(Host) While researching Great Thoughts of Vermont, commentator Willem Lange found himself also contemplating the reason Vermonters seem to come up with so many imaginative ideas. And he thinks he found the answer – along with a topic for his next commentary.
(Lange) The late Marshall Dodge had a theory about why Vermonters over the years have come up with so many innovative ideas. Out in the wide-open spaces of the West, you can see what’s going on around you. But in Vermont, with its narrow, forested valleys, you have to guess at it. This exercise, he said, leads to highly developed imaginations and new ideas. So it’s no wonder that so many great ideas sprang into flower in Vermont — the steamboat, electric motor, and steel plow, for example. But perhaps one of the most interesting ideas to be expressed by a native Vermonter was essentially immaterial.
Joseph Smith was born in December 1805 on a rented hardscrabble farm in Sharon. Shortly after his birth, his parents concluded the farm simply couldn’t support them. They tried again in Tunbridge, Royalton, Lebanon, New Hampshire. While they were in Lebanon, a typhoid epidemic swept the town. Joseph, seven years old, was left with an infection that settled in his leg – probably osteomyelitis. Dr. Nathan Smith, another Vermonter and later the founder of the Dartmouth Medical School, recommended amputation, but was persuaded to try to save the leg by cutting away the diseased bone – which he did without anesthesia, on a kid who refused to have his arms bound during the operation. The leg was saved and Joseph survived.
The Smiths finally gave up on Vermont and moved to central New York, where the soil was better. It was here, where prosperous local families never quite accepted the Smiths, that Joseph developed an intense interest in religion and shortly after that, his visions began. He was 15 when he had a vision of God in the nearby woods. Three years later he was visited by an angel named Moroni, who told him about some golden plates buried nearby whose sacred inscriptions would complete the Christian gospels. Joseph, as soon as he could suppress his desire to get rich by exhibiting the plates, would be given two stones to help him translate the inscriptions.
The story is too long to tell here, and it’s well known, anyway. Mormonism, as Joseph’s revelation was called, was very attractive for its asceticism, mysticism, and communal living. But it was a victim of its own success. Others were jealous of the Mormons’ diligence, suspicious of their religion, and fearful of their well-drilled militia. They were forced to keep moving westward in search of peace, but persecutions intensified. In June of 1844, shortly after announcing his candidacy for president of the United States, Smith was murdered by a mob in Carthage, Illinois.
The Book of Mormon, whatever its origins, is fascinating reading. Mormons number in the millions today, their religion among the fastest growing in the world. And it all started right here in the bony hills of Vermont.
This is Willem Lange up in Etna, New Hampshire, and I gotta get back to work.
Willem Lange is a contractor, writer and storyteller who lives in Etna, New Hampshire. He spoke from our studio in Norwich.