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Joseph Smith (December 23, 1805 – June 27, 1844) was an American religious leader and the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement whose current followers include Mormons and members of the Community of Christ. The early life of Joseph Smith covers his life from his birth to the end of 1827. Smith was born in Sharon, Vermont, the fifth of eleven children born to Joseph and Lucy Mack Smith. By 1817, Smith's family had moved to the "burned-over district" of western New York, an area repeatedly swept by religious revivals during the Second Great Awakening. Smith family members held divergent views about organized religion, but they believed in visions and prophecies and engaged in folk religious practices typical of the era. Smith briefly investigated Methodism, but he was generally disillusioned with the churches of his day. Around 1820 Smith is said to have experienced a theophany, now known as his First Vision among Mormons. Around this time he, along with other male members of his family, was hired to assist in searching for buried treasure. In 1823, Smith said angel directed him to a nearby hill where he said was buried a book of golden plates containing a Christian history of ancient American civilizations. According to Smith, the angel prevented him from taking the plates in 1823, telling him to come back in exactly a year. Smith made annual visits to the hill over the next three years, reporting to his family that he had not yet been allowed to take the plates. Meanwhile, during one of Smith's treasure hunting expeditions, he met and fell in love with Emma Smith from Harmony Township, Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, who he married in 1827. Returning with Emma to the hill in 1827, Smith said the angel allowed him to take the plates but forbade him from showing them to anyone except those to whom the angel directed. As news of the plates spread, Smith's former treasure hunting associates sought to share in the proceeds, ransacking places they thought the plates were hidden. Intending to translate the plates himself, Smith moved to Harmony Township to live with his in-laws. ==Childhood== Smith was born in Sharon, Vermont, the fifth of eleven children born to Joseph Smith, Sr. and Lucy Mack Smith. The Smiths were a middling farm family that suffered a fateful loss when Smith, Sr., after speculating in ginseng and being cheated by a business associate, was financially ruined. After he sold the family farm to pay his debts, the Smiths "crossed the boundary dividing independent ownership from tenancy and day labor." In the next fourteen years, the Smiths moved seven times.〔. Two of the Smiths' children died in infancy.〕 Despite the moves and the financial woes, Lucy Smith remembered the period of Joseph Smith's early childhood as "perfectly comfortable both for food and raiment as well as that which is necessary to a respectable appearance in society."〔.〕 Then during the winter of 1812–1813, typhoid fever struck along the Connecticut Valley, including the area around Lebanon, New Hampshire, where the Smiths had recently moved. A number of family members fell ill, and Joseph experienced a common complication whereby typhoid bacteria infected bone, in Smith's case, the shin bone. Lucy later claimed that she had refused to permit her son's leg to be amputated; in fact, the Smiths had chanced on one of New England's most respected physicians, Nathan Smith, who "probably alone in American medicine at this time" advocated removal of the dead portion of the bone rather than amputation of the leg. After the typically horrific early nineteenth-century surgery without either anesthetic or antiseptic, Smith eventually recovered, though he used crutches for several years and had a slight limp for the remainder of his life.〔;.〕 In 1814 the Smiths moved back across the Connecticut River to Norwich, Vermont, where they suffered three seasons of crop failures, the last the result of the Year Without a Summer.〔.〕 The extended Smith clan had already moved west to New York, and in 1817, Joseph Smith, Sr. traveled alone to Palmyra, New York, followed shortly by the rest of his family—although not before Lucy Smith was forced to settle with some last-minute creditors.〔.〕 In Palmyra village, Smith, Sr. and his oldest sons hired themselves out as common laborers, ran a "cake and beer shop," and peddled refreshments from a cart; Lucy painted cloth coverings for tables and stands.〔;. In 1818 the two Josephs and Hyrum Smith worked on a farm owned by one Jeremiah Hurlburt, but the relationship ended with each party suing the other.〕 In 1820, the family contracted to pay for a farm just outside Palmyra in Manchester Township.〔. Manchester was part of Farmington until 1821.〕 The Smith family first built a log home,〔. The log house was built just outside their property in the town of Palmyra.〕 then in 1822, under the supervision of Joseph Smith's oldest brother Alvin, they began building a larger frame house. Alvin died in November 1823, possibly as a result of being given calomel for "bilious fever", and the house remained uncompleted for a year.〔Alvin Smith's death remains mysterious. Lucy thought it the result of a dose of Mercury(I) chloride, or calomel, given for "bilious fever" after he ate green turnips. . Alvin Smith may have died of appendicitis, hastened by the laxative. (Joseph Smith Papers ).〕 By this time Joseph Smith, Sr. may have partially abdicated family leadership to Alvin,〔Joseph Smith, Sr. confessed in 1834, "I have not always set that example before my family that I ought." Later, Joseph Smith, Sr. told Hyrum he had "been out of the way through wine." (noting that Smith's drinking was not excessive for the time and place). Vogel frankly calls Smith, Sr.'s difficulty "low self-esteem and alcoholism.".〕 and in 1825, the Smiths were unable to make their mortgage payments. When their creditor foreclosed, the family persuaded a local Quaker, Lemuel Durfee, to buy the farm and rent it to them. Nevertheless, in 1829, the Smiths and five of their children moved back into the log house, with Hyrum Smith and his wife.〔.〕 Joseph Smith had little formal schooling, but may have attended school briefly in Palmyra and received instruction in his home.〔Smith may have attended school briefly in Palmyra. He later wrote that he was "deprived of the bennifit of an education" and that he had been instructed only in reading, writing, and the ground rules of arithmetic. ; Smith also may have been educated at home by his father, who had taught school some winters to make ends meet. .〕 Young Joseph worked on his family farm and perhaps took an occasional odd job or worked for nearby farmers.〔.〕 His mother described him as "much less inclined to the perusal of books than any of the rest of the children, but far more given to meditation and deep study." Lucy Smith also noted that though he never read through the Bible until he was at least eighteen, he was imaginative and could regale the family with "the most amusing recitals" of the life and religion of ancient Native Americans "with as much ease, seemingly, as if he had spent his whole life with them."〔; .〕 Smith was variously described as "remarkably quiet,"〔; .〕 "taciturn," "proverbially good-natured," and "never known to laugh."〔; .〕 One acquaintance said Smith had "a jovial, easy, don't-care way about him," and he had an aptitude for debating moral and political issues in a local junior debating club.〔; Quoted in , and .〕 Biographer Fawn Brodie wrote, "He was a gregarious, cheerful, imaginative youth, born to leadership, but hampered by meager education and grinding poverty."〔.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Early life of Joseph Smith」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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