One (1806)Joseph Smith, Sr.
The third child born to Asael and Mary Smith, Joseph Sr. moved a lot as one of their
seven sons and five daughters. Likewise, as an adult, Joseph Sr. also moved his own family
many times. This was a result of his failed farm and many unsuccessful business ventures.^30
During the first years of Joseph Jr.’s life, the family lived in mid-State Vermont, not far from
the cities and close to the New Hampshire and Vermont border.^31 Over the course of the
next ten years, by the fall of 1816, the Smith family had moved from Vermont, to New
Hampshire, and then to Palmyra, New York.^32 These early years of Joseph Jr.’s life
culminated with the backdrop of personal financial problems, epidemics,^33 cataclysmic
national and global events (with respect to foreign and a national war), as well as a
worldwide natural disaster affecting the failure of crops generally in the Northeast.^34 All of
these circumstances would take their toll on Joseph Sr. as he attempted to be the father he
wanted his children to have and the husband Lucy expected him to be.
Like his father-in-law, Joseph Sr. found himself doubting the authority and truths of
the many different religions^35 that sprang up during that time period in free America.
Offshoots of the major Protestant religions were popping up everywhere.^36 Because the
people had religious freedom,^37 anytime people found fault with their religious leaders, they
could start their own religion. After the American Revolution, there was a popular push to
find a religion that was closer to the primitive Christian religion described in the Bible.^38
Law protected religious belief (although the law would later be tested and violated when
Joseph Jr. started a religion that was not an offshoot of any known Protestant or Catholic
group). With this freedom, the belief system structured around Joseph’s message would
become the first and most unique and original American religion ever established.
Dreams Confirm Joseph as a True Messenger to his Parents
Although Lucy was the more spiritual one who kept the family drawn to religious
affiliations, Joseph Sr. was an intelligent man with his own deep sense of spirituality. As
stated above, he would often dream strange dreams that he didn’t understand.^39 One of
Joseph Sr.’s dreams^40 was almost an exact version of Lehi’s dream found in the Book of
Mormon.^41 Mormon critics would later present Joseph Sr.’s dream as evidence that Joseph Jr.
made up the stories in the Book of Mormon from events in his own life.^42 What these critics
don’t know is that neither Joseph Sr. nor Lucy said anything to Joseph about his father’s
dream that occurred in 1811, almost 20 years before the publication of the Book of Mormon.
When Joseph Sr. and Lucy read Lehi’s dream in the completed transcript of the
unsealed portion of the gold plates, they both received a resounding witness that the record
was indeed divine. They both wept when they read Lehi’s dream and held each other in
tears as they recounted the exactness of the dream that Joseph Sr. had shared with Lucy
many years before. Of course the advanced beings knew what would be translated from the
gold plates; and their purpose was to prepare the minds of Joseph’s parents to be the
support that the young messenger would later need. When Moroni appeared to Joseph, he
instructed him to go tell his father what had happened.^43 And if Joseph Sr. had not been
prepared through subtle divine intervention in his dreams, he would have had a harder
time accepting the claims of his son.
Like most young boys who often doubt the wisdom of older people (being instructed
by an advanced being or not), Joseph shrank from his father and didn’t tell him about the