A Visit to Palmyra (1835)
By Davis Bitton

We are learning a lot about the production of news, and some of our conclusions have broader application. Information can be presented to the public that turns out to be inaccurate.  It can be framed and slanted.  Reporters coax out of people the desired response or suggest answers to them.  A lengthy interview is viewed as a mine from which one or two quotations are used.  Never mind what else might have been said or whether the measured views of the interviewee have been fairly presented.

When we read news or see it presented on television, we take it with a healthy dose of skepticism.  News announcers and print journalists are market-driven.  Their interviews tell us something, perhaps, but not much.  They can be misleading, to put it mildly.  Recent political campaigns offer abundant evidence that witnesses can be found who will praise and others who will malign a candidate=s character.

Often we hear Asoftball@ questions from a friendly reporter.  Or the respondent is cut off before completing a thought.  The interviewer is in the driver=s seat and knows what he thinks would interest the audience.

Let=s go back to the year 1835.  The first anti-Mormon book had been published the previous year by Eber D. Howe, under the title Mormonism Unvailed.

That book includes affidavits collected in the neighborhood of Palmyra, New York, by a disaffected Latter-day Saint with the wonderful name of Philastus Hurlburt.  Excommunicated for morals infractions, Hurlburt was filled with the desire for revenge.  Not content to leave quietly and pursue a different path, forgetting anything good he ever saw in Mormonism, he now wanted to overturn it.  He would show the world the rottenness and falsehood of the religion that had failed to appreciate him.  We recognize the syndrome.

Hurlburt made no secret of his own rejection of Joseph Smith and all he stood for.  Not surprisingly, the affidavits he collected are negative.  He was the equivalent of a modern political operative engaged in dirty tricks. 

I shall not here offer a detailed analysis of these affidavits (Richard L. Anderson is our reliable source on this subject) but will simply state three things about them.

1.  Many of them are not in the words of the Palmyra neighbors.  They are in the words of interviewer Hurlburt.  So-and-So down the road said the Smiths were lazy and intemperate.  Will you agree?  This kind of thing.  It is known as “leading the witness” — in effect putting words in his mouth.

2.  Some of the allegations are demonstrably untrue.  Were the Smiths “lazy”?  Laziness or an unwillingness to work is simply not compatible with the amount of land cleared of trees by this family and what they accomplished that required arduous physical labor.

3.  Other investigators, such as E.L. and W.H. Kelley in 1881, later heard quite different reports from the Palmyra residents.  

In early 1835 a convert by the name of Jonathan Hale (from Dover, New Hampshire) traveled to Kirtland, Ohio.  He received a patriarchal blessing from Joseph Smith, Sr., father of the Prophet.  The Twelve Apostles had been called and ordained just two months earlier.  It was an exciting moment in the development of the young church.

In early May the new apostles and others, including Jonathan Hale, left Kirtland for the purpose of preaching the gospel in the eastern states.  At the end of the month Hale’s diary records the following: “Left there [Portage] in company with Elders Thomas B Marsh & David W. Patten.  Went to Palmyra in the night.  Went to Elder Martin Harris to Brakefast thence to the hill Cumorah.  Went on the hill and offered up our thanks to the most high God for the record of the Nephites and other blessings.”  (I am not correcting the spelling but for ease of reading have added periods and capitalization.)

In its simplicity we can envision the scene.  It was a beautiful spring morning, fifteen years after Joseph Smith=s First Vision, five years after the official organization of the Church.  Three believers —Thomas B. Marsh, David W. Patten, and Jonathan Hale — had been touched by the Spirit.  The Book of Mormon had stirred their souls and changed their lives.  Standing on a hill, they addressed prayers of gratitude to the Lord.

Then they did something else. “We went about in the Neighbourhood from house to house to inquire the Character of Joseph Smith jr previous to his receiveing the Book of Mormon,” wrote Hale.  “The amount [account?] was that his Character was as good as young men in Genreal.”

The student of history is faced with a contradiction.  Hurlburt had collected negative statements about Joseph Smith.   Now Jonathan Hale and his companions were getting a different response.  What is the truth of the matter?

What, we might ask, did Jonathan Hale bring to the task when he interviewed the Palmyra neighbors?  To begin with, he brought an openness to spiritual things, the opposite of the mind-set that already knows there could be no truth to any of Joseph Smith’s claims.

We all recognize the snort of disdain accompanying the refusal by some to read or consider.  This week a Protestant pastor boastfully told how, when approached by two young Mormon missionaries with a friendly offer to become better acquainted, he informed them in no uncertain terms that he had no interest in their overtures and would not read any of their vile pamphlets, for he, the minister, already knew everything —that was his word, Aeverything@ — about their religion.

Another thing.  In 1835, Hale also brought a huge personal motive for wishing to discover the truth.  Think about it.  He was devoting himself to this new cause.  He would suffer pain and privation.  His family would be forced to move many times.  If Joseph Smith was a fraud, if the restoration was not what it purported to be, he had every reason to want to know the truth of the matter.

And here is the simple fact: Jonathan Hale was satisfied with what he heard.  He didn’t expect the Palmyra residents to go into spasms of delight when they heard the name Smith.  Like most people then and since, they were unbelievers.  Endorsement of the new religion was not expected and not given.

But was young Joseph Smith a rascal?  Was he someone with a reputation for lying, stealing, and cheating?  Was he someone you wouldn’t want to hire or whose word could not be counted upon?  When his name was mentioned, did the people of Palmyra throw up their hands, roll their eyes, and pronounce him insane?  No.  You might coax such things out of some of them.  We can imagine how questions might be prefaced.  But on this occasion at least they did not launch into a denunciation.  When they said Joseph was about what you would expect of young men in general, that was good enough for Jonathan Hale.

Hale’s investigation of the Prophet would not stop there.  In fact, having just come from Kirtland, he knew more about the subject than these people of Palmyra.  How many of them, we wonder, had ever given Joseph the time of day, had ever heard him preach, or witnessed his leadership qualities?

As time went on, Hale would make other observations.  He would talk to others who saw Joseph Smith in action day by day.  But if anybody brought out Mormonism Unvailed, proclaiming, “Here is evidence of what a worthless character your prophet is,” Hale was in a position to say, “Not so fast.  I happen to have visited those people and what they told me is entirely different.”

What Jonathan Hale found was good enough for him.  What I find, in my own research is good enough for me.  We should not stop with snap judgments by shallow secularists, should not empower them to frame the questions and by their labeling determine what is acceptable and what is not.  Like Jonathan Hale, we may wonder about Joseph’s local reputation in his youth.  But that is not as easy to discern as we might hope.  In any case, it is a point of departure but scarcely the end of the matter.

Possessed of “real intent,” differently motivated than the resentful Philastus Hurlburt, we are actually able to learn much more about Joseph Smith than his busy neighbors ever knew.  How many of them witnessed his personal qualities, his character as demonstrated during times of intense trial? How many of them truly understood his ideas?  The depth and beauty of the restored gospel will never be understood by flippant reporters who are sure they already know “everything” about it.

Ultimately, when it comes the deep truths of eternity, we, like Jonathan Hale, have access to a Source that is not, I think, given much importance in journalism classes.