Although he received the news directly from President Gordon B. Hinckley that a temple would be built in the Palmyra, N.Y., area — near the place where the restoration of the gospel all began — Pres. David L. Cook of the Rochester New York dreaming, Palmyra Stake said he has to pinch himself to be sure he isn't dreaming.
"I was floored by the thought that we would have one of the temples," Pres. Cook said in a Church News telephone interview after having told local members in a special fireside Feb. 14 of plans to build a temple near the Sacred Grove and the Smith farmhouse. "When I told the members of the First Presidency's announcement that a temple would be built near Palmyra there was an audible gasp and a tremendous outpouring of gratitude," Pres. Cook said.
"This is amazing," Pres. Cook said of the announcement. "President Hinckley was here in March 1998 for the dedication of the E.B. Grandin Building [where the Book of Mormon was printed in 1830] and the [replica of] the Smith log home. Now, to think that this is happening is amazing. It makes us step back and stand in awe of what's going on here."
At the fireside, Pres. Cook counseled members, "Begin to prepare yourselves spiritually for the dedication and for a deeper commitment to temple worship. Let us make this a watershed event in our lives, that we may repent and live our lives in such a way to be worthy of this blessing."
A native of Ogden, Utah, Pres. Cook said that his third-great-grandfather, his father and he himself served as missionaries in New York. "When my dad served in the Eastern States Mission from 1939-1940, there was one stake in what is now the North America Northeast Area. Today, there are 120 stakes," Pres. Cook said.
The Palmyra temple will be built in an area often referred to as "The Cradle of the Restoration."
Located about 25 miles southeast of Rochester in upstate New York's Finger Lakes region in Wayne (formerly Ontario) County, the vicinity of the 100th temple is tied closely with Joseph Smith's early history, the coming forth of the Book of Mormon and the organization of the Church. Many of the Restoration events were set in the village of Palmyra and its outskirts, and in the townships of Manchester and Fayette.
Palmyra and Manchester Township
Joseph Smith was born Dec. 23, 1805, in Sharon, Vt. His family moved from Vermont in about 1814 to a log home some two miles south of the village of Palmyra when Joseph was "in [his] tenth year." (Joseph Smith History 1:3.)
In about 1818 his father, Joseph Smith Sr., had accumulated enough money for a down payment on 100 acres of wooded land in the nearby township of Farmington. (The exact year that the Smiths moved is uncertain. The Prophet's mother, Lucy Smith, recorded that the family moved from Palmyra in the second year; Joseph put the time as being about four years.)
When the township of Farmington was divided in 1822, the Smith farm became part of the new township of Manchester. (For simplification, Manchester will be used rather than Farmington in references to the location of the Smith farm.) For a period of about 10 years, the Smiths "fenced the land, cleared 60 acres, built a barn, a cooper's shop and animal shelters, planted a garden, started a large apple orchard, and developed meadows and fields. They also built a one-and-one-half-story frame house, which was sufficiently finished to occupy during the spring of 1825." (Donald L. Enders, "Palmrya, New York," Historical Atlas of Mormonism, p. 10.)
Joseph, then 14 or, as he stated, in his "fifteenth year," was confused by the claims and sometimes bitter accusations that ministers made against each other as they held revivals and sought followers. Observing such contention brought "grief to my soul." (Personal Writings of Joseph Smith, p. 5.)
Amidst such turmoil he read in the Bible: "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him." (James 1:5.) That scripture led Joseph to the woods on an early spring morning in 1820 to make his first attempt to pray vocally. (See JSH 1:14.)
Those woods are known and revered among Latter-day Saints as the Sacred Grove, where the Father and Son appeared before Joseph. (JSH 1:17-18.)
And the events of the Restoration began to unfold.
While building their new farm home, the Smiths were living in a small log house where, late in the evening of Sunday, Sept. 21, 1823, Joseph, then 17, received a visit from the Angel Moroni who revealed the existence of a sacred record written on gold plates. (JSH 1:30-34.)
Moroni returned twice that night. Joseph saw in vision the place where the plates had lain hidden (JSH 1:42) for 14 centuries. (JSH 1:46.) The next morning, Sept. 22, 1823, Joseph went to the place he had seen in the vision (JSH 1:48-50), known today as Hill Cumorah, about three miles southeast of the Smith farm along the main road leading from Palmyra to Manchester.
Joseph visited the site annually and conferred with the Angel Moroni each year until Sept. 22, 1827, when he was permitted to remove the plates, the Urim and Thummim and breastplate. (JSH 1:51-54.)
Shortly after Moroni's first visits in 1823, Joseph's oldest brother, Alvin, became seriously ill and died on Nov. 19. After Alvin's death, the family experienced economic hardships. The Smiths lost title to their land in late 1825, but remained on it as tenants until the spring of 1829, when they returned to their log home.
After translation of the gold plates was completed, the first edition of the Book of Mormon was printed at Egbert B. Grandin's printing office in Palmyra in 1830; the first copies were off the press by March.
Sites of interest:
The Grandin Building, purchased and remodeled by the Church, serves as a museum, staffed by missionary couples and other Church volunteers. Admission is free.
A house built about 1850 on the outskirts of Palmyra stands on the site of the home of Martin Harris, one of the Three Witnesses to the Book of Mormon.
The Sacred Grove, the Joseph Smith Sr. home and a replica of the log cabin in which the family lived are located about two miles southwest of Palmyra in Manchester Township.
The Hill Cumorah, located about five miles south of Palymra, is the site of an annual pageant, "America's Witness for Christ." An LDS visitors center is located at the base of the hill.
The Palmyra Ward meetinghouse is located on the south side of Palmyra. The meetinghouse was dedicated Jan. 15, 1961, by President David O. McKay. Additions were made in 1975 and 1988. A unit of the Rochester New York Palmyra Stake, the Palmyra Ward has some 420 members. Palmyra's population is about 7,700.
Fayette, N.Y.
During the winter of 1828-29, Joseph periodically worked on the translation of the Book of Mormon with the help of his wife, Emma Hale Smith, whom he had married Jan. 18, 1827, in South Bainbridge, N.Y.
In the spring of 1829, Oliver Cowdery became Joseph's scribe in Harmony, Pa., where Joseph and Emma were then living with her parents. Soon after he began assisting Joseph, Oliver wrote to a friend, David Whitmer, in Fayette township in New York, and asked about the possibility of Joseph and Oliver staying with the Whitmers, since persecution had begun to intensify in Harmony. Peter Whitmer Sr., David's father, invited Joseph to stay at his farm as long as he needed to finish the work of translation. David's brother John offered to help as scribe.
The translation of the Book of Mormon was completed in late June 1829 in the Whitmer home at Fayette, located in Seneca County, N.Y., a farming community some 27 miles southeast of Hill Cumorah.
The Church was organized in the Whitmer home on April 6, 1830. It was at Fayette that an angel showed the Three Witnesses the plates from which the record was translated. Twenty revelations were received at Fayette from June 1829-January 1831, when the headquarters of the Church was located there.
Sites of interest
A replica of the Peter Whitmer home stands on the original stone foundation of the original structure. The foundation was unearthed by BYU archaeologists after a farmer's plow accidently dug into the buried stone. The reconstructed cabin, complete with antique furnishings, is open to the public for free tours.
A dual-purpose building — one portion used as a meetinghouse and the other as a visitors center is located just a short distance from the restored Whitmer cabin.
On April 6, 1980, for the first time in its 150-year history, the Church held general conferences in two locations — one in the Tabernacle in Salt Lake City and the other in Fayette. The proceedings were linked by satellite, and carried wherever conference was shown. In Fayette, President Kimball delivered an address in the Peter Whitmer cabin and a conference address in the Fayette meetinghouse. Some 350 members reside in the Fayette Ward. An estimated 3,000 people reside in the township of Fayette. The town of Fayette consists of a few dozen homes at a crossroads.
