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Lucy Mack Smith wrote, “Two years from the time we entered Palmyra, strangers, destitute of friends or home or employment, we were able to settle ourselves upon our land, in a snug comfortable though humble habitation built and neatly furnished by our own industry.”[1] The Smith cabin, built in the winter of 1818 by Father Smith and his sons, had two rooms on the ground level, a kitchen or “keeping room” on the south, and a parlor on the north. Later the Smiths added a bedroom wing. A steep, narrow stairway led to an overhead garret that was divided into two compartments.
By the twentieth century, the Smith cabin had completely disappeared—not even the foundation was visible. On June 18, 1930, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints negotiated with personnel from the Federal Land Bank of Springfield, Massachusetts, to purchase 6.2 acres of the old Smith property, including the acreage on which the Smith log home once stood.
A series of archeological digs in the 1980s uncovered the foundation. This was followed by the construction of a log cabin that had the same dimensions as that of the Smith cabin. On March 27, 1998, President Gordon B. Hinckley dedicated the rebuilt Smith Family Log Home and said, “This will do away with the legend that has somewhat grown up among us that the other house [the Joseph Smith Sr. frame house] was the place where Moroni visited the Prophet. It was in this place and in the upstairs room that that event occurred.”[2]
Significant events occurred in or near the Smith log home—
[1] Lucy Mack Smith, History, 1844–1845. Joseph Smith Papers.
[2] “Pres. Hinckley Dedicates Historic Sites,” LDS Church News, April 4, 1998.
[3] Lucy Mack Smith, History, 1844–1845. Joseph Smith Papers.
[4] Lucy Mack Smith, History, 1844–1845. Joseph Smith Papers.
Book
140 Chapters
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