pierce] ORIGIN OF THE "BOOK OF MORMON" 677
the doctor, the minister, and those who with them made up the social life of the community. The hard-working tiller of the soil was largely predominant. There was, however, in the new and crude organic union of the forces of civilization, but very narrow space for the idle, the indolent, the ne'er-do-well, whose instincts ever lead him far from the exercise of that energy which lies at the base of all ambition to climb the ladder of life. His pres- ence in the midst of such a community was at once known and resented. He was not welcome. He had nothing to part with which was of value to those to whom he might offer it. His name was known to his neighbors, and his secret life could not be hidden. If he toiled not, and had no income, the question, How does he live? was not long in receiving an answer in such a community as this.
To Palmyra came from Windsor county, Vermont, in 1815, a middle-aged farmer named Joseph Smith, with his wife and a large family of children. They settled on a tract of land in the southern part of the township near the adjoining township of Manchester. The years passed by, but the family did not pros- per ; the woods were not chopped down ; the soil was not tilled ; the crops did not grow. The children did, however, for in that land no one ever suffered for lack of food. The boys grew up without desire for education ; if they were sent to school, their days were passed in the woods with guns and dogs. The father, with native Vermont shrewdness, was a hunter and trapper before them, and soon knew the haunts of all the wild game of the country, as well as its natural scenery. If the Smiths' crops failed to come to a harvest for lack of care, the family did not allow that to interfere with their means of living. Their neigh- bors were always well supplied, and " borrowing " was always possible.
One of the sons of this family was Joseph Smith Jr. He was born in Sharon, Vermont, December 23, 1805, and was, therefore, in his tenth year when his father emigrated to Ontario
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