had more in common with the Second Great Awakening that would begin in a few years, however, since it attracted the unchurched in the area until nearly all the families in the valley offered morning and evening prayers.168 Both the Hale and Lewis families were caught up in this awakening, and the parents took their one-year-old sons, Alva Hale and Levi Lewis, to Buck for baptism.169, John B. Buck, a grandson of Daniel Buck, recalled years later, after the valleys Congregationalists had transformed themselves into Presbyterians, how during the 1790s the congregation, was scattered up and down the river, in cabins. In December 1827 Joseph began work on the Book of Mormon. His appearance at this time, was that of a careless young man -- not very well educated, and very saucy and insolent to his father. Wells Town Clerk, Vital and Town Records, 17322005, Wells, Vermont, Family Search, accessed 2008,http://FamilySearch.org. . It is also possible he drew from the general folk culture of New England and learned how to use a rod to receive revelation elsewhere. See John Comfort Correspondence. A mob of about 200 armed men stormed the jail in the late afternoon of June 27, 1844, and both Joseph and his brother Hyrum were killed. Subject Files, Susquehanna County Historical Society. Quaker John Hilborn was the best educated man in the valley. The sons likely visited their fathers grave at some later point and replaced the original Hale and Lewis marker since a nicely carved 1820s headstone with a weeping willow and well-carved lettering now marks the grave.165, A religious transformation in the Hale family followed the death of Tim Pickering; and a transformation in the Hale home and land followed their religious transformation. See Land Survey, R. H. Rose Survey Map, Bound Ledger, Rose Family Papers, Binghamton University Libraries Special Collections, Binghamton, New York. Hand painted tea cups and saucers suggest the Hale women socialized in their home with other women from the valley. Silas Gildersleve, letter to Family, September 18, 1823, John Comfort Correspondence, George Fisk Comfort Papers, Syracuse University Special Collections; see also, Charles Wentworth Upham,The Life of Timothy Pickering(Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1878), 4:116. Fanny Winters, a stepdaughter of Joseph McKune Sr., married Benjamin Comfort on May 12, 1829, and Catherine Winters, a sister of Fanny, married George W. Lane, a nephew of influential minister George Lane and son of Martin Lane, the prominent businessman after whom Lanesville was named.313 Robert McKune married Mary Hilborn and they moved into the Hilborn home at the death of her father, John.314 Hale sons Jesse and Ward each married a McKune girl as well, and the other Hale children married locally except Emma. Thomas Houghton,Royal Institutions: Being Proposals for Articles to Establish and Confirm Laws, Liberties, and Customs of Silver and Gold Mines to All the Kings Subjects(London: Daniel Poplar, 1694), A23,68. Horses, cows, and oxen were taxed, but mules, sheep, goats, and pigs were not. The William and Jacob Smith assessments were adjusted in 1825 by Jesse Hale for the 1826 season. As he viewed the land, Rose pushed through thirty miles of woods, setting up a camp at a location occupied the week before by some indians.225 His dress was a hunting shirt, trousers and mockasons226which helped him blend in with the locals, such as Jesse Hale who was described as six feet in his moccasins. Despite the backwoods clothing, however, the wealthy Rose had little in common with the Hale family or their neighbors, and he brought with him a notion of gentility then common in his native Philadelphia. 234. 197. MarkL. Staker, A Comfort unto My Servant, Joseph: Emma Hale Smith (18041879), in RichardE. TurleyJr. and BrittanyA. Chapman,eds., Women of Faith in the Latter Days, Volume One, 17751820 (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2011), 345,349. 236. Winter approached, and one long-time resident, fifty-five-year-oldJosiah Stowell had a wagon full of men from the vicinity of Palmyra, New York, he was bringing to work in Harmony Township before they could no longer dig the frozen ground. The lack of a legal will placed both the Church and Emmas family in uncertain financial conditions. Drawing by Ted. Court of appeal held at Isaac Hales in Harmony, February 28, 1816, see Tax Assessment Records, Harmony Township, 1815, Susquehanna County Courthouse. The remains of the homes foundation suggest Isaac and Elizabeth Hales frame home was 14 x 34 feet with a rear addition 12 x 24 feet. He experienced some melancholy while he was away from his fianc, Jane Hodge, and he wrote her of his homesickness, Even the talisman around my neck, which I fondly thought would have defended me against all mischance, cannot shield me from this evil spirit . After Joseph and Emma Hale Smiths marriage, they returned to the neighborhood that became for them a significant place in their familys timeline. After Ruper sold his land to Tench Francis; however, the Hales clearly knew who owned their land. Nevertheless, white settlers developed their own mines in search for hoped riches. George Peck recalled, during the years he was a circuit rider preaching in the Hale home, how his own fourteen-year-old sister developed a similar missionary enthusiasm. 176. Lewis was later particularly critical of Joseph Smiths spectacles used to translate rather than his theology or claims of angelic visitations, which may have been an outgrowth of Lewiss Vermont experiences (or may have been a reflection of the similarity between Shouting Methodist expectations and Joseph Smiths results). Isaac Hale and Elizabeth Lewis may have attended the same church services. Nathaniel Lewiss later military service in the navy may reflect experience gained through his father. For significant publications by Charles Pickering see,The Geographical Distribution of Animals and Plants:United States exploring expedition, 18381842, under the command of Charles Wilkes)(Boston: Gould and Lincoln, 1863); andRaces of Man and Their Geographical Distribution (London: H. G. Bohn, 1854). There are also two other individuals buried in unmarked graves within the row of Hale family headstones. Their families all lived in Lanesville where the generally shallow river water filled the air with a constant roar and the creaking of several sawmills added the noise of industry and pious work to the setting. Joseph lived near Palmyra, New York, but boarded with the Hales in Harmony while he was employed in a company of men hired by Josiah Stowell to unearth a "Dream Mine". They seem to have thought of it. After offering him a ride, the man declined, saying that he was headed to Cumorah, and then disappeared suddenly. He had disapproved of Joseph's past money-digging and he strongly disapproved of the marriage with Emma. One of Emmas young female contemporaries described what she considered tragic circumstances connected to another woman in their area. Among the ruins, Hale met Daniel Buck, an army surgeon and officer during the recent war. 1825, Appendix 2: Copies of Book of Mormon Characters, The land was rocky without a good soil base and could not be farmed, its only resource available to Morse was the old growth forest growing on its steep slopes. . ]For details about David Hales store, see Staker and Jensen, David Hales Store Ledger, 77112. 58. Vogel, Michael Morse Interview with William W. Blair,8 May 1879,Early Mormon Documents,4:34344. EMMA HALE In late 1825, Joseph Smith was working as a hired hand on a farm in South Bainbridge, New York. Emma most likely attended the female seminary in Great Bend Township, and she later taught school.2. Even though Rose was wealthy and from the Philadelphia elite, he was still influenced by popular culture of his day which suggests the cultural context of the Endless Mountains where the Hale family lived. John E. Goodrich,The State of Vermont Rolls of the Soldiers in the Revolutionary War, 17751783, (Rutland, Vermont: The Tuttle Company, 1904), 20809. 125. Lyman H. Bagg, Marriages in West Springfield, Mass.The New England Historical and Genealogical Register,July 1881, 232. On January 17, 1827, Joseph and Emma left the Stowell house and traveled to the house of Zachariah Tarbill[12] in South Bainbridge, New York, where they were married the following day. Isaac Hale hereby Covenants and agrees to sell and convey to the said Joseph Smith J un. Blackman,History of Susquehanna County, 578. [10] Beginning at age eight, she was involved in the local Methodist Episcopal Church in Harmony, reading the Bible and singing hymns. August 1830, Deed from Isaac and Elizabeth Hale, 25 August 1830, as And Alva was born November 29, 1795. The Lord will have respect to thy cries, and by his judgments he will cause some of them to see their folly and repent of their sins; but it will be by affliction that they will be saved. Emma first met Joseph Smith Jr. in 1825, while he boarded with her family. George Edward Anderson, 1909. Norris Galpin Osborn,Men of Mark in Connecticut(Hartford: William R. Goodspeed, 1906), 340. 220. Alvin, their first child, was born and died in this home. See Emily Blackman, draft version of History of Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, Susquehanna County Historical Association, Montrose, Pennsylvania. line; Smith Farm, bottom right of center line. 211. Both families were financially well placed and both played a significant role in community life. The tax valuations of log homes in the valley tended to fall into specific ranges that suggest they had common elements. . And the office of thy calling shall be for a comfort unto my servant, Joseph Smith, Jun., thy husband, in his afflictions. (D&C 25:3, 5.) There would not be a gristmill within twenty miles for another two decades and the family likely ate little grain themselves. [11] The Latter-Day Saint Biographical Encyclopedia records that Emma Smith "filled [the position] with marked distinction as long as the society continued to hold meetings in that city [Nauvoo]". For example, Hymn 15 changed Isaac Watts's Joy to the World from a song about Christmas to a song about the return of Christ (see Joy to the World (Phelps)). Short Biographies of Joseph, Emma, and their family, http://mormonhistoricsites.org/subscribe-to-our-publications/, http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=brendablack&id=I1806. Upon this surface the early settlers found painted in an ingenious, though rude, style, the representations of various animals, such as panthers, bears, wolves, and wild cats. Soon after this happened, Martin Harris informed me that he must have a greater witness, and said that he had talked with Joseph about it -- Joseph informed him that he could not, or durst not show him the plates, but that he (Joseph) would go into the woods where the Book of Plates was, and that after he came back, Harris should follow his track in the snow, and find the Book, and examine it for himself. She was also charged to act as a scribe to Joseph, to expound the scriptures, to exhort the Church, and to coordinate the publication of sacred music in a hymnbook. isaac hale father of emma smith . As Tim courted Lurena, and they may have already announced their planned wedding, Isaac worked on the larger, elaborate Pickering mansion. Emma was one of nine children of Isaac and Elizabeth Hale. Frisbie,History of Middletown,58. Photograph by. One of the key elements of this style of preaching was a belief in direct answer to prayer. But the details of this courtship are not known. It was at a very Low ebb with us, he complained.283 The whole nature of Methodism changed during the years he and the Hales were members, and many of the first generation converts in Harmony did not comfortably change with it. Enoch Mudge,The American Camp-Meeting Hymn Book(Boston: Joseph Burdakin, 1818), vii; Adam Clarke, the theologian to which many Methodist clergymen, including Emmas uncle Nathaniel Lewis, looked for insight into the scriptures, interpreted the Elect Lady mentioned in the Second Epistle of John (2 John 15) as an eminent Christian matron . Everyone in the valley assisted each other in their daily tasks during social events where this combination of work and play were known as frolics. Frolics were occasions for dancing, eating, and socializing while settlers raised barns, husked corn, quilted fabric, or other tasks usually completed as a community. She found her long home before her parents, as they placed her in a coffin and buried her nearby in the Hale family cemetery plot. The Hale property is carefully drawn in the Rose survey maps and labeled with Isaac Hales name.232 While preparations to divide the Rose tract were underway, Isaac and his sons helped finish the Lewis familys new home in 1809 on poor farmland south of the Susquehanna River and just east of a small creek (now Bedbug Creek). A second son, Frederick Granger Williams Smith (named after Frederick G. Williams, a counselor in the church's First Presidency), followed on June 29, 1836. Robert C. Ritchie,Captain Kidd and the War Against the Pirates(Cambridge, Mass. 207. A hoe found at the site suggests it may have been more than simply a hunting camp since women worked there too. This hard winter preceded a severe drought the following spring and on June 6, 1800, a frost hit the county that killed most crops. When John and Phoebe Comfort moved to Harmony in 1808, built a large sawmill, opened a mercantile institution, farmed hundreds of acres of prime land, and purchased the large Pickering country house, they instantly became not only one of the wealthiest families in the township, but members of this same elite group that established social order and respectability for the rest of their remote mountain valley.When the Comforts joined the Methodists the year after their arrival, during the period when Methodism became Harmonys dominant religion, they became closely allied with the prominent Hale family. Methodist circuit rider William Colbert left Lackawanna, fifty miles south of the Hale home, on Monday, December 3, 1792, heading north on horseback to take his increasingly popular religion into the Endless Mountains. Nathaniel returned to the war briefly as he enlisted a fourth time and served in Vermont.74. TheCommentarybecame one of the principal Methodist theological resources, and Peck indicated he had read it and believed Clarkes arguments supporting a Trinitarian view (Peck,Early Methodism,395).Peck also indicates John Comfort had access to C. Giles book,Dagon of Calvinism; or, the Young Hammerer,which may have been borrowed or owned (Peck,Early Methodism,257). 227. Anderson,Ancestry and Posterity of Joseph Smith and Emma Hale), 1:131, 399, 463, 580, 711; Correll H. Tiffany, comp., West Hartland, Conn.: A Documentary History of Her Homesteads, 17601916, unpublished manuscript, Connecticut State Library; Sharpe,History of Oxford,14; Henry P. Johnston, ed.,The Record of Connecticut Men in the Military and Naval Service During the War of the Revolution, 17751783(Hartford, Conn.: Case, Lockwood & Brainard Company, 1889), 326, 364, 643. Alva Hale, Letter to His Brothers and Sisters, February 20, 1842, Wilford C. Wood Museum Collection, Bountiful, Utah. 33. In May 1829, Emma and Joseph left Harmony and went to live with David Whitmer in Fayette, New York. Smith, and his father, with several other "money-diggers" boarded at my house while they were employed in digging for a mine that they supposed had been opened and worked by the Spaniards, many years since. 289. 310. . 218. (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1998), 2:132. 64. Did Emma Smith have children with her second husband? There are a large number of headstones made by Coffin Man in the region, and Nancy Mess has identified him as J. W. Stewart of Coventryville, New York. It is possible that Hales role in working for the well-read Pickering family encouraged them to suggest names for his daughter. David Hale letter as cited in Blackman,History of Susquehanna County,104. 245. Robert H. Rose, one of the valleys land developers, sought to attract immigrants from throughout New England and advertised in England and Germany, praising the wheat growing capabilities of the valley in newspaper advertisements. 251. George Peck,The Life and Times of Rev. Linda King Newell and Valeen Tippetts Avery,Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith, Prophets Wife,Elect Lady,Polygamys Foe, 18041879(Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1984), 8. A man came, first to Wells, then to Middletown, [and] introduced the hazel rod.85 A number of these Rodsmen lived in Wells along the township line in the Lewis neighborhood, while most gathered in Middletown where Sarah Cole lived as she and Nathaniel Jr. courted. Emma first met her future husband, Joseph Smith, in 1825. But he was more interested in preparing formal, well-polished sermons than in getting out to serve the poor or minister to his community. Ben Pykles, personal communication to author, December 28, 2011. Blackman,History of Susquehanna County,8283. [11] Untangling the church's debts and property from Emma's personal debts and property proved to be a long and complicated process for Emma and her family. Ever bent on elevating the situation of her family, Lucy gushed about the Hale home in a later reminiscence when she noted the ma[n]sion in which they lived [was] a large neatly finished frame with convenient appendage necessary. Their mansion, she recalled, was pleasantly situated, and it stood on an extensive and well cultivated farm.11 Not only did they live in a home full of comforts, according to Lucy, but she seemed to believe their circumstances added to their moral standing. isaac hale father of emma smith Rose charged the Hales $3.79 an acre for their land which was more than ten times the amount Bennett initially paid for it and a dollar per acre higher than Rose charged Isaac and Elizabeth Hales neighbors, suggesting he took advantage of the added value twenty years of Hale family improvements had given the land. A surveyor in the employment of Dr. R. H. Rose, while tracing a boundary line through the woods, placed his hand high on a tree to mark where the ax-man, who followed, should strike out a chip as an evidence of the line that had been run. The other families were those of John Hilborn, Martin Lane, and John Comfort. 21. Their correspondence reveals not only their difficult circumstances but their commitment to each other. But his response to their home may not have been quite as exuberant as was his mothers when she visited it three years later, since she was more attuned to its elaborate character and what it did for ones place in the community. Isaac Hale may have also gotten his interest elsewhere rather than in Wells since the practice was so widespread in America at the time. The home and farm then passed on to others.296 Alva moved west to Amboy, Illinois in the general area where the Hale family had gathered again. He also did not agree with his daughter's decision to join the church and move with Joseph to Ohio. Joseph Lewis recalled his childhood home where he lived with his father, Nathaniel Lewis, as our home and residence,Joseph and Hiel Lewis, Mormon History. agreed with Lucy Smiths account, arguing Joseph began courting while still at the Hale farm, stating a group of money diggers boarded at his [Isaacs] house [when]JS [Joseph Smith] began courting Hales daughter Emma. Michael Hubbard MacKay, Gerrit J. Dirkmaat, Grant Underwood, Robert J. Woodford, and William G. Hartley, eds.,The Joseph Smith Papers,Documents Volume 1: July 1828June 1831(Salt Lake City: Church Historians Press, 2013), 347. 104. Harmony, February 22, 1826, Elial T. Foote Papers, 26:137; and Paul,History of Wells,119. . See Larry C. Porter, A Study of the Origins of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the States of New York and Pennsylvania, 18161831 (PhD diss., Brigham Young University, 1971), 118. Only six families in the valley had frame homes while less than half of the barns and other outbuildings in 1798 were specifically identified as log structures, suggesting the earliest sawn lumber went to outbuildings.142, When John Comforts sawmill began operation at the bend of the river, it was clearly the largest in the region and made lumber readily available in the area. Pennsylvania created Susquehanna County on February 21, 1810, out of part of Luzerne County, and over the next year local citizens organized a government. 163. Since the Lewis family, as were many Methodists, had been early promoters of temperance, but did not condemn tobacco use, the artifact pattern more likely reflects their use of the site as a Methodist meeting house than a public house. Collection of the LDS Church History Department. He had already sold some of his property, but he left, All the farm, 97 acres with all buildings and imp[rovements] to his son Alva, who would care for his mother. Blackman,History of Susquehanna County,102. July 3, 2022 . Born 21 Mar 1763 in New Haven, Connecticut. In addition to being church president, Joseph had been trustee-in-trust for the church. Isaac Hales son-in-law Michael B. Morse later lived on high, rocky ground at the north end of the Hale farm. The youngest Hale son, Reuben, could write well enough to serve as Joseph Smiths scribe, and the younger daughters were apparently also educated.
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