The covers the period from his birth on December 23 , 1805 , to the end of 1827, when Latter Day Saints believe Smith located a set of Golden Plates engraved with ancient Christian scriptures, buried in A Hill near his home in Manchester , New York .
, which includes such denominations as The Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter-day Saints and the Community Of Christ . Smith's followers revere him as a Latter-day Prophet .
This early period of Smith's life is significant within Mormonism because it represents the time when Smith first claimed to act as a prophet, to have had a Theophany (called by his followers the First Vision ), and to have obtained the Golden Plates, purportedly the source material for the '' Book Of Mormon '', a Latter Day Saint Sacred Text . During this period, Smith was influenced by numerous religious and cultural trends in early United States history. The nation at the time was undergoing a cultural reaction against the Secularism of the Age Of Enlightenment , called the Second Great Awakening . In addition, Americans' widespread acceptance of Folk Religion up until the 1830s and a growing interest in forming separate religious communities created ripe conditions for a young man such as Smith to successfully build a religion based on the appearance of Angel s and the miraculous translation of ancient records. Latter Day Saints view the events in Smith's early life as evidencing his Calling as a Prophet and as providing the basis for organizing the Church Of Christ .
Smith was born in Sharon , Vermont , the fourth child of Joseph Smith, Sr. and Lucy Mack Smith . The Smiths were a farming family and several moves in and around New England were necessitated by crop failures and some ill-fated business ventures.
During the winter of 1812-1813, when Joseph was eight years old, his leg became dangerously infected. Some doctors advised Amputation , but his family refused. After a successful operation to remove parts of his affected shin bone (without Anesthesia or the commonly used tranquilizer at that time, Whiskey ), Smith eventually recovered, though he used crutches for several years and was bothered with a limp for the rest of his life. Joseph's mother gives the following account:
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However, Smith initially kept the plates out of sight, even to his family. At first, he reportedly kept the plates in a chest under the hearth in his parents' home . Fearing they might be discovered, however, Smith hid the chest under the floor boards of his parents' old log home nearby . Later, he took the plates out of the chest, left the empty chest under the floor boards, and hid the plates in a barrel of flax, not long before the location of the empty box was discovered and the place ransacked by Smith's former treasure-seeking associates, who had enlisted one of the men's sisters to find that location by looking in her
Seer Stone .
Once Smith had the purported Golden Plates, temporarily kept safe from his Palmyra neighbors, his focus turned to getting the engravings on them translated. To do so, however, he needed money, and at the time he was penniless . Therefore, Smith sent
His Mother to the home of
Martin Harris , a local landowner said at the time to be worth about $8,000 to $10,000 .
Harris had apparently been a close confidant of the Smith family since at least 1826 , and he may have heard about Smith's attempts to obtain the plates from the angel even earlier from Smith, Sr. . He was also a believer in Smith's powers with his
Seer Stone . When Lucy visited Harris, he had heard about Smith's claim to have found Golden Plates through the grapevine in Palmyra, and was interested in finding out more . Thus, at Lucy Smith's request, Harris went to the Smith home, heard the story from Smith, and hefted a glass box that Smith said contained the plates . Smith convinced Harris that he had the plates, and that the angel had told him to "quit the company of the money-diggers" . Convinced, Harris immediately gave Smith $50, and committed to sponsor the translation of the plates .
The money provided by Harris was enough to pay all of Smith's debts in Palmyra, and for him to travel with Emma and all of their belongings to
Harmony ,
Pennsylvania , where they would be able to avoid the public commotion in Palmyra over the plates. . Thus, in early October 1827, they moved to Harmony, with the glass box purportedly holding the plates hidden during the trip in a barrel of beans .
