Origin from 1830
Joseph Smith, a young farmer in the religiously restless upstate New York of the 1820s, published the Book of Mormon in March 1830, a scripture he said he had translated from golden plates shown to him by an angel. On 6 April 1830 he and five others formally organised a church at the log home of Peter Whitmer in Fayette, New York, under New York state law, the founding act of what became The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The new movement grew quickly among neighbours and family, but its unconventional claims and its founder's own earlier career as a treasure seeker drew hostility from the start, hostility that would follow the church through every move it made over the next two decades.
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How the Latter-day Saints Arose in Upstate New York
This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Joseph Smith, a young farmer in the religiously restless upstate New York of the 1820s, a region so thick with competing revivals it later earned the name the Burned Over District, published the Book of Mormon in March 1830. He said he had translated it from golden plates shown to him by an angel, a claim that set his new movement apart from every revival then competing for converts around him.
On 6 April 1830 Smith and five others formally organised a church at the log home of Peter Whitmer in Fayette, New York, doing so deliberately under New York state law rather than as an informal religious society, the founding act of what became The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The new movement grew quickly among neighbours and family in the surrounding towns, spreading first the way most new American religious movements of the period did, through people who already knew each other.
What this changed for Christianity's spread was the arrival of a new American scripture and a formally incorporated new church within the same single year, born in a region already saturated with religious enthusiasm yet distinct enough from its neighbours to draw sustained hostility from the start. That hostility, aimed as much at the church's unconventional claims as at Smith's own earlier career as a treasure seeker, would follow the young church through every move it made over the next two decades.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
This source names New York directly: "in the religiously restless upstate New York of the 1820s, published the Book of Mormon in March 1830, a scripture he said he had translated from golden plates shown to him by an angel."
Occurred In
The Peter Whitmer log home, Fayette, New York.
Spread Event Of
The founding episode of the Latter-day Saint movement's own spread history.
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