Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Maps
- Preface
- Part I A Prepared People
- Part II Hermetic Purity and Hermetic Danger
- 4 A Urim Spiritual
- 5 Alchymical Experiments
- 6 I Was Born in Sharon
- Part III The Mormon Dispensation
- Appendix The Sectarian and Hermetic Circumstances of Mormon Origins in Vermont and New York
- Abbreviations Used in Notes
- Notes
- Index
6 - I Was Born in Sharon
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Maps
- Preface
- Part I A Prepared People
- Part II Hermetic Purity and Hermetic Danger
- 4 A Urim Spiritual
- 5 Alchymical Experiments
- 6 I Was Born in Sharon
- Part III The Mormon Dispensation
- Appendix The Sectarian and Hermetic Circumstances of Mormon Origins in Vermont and New York
- Abbreviations Used in Notes
- Notes
- Index
Summary
I was born in Sharon, Vermont, in 1805, where the first quarter of my life grew with the growth and strengthened with the strength of that “first-born” State of the “united Thirteen.” … I appeal to the “Green Mountain boys” of my native State to rise to the majesty of virtuous freemen, and by all honorable means help to bring Missouri to the bar of justice. If there is one whisper from the spirit of Ethan Allen, or a gleam from the shade of General Stark, let it mingle with our sense of honor and fire our bosoms for the cause of suffering innocence.
Joseph Smith's “Appeal to the Green Mountain Boys,” November 29, 1843, to be distributed throughout New York State and Vermont by Parley P. PrattThe towns of central vermont were the immediate hearth of Joseph Smith's Mormon church. The Smiths of Topsfield were predisposed to witchcraft beliefs and metallurgical dreams; the Macks of Lyme lived in a religious milieu of visions, healing miracles, and sectarian perfectionism. The marriage in 1796 of Joseph Smith Sr. and Lucy Mack in Tunbridge, Vermont, brought both streams of familial culture into a single household. So, too, the northern frontier attracted many other people from the dissenting, sectarian communities of older New England, people at odds with orthodoxy, people sharing a deep-rooted affinity for works of wonder. And here this prepared people encountered the full force of the late-eighteenth-century reformulations of the hermetic tradition.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Refiner's FireThe Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644–1844, pp. 129 - 146Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1994