Passed December 30th, 1860. A. O. Smoot, Mayor.
Robert Campbell, City Recorder.
V. CHRONOLOGICAL ABSTRACT OF MORMON HISTORY.
1801. June 1. Birth of Mr. Brigham Young, at Wittingham, Vermont, U. S. In this year Mr. Heber C. Kimball also was born (June 14th).
1805. Dec. 23. Mr. Joseph Smith, jun., son of Mr. Joseph Smith, sen., generally called “Old Father Smith,” and Lucy Mack, known as “Mother Smith,” born at Sharon, Windsor Co., Vermont.
1812. A book called the “Manuscript Found” was presented to Mr. Patterson, a bookseller at Pittsburgh, Penn., by Mr. Solomon Spalding or Spaulding, of Crawford, Penn.; born in Ashford Co., and a graduate of Dartmouth College. The author died, the bookseller followed him in 1826, and the book fell into the hands of a printer’s compositor, Sidney Rigdon, one of the earliest Mormon converts. Anti-Mormons identify parts of the “Book of Mormon” with the “Manuscript Found.” The Saints deny the existence of a Patterson, and assert that Mr. Spaulding’s book was a mere historical and idolatrous romance concerning the Ten Lost Tribes, altogether different from their Biblion. They trace the calumny to a certain Doctor (so called because a seventh son) Philastus Hurlbert or Hurlbut, an apostate excommunicated for gross immorality, and bound over in $500 to keep the peace, after threatening to murder Mr. Joseph Smith, jun.; and they observe that in those early days their Prophet was too unlearned a man to adapt or to alter a manuscript.
1814. Mr. Joseph Smith, jun., powerfully awakened by the preaching of Mr. Lane, an earnest Methodist minister.
1815. Mr. and Mrs. Smith removed with their family—Alvin, Hyrum, Sophronia, Joseph, Samuel, Ephraim, William, and Catharine, from Vermont to New York. They first lived at Palmyra, Wayne Co., for ten years, and then passed on to Manchester, Ontario Co., the site of the Hill Cumorah, where they tarried eleven or twelve years.
1820. Many religious revivals in Western New York. Mr. Joseph Smith becomes partial to Methodism (J. Hyde, chap. viii.). Early in the spring of the year occurred Mr. Joseph Smith, jun.’s first or preparatory vision announcing his ministry.