For more than forty years, I’ve been an enthusiastic proponent of Mormon parallel and environmental studies. Throughout this long period, I’ve listened to equally enthusiastic friends expand or exult over the inferred Dartmouth connection. Often, I feel this is exaggerated, or at least too narrow in perspective.
The Smiths probably lived in the West Lebanon, NH area (about 4 miles from Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH) for two or three years (roughly 1812 or ’13 - 1815) and then Norwich, Vermont (pronounced by some locals as “Norridge,” across the river and a somewhat comparable distance, or less, from Dartmouth) for about two years (roughly 1815-early 1817). See Dan Vogel,
Early Mormon Documents 5:384-85.
Lucy Mack Smith says they sent Hyrum to “the accademy in Hanover” until the typhus hit (EMD 1:260). If this was indeed Moor’s Charity School, it was worthy, but hardly the equivalent of a formal collegiate training at Dartmouth itself with the latter’s sophisticated compliment of advanced studies.
Prof. John Joannis Smith (1752-1809), a founding figure at Dartmouth, was a distant cousin, and not even through the Mormon “Smith”-named line, but rather the Palmers. His mother Elizabeth Palmer (married one Joseph Smith, 1724-1760, no relation) was a first cousin to Joseph Smith Jr.’s great grandmother Mary Palmer (married Moses Duty), mother of Mary Duty Smith. Or if you want to make it sound as close as possible, Joseph Smith Jr. was a second cousin, twice removed, to Prof. Smith. Did he ever know that?
The innovative physician who operated successfully on young Joseph Smith was the eminent medical professor Nathan Smith (not John) who routinely rambled the nearby countryside with his assistant students to handle such cases. It had to be excruciating for the poor patients, and pretty invasive, but Dr. Smith wrote in his published memoires that the results were rarely unsuccessful.
Ethan Smith and Solomon Spaulding were indeed students at Dartmouth, but long before the Smiths lived nearby. I agree that many Mormon parallel elements can be associated with luminaries who functioned at one time or another in that particular climate. But the same can be said equally of the broader regions and contexts of Joseph Smith’s early life. So I don’t mean to denigrate the interesting similarities, but only warn against leaving ourselves vulnerable to criticism by overplaying them in relation to the bigger picture.
In order to dry the wet blanket which I have cast above, let me end with some fun collector notes! Sitting on my desk at this moment are . . .
1) Eleazar Wheelock,
A Plain and Faithful Narrative of the Original Design, Rise, Progress and present State of the Indian Charity-School At Lebanon, in Connecticut . . . [and later moved to Dartmouth] . . . Boston: Richard and Samuel Draper, 1763. First edition of the first Wheelock report, if memory serves, and quite a little treasure.
2)
The First Book of Napoleon, the Tyrant of the Earth . . . by Eliakim the Scribe . . . (London, Edinburgh and Dublin, first edition published jointly by several firms, 1809) in red gilt-decorated morocco, all edges gilt, with two very carefully-written presentation inscriptions from “The Author” to Evan John MacGregor Murray Esq., (
https://www.britishmuseum.org/collectio ... 37-0308-17) a once popular hero figure of the Napoleonic wars. I paid plenty for the thing for my Mormon Parallels permanent collection, but I would be very surprised if young Joseph Smith ever saw or heard of this work. I see it not as a source, but a sampling: a symptom rather than a cause.
3) And a book hunting story: Many years ago, I went on a very short buying jaunt, merely to the other side of Syracuse, where a woman sold my friend a few items. She also had a large and very old Bible concordance which interested me as soon as I saw it. Inside was an inscription of an earlier owner stating that it had once belonged to Sampson Occom (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_Occom). My friend thought I was a little too generous in spending the money, but Dartmouth College Library later expressed their gratitude to me for selling this artifact to them.
Forgive these late-night rambles, and I hope no offense is taken.