Читать книгу Essentials in Church History - Joseph Fielding Smith - Страница 83

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Continued sickness pursued the family for a year; this, together with three successive years of crop failure, placed the family in rather straitened circumstances. So discouraged did they become that the decision was reached to move to the milder climate and more fertile region of western New York, where there would be a better opportunity to retrieve their fortunes.

As soon as arrangements could be made and obligations settled, Joseph Smith and family moved to Palmyra, New York, a distance of about three hundred miles from their home in New Hampshire. The members of the family now counseled together relative to the course they should adopt. It was finally decided to purchase about one hundred acres of land, situated about two miles south of Palmyra on the border of Manchester township. It should be remembered that western New York, at that time, was sparsely settled. Ohio, Michigan and Illinois were still largely in a state of wilderness, and beyond the great “Father of Waters” lay a vast country scarcely known. More than ten years later Missouri was spoken of by the Lord to Joseph Smith, in a revelation as being on the “borders of the Lamanites.”¹