I am going to quote a bit from an article on the Smith's without any further comment. (Donald L. Enders, “The Joseph Smith, Sr., Family: Farmers of the Genesee,”) The information can be found at
You may believe what you wish.
The Joseph Smith, Sr. family lived in the Palmyra, New York, area for 14 years—from 1816 through 1830. They spent 12 of those 14 years on a farm in a “sequestered neighborhood” (Townsend 1) two miles south of the village near the Palmyra-Manchester town line. Lucy Mack Smith’s reminiscences, plus Joseph Smith, Jr.’s, and William Smith’s recollections, paint an admirable picture of those years. In just ten years, says Lucy, the Smiths turned their heavily forested hundred acres into a productive farm “admired for its good order and industry” (Lucy Smith 1). They cleared 60 acres (thirty in the first year alone), cultivated approximately 35 acres, fenced the farm, planted a large apple orchard, and tapped 1,200 to 1,500 sugar maples, producing 1,000 pounds of sugar annually. They also built a log home, a frame home, a barn, a cooper’s shop, and other outbuildings. By fall 1823, the season of Alvin’s death, the Smiths “enjoyed their third harvest,” and within five years they had completed the clearing and fencing. The Smith reminiscences recall with pride that every able family member cooperated fully, showing “the strictest kind of economy and labor” (Lucy Smith 49; see also Peterson 11).
This account is an impressive record, not only of achievement but of family unity, thrift, and exemplary work habits. But were the Smiths the effective and successful farm laborers their accounts portray? A number of their Palmyra and Manchester neighbors and acquaintances said no. After the Smiths moved away in 1830, some associates went on record with accusations that the Smiths had done little to improve the farm, had cleared only a small acreage (Deming), and were “lazy,” and “indolent” (Howe 262). One neighbor claimed that the Smiths’ “great objective appeared to be to live without work” (260), while another said, “It was a mystery to their neighbors how [the Smiths] got their living” (249). Some even asserted that the Smiths had no legal claim to those property but were mere “squatters” (Tucker 12–13; see also Cook 219).
Which version is correct? Land and tax records, farm account books and correspondence, soil surveys, and interviews with archaeological reports, historic building surveys, and interviews with agricultural historians and specialists of early nineteenth-century New York suggest that the Smith version is an honest one. These sources, which generally have not been part of the scholarly reconstructions of the origin period of Mormon history, yield data about the process of buying and developing land, farm labor, crops and markets, farm values, farm building construction, and agricultural knowledge and practices. Some of these sources specifically mention the Joseph Smith, Sr., family. Used in conjunction with traditional sources, these new sources permit a much clearer view about the Smiths’ work ethics and habits and of their accomplishments and failures as farm people. I will cast in question form the Smiths’ assertions about how they developed the farm, then draw from the combined sources data relevant to those claims.
Question 4: Did the Smiths clear land, plant fields and an orchard, make the fences, and construct the building as they said they did?
Here tax records which define farm values as the combined value of the land and improvements made on the land are an important source. Generally, buildings represented 50 to 60 percent of the assessed value of farms. Cleared land, fencing, orchards, gardens, and woodlots were generally less than half of the value. In 1830, in rural Manchester Township for example, the mean value of one hundred acres in “developed” condition was $1,285. A developed hundred acre parcel translates into about two-thirds of the land cleared of timber, the perimeter and interior fenced with 25 to 30 acres of cultivated fields, a woodlot and meadow, and a log or small frame house and a barn. Improved land represented about $550 of that amount. About $735 represented the value of the buildings (John Mott).
In 1820, when the Smiths purchased their hundred acres of heavily forested “undeveloped” land it was valued at $700 (Assessment Rolls 17). The 1830 tax records assess its value at $1,300. The $600 increase represents considerable development by standards of that time. The Smiths’ 60 acres of cleared land, divided into 30 to 35 acres of cultivated fields, 10 to 15 acres of meadow, an orchard of 200 apple trees, and the woodlot and fencing, represented about $250 to $275 of the $600 increase. The Smith barn, which historical sources suggest was of common design, would have been valued at $150 to $175; the cooper’s shop, with “wood floor and loft” (Research File) at $50, animal enclosures at $25, and the “unfinished” but inhabited frame home at &75 to $125 (Ibid and John Mott; also William H. Siles). The value of the buildings (about $325), when added to the value of the improved land ($250-$275), agrees very closely with the $600 increase in the value during the decade of the 1820s. This data must be viewed as verification of the accuracy of the Smiths’ memory of their improvements.
Consider what those developments represent. Based on horticultural studies, approximately 100 trees per acre grew in that area. To clear the 60 acres, the Smiths cut down about 6,000 trees. (Marion). A large percentage measured from four to six feet in diameter, and grew to heights of one hundred feet or more (Peterson). These figures help us to better appreciate William Smith’s statement: “If you will figure up how much work it should take to clear sixty acres of heavy timber land . . . trees you could not conveniently cut down, you can tell whether we were lazy or not” (Ibid 11).
The Smith farm had a perimeter of one and 2/3 miles. To fence that distance with a standard stone and singer fence required moving tons of stone from fields to farm perimeter, then cutting and placing about 4,000 ten-foot rails. This does not include the labor and materials involved in fencing the barnyard, garden, pastures, and orchard, which, at a conservative estimate, required an additional 2,000 to 3,000 cut wooden rails (McNall 59, 84, 87, 91, 110–11, and 144). Clearly, this work alone—all of it separate from the actual labor of farming—represents a prodigious amount of concerted planning and labor.
Question 5: How did the Smith farm compare to other farms in the township and “neighborhood”?
The 1830 tax records for Manchester Township contain the evaluations of 176 farms of more than 50 acres in size. The average value per acre for those farms was $13. The mean value was $12.85. The Smith farm was appraised at the average value per acre. Seventy-one farms were valued at a higher rate per acre than the Smith farm, 90 were valued below theirs, and 14 were valued at the same level. The farms rating higher than the Smiths ranged from $13.10 to $18 per acre, while those of less value were appraised at $12.90 to $8 (Ibid).
The average size of the township’s 253 farms was 85 acres. The mean was 63 acres. Sixty-two of the 253 farms were larger than the Smith farm. They ranged from 105 to just over 300 acres. Twenty-two farms were the same size as the Smith; 168 were smaller and decreased in size from 98 to 10 acres (Ibid).
The Smith “neighborhood” farms are of particular interest because their owners included some of those who accused the Smiths of being “lazy, indolent and shiftless.” Forty-two families resided in the “neighborhood,” that is, the area along Stafford and Canadaiqua Roads extending three miles south from the Palmyra-Manchester town line. Of these 42, eleven had larger farms than the Smiths’, ranging from about 125 acres to 215 acres. Four had farms the same size. Twenty-five were smaller, ranging downward from 98 to 14 acres. The average size farm in the “neighborhood” was 83 acres and the mean was 71 acres. Twelve of the neighborhood farms were assessed at a greater value per acre than the Smith farm ranging from $14 to $18 per acre. Five farms, including the Smiths’, were valued at $13 per acre, while 25 were valued lower, from $12.96 to $10 per acre.
The Staffords, Stoddards, Chases, and Caprons were neighborhood residents who spoke poorly of the Smiths. Only one of the ten families in this four-family group had property assessed more valuable than the Smiths’. Of the five families in the Stafford family group, none had a higher appraisal than the Smiths. Abraham Stafford’s 162 acres was valued at $12.96, William Stafford’s 100 acres at $12.50 per acre, Joshua Stafford’s 123 acres at $12.20 per acre, David Stafford’s 20 acres at $11 per acre, and John Stafford’s 60 acres at $10 per acre (Assessment Rolls 21–22). Only Edmund Chase of the Chase family group was still farming in Manchester Township in 1830. His 29-acre farm, bordering east on the Smith farm, was valued at $10 per acre (Assessment Rolls 6).
Russell Stoddard, the man who, according to Lucy Smith, cheated them out of their farm, lived a mile and a half south of the Smiths in a frame home with a barn, outbuildings, an orchard, a handsome cedar grove, and a small sawmill. His 98-acre farm was considered “number one quality” and was valued at $16 per acre (Assessment Roll 21). Stoddard owned other farms, speculated in land, and built houses. After Alvin’s death, he contracted with the Smiths to complete their frame home enough to allow them to move into it. [For identification of Russell Stoddard as the carpenter who finished building the Smith’s frame home after Alvin’s death, see George Albert Smith Diary.] When fully “enclosed” after the Smiths moved away, it was comparable in size to Stoddard’s home (Research File). The 150 acre farm of Squire Stoddard, Russell’s brother, lay immediately south of the Smith farm and was valued at $12 per acre. Joseph Capron’s land, a five-acre parcel situated within 200 yards of the Smith home, was valued at $10 per acre (Assessment Rolls 5, 22).
In comparison to others in the township and neighborhood, the Smiths’ efforts and accomplishments were superior to most. In the township, only 40 percent of the farms were worth more per acre and just 25 percent were larger. In the “neighborhood,” only 29 percent of the farms were worth more and only 26 percent were larger (Assessment Rolls 1–34).
Question 6: Does the fact that the Smiths worked at day-labor to provide for themselves and pay for their farm support the charge that they were “lazy and indolent” and “without industry”? Day laboring implied low work, and people who were employed for short term, often at menial tasks, were considered “low folk,” unrefined and socially undesirable. What “day labor” did the Smiths perform?
Sources document over two dozen kinds of labor the Smiths performed for hire, including digging and rocking up wells, mowing, coopering, constructing cisterns, hunting and trapping, teaching school, providing domestic service, and making split-wood chairs, brooks and baskets. The Smiths also harvested, did modest carpentry work, dug for salt, constructed stone walls and fireplaces, flailed grain, cut and sold cordwood, carted, made cider, and “witched” for water. They sold garden produce, made bee-gums, washed clothes, painted oil-cloth coverings, butchered, dug coal, painted chairs, hauled stone, and made maple syrup and sugar (Research File).
Joseph Jr.’s account suggests honest industry in the face of difficult conditions: “Being in indigent circumstances,” he says, “[we] were obliged to labour hard for the support of [our] Large family and . . . it required exertions of all [family members] that were able to render any assistances” (Jessee 4). The Smith men had a reputation as skilled and diligent workers. William Smith asserted that “whenever the neighbors wanted a good day’s work done they knew where they could get a good hand” (Peterson 11). Eight wells in three townships are attributed to the Smiths (Research File). They likely dug and rocked others, including some of the 11 wells dug on the farm of Lemuel Durfee, who lived a little east of Martin Harris. The Smiths did considerable work for this kindly old Quaker; some of their labor served as rent for their farm after it passed into his ownership in December 1825 (Ralph Cator; Lemuel Durfee Farm books).
Father Joseph, Hyrum, and Joseph Jr. were coopers. Coopering was an exacting trade, particularly if the barrel was designed to hold liquid. Dye tubs, barrels, and water and sap buckets were products of the Smiths’ cooper shop. They also repaired leaky barrels for neighbors at cidering time. (Research File).
Sugaring was another labor-intensive work. William recalls, “To gather the sap and make sugar and molasses from [1,200–1,500 sugar] trees was no lazy job” (Peterson 11). Lucy said they produced an average of “one thousand pounds” (50) of sugar a year. One neighbor reportedly said that the Smiths made 7,000 pounds of sugar one season and won a premium for their effort at the county fair (Brodie 10–11). Many people could make maple syrup, but it required considerable skill to make sugar and particularly good skill, dexterity, and commitment to make high quality sugar.
These labors indicate a strong work attitude, and the record of their hiring does not substantiate accusations that they were an “idle” family.