After crossing the border, we were in New York, which was a new state for all of us but Daddy-o who spent a weekend in NYC last fall. We had decided to spend a couple nights in Rochester on the way home so we could visit some historical sights for our church.
For those of you who aren't familiar with LDS history, Palmyra, NY was the home of Joseph Smith who was the first prophet of the restored church. This is a recreation of the cabin that he lived in at age 14 when it all began.
Our church has a pretty thorough set up on the property which gave us a good feel for what it would have been like to live there almost 200 years ago.
There was a very nice missionary who showed us around the home and told us stories.
I was actually surprised by both this cabin and the frame home they built later. I'd always heard about the large family living in tight quarters, and while this wasn't a large home by any means, the parents did have an actual bedroom downstairs and there was even another small bedroom built added on to it later.
Sure, there were a lot of kids living there, and most of them slept upstairs in the half attic/half bedrooms, but it felt more spacious than I've imagined it.
Here's the attic where Joseph slept with his brothers (and his sisters were in a small bedroom built behind the main space here.) This is where the angel Moroni appeared to him several times in one night to teach him. It is amazing that something so profound happened in such a simple place, but I feel like it is a good reminder that what God sees and values is so different than what we see through our very human eyes.
I thought the cabin was really well done, down to the details of what would have existed in an 1820's home.
A couple years later, the Smith's built a larger home on a different part of their farm and moved over there.
This home is still the original house, and includes some of the original pieces.
These are the bricks that Joseph hid the Gold Plates beneath to protect them from the mob of people who wanted to take them.
This home was really very large.
It had a beautiful pantry, and once again, the details were really well done.
It was pretty easy to imagine living here.
The main bedroom was much larger than I'd ever imagined a non 20th or 21st century bedroom.
The kids noticed the absence of a faucet right away. We got to see the well out in the yard where they would have gotten their water. Makes us appreciate the modern conveniences (although when we came home to a leak under the kitchen sink from the convenient faucet, it was a little harder to be grateful for it.)
Another thing I never knew--Joseph Smith Sr. and one of the older sons were barrel makers, or coopers, and farming was more secondary to the family income.
The farm land is really beautiful. The thought of how they had to clear the forest and make the miles of fencing is overwhelming.
The road leading to the Sacred Grove.
This was another part that I was surprised by. I'd always pictured a small clearing in the forest where they knew that he had gone to pray.
But it turns out, and I suppose makes sense considering how long ago this was, that there's a huge forest out there and all they know is that he was somewhere out there behind the log cabin. There are several trails running through the woods that you can walk on and it's beautiful and could be peaceful if you didn't have kids with you.
It was still nice, just not quite the spiritual experience that I hear people talk about when they visit, haha. Luckily, we were the only ones out there for awhile, so at least we weren't disrupting other people's quiet moments.
After that, we headed over to the Hill Cumorah, which is where Joseph was told to go get the gold plates (which he translated and are now the Book of Mormon). There's a huge pageant every summer, but we missed it by a couple weeks, which was both bad and good. At least we didn't have crowds of people at the various sites.
This kid was cracking me up while we were there. This was Day 8 of our trip and we'd been taking a LOT of pictures. Rather than getting burnt out on the whole smiling things, Peanut decided he was a model and kept posing for me.
"Take a picture of this, Mama!"
"Now, take this one!"
"And another one!"
"Take a picture of this, too!"
Hahaha! My funny, funny boy. Seriously, 4 is such a better age than 3!
(Some of our other kids may have been getting tired of the picture taking, or just each other. Who knows. It all bleeds into one big grumpy mess by Day 8.)
