Wells Town Clerk, Land Records, F:9. Mrs. George A. Perkins,Early Times on the Susquehanna,(Binghamton: Malette & Reid, 1870), 2021. But in her draft history she also suggests Isaac Hale was briefly involved in treasure digging activities as well. 93. 1833, June 14, 1832. See relevant entries throughout Staker and Jensen, David Hales Store Ledger: New Details about Joseph and Emma Smith, the Hale Family, and the Book of Mormon., 132. This set into motion the events that ultimately led to Joseph's arrest and incarceration in the jail in Carthage, Illinois. Several decades later, in 1825 Isaacs sons Jesse and Ward bought the Traves sawmill, and the illiterate John and Mercy Travis both signing their X for the transaction.143 Some of the millers, sawyers and workmen of these mills were among the earliest converts to Mormonism.144. David was tall and straight, with eyes bright and brown, and hair dark almost black. He looked much like his sister Emma with whom he had a close relationship. 22. Tax Assessment, Great Bend Township, 1823, Susquehanna County Courthouse. While there was not a single Elect Lady among the Methodists who could prophesy and reveal the will of God, many of the women among the Shouting Methodists found themselves in the woods seeking inspiration as they reminded the young they should be retiring to the grove for a solitary walk, or private devotion.185 They saw themselves as saints in the tradition of early Christianity, and their hymns encouraged them to pray, asking to see the power of God manifested.186 To reinforce this effort, they sang Ye saints, who love the Lords dear name, Who love to worship at his feet . A gaping hole grew in his neck, and he became emaciated until he looked like a living skeleton.159 The Lewis family moved into the Pickering log home to better care for him. Some of the settlers also brought with them their interest in buried treasure and precious ore. A local slave recalled when she arrived in the valley, already several people had moved to the neighborhood, had erected log houses, cleared the lands, and begun to cultivate fields and raise stock.139 Each family built a log-house covered with bark, which differed from a log cabin in that the logs were smoothed with an adze to create straight edges, and the bark was generally used to enclose the upper portions in lieu of sawn lumber as was the case with the Hale familys neighbor John Osterhout (as seen in the illustration).140, Despite the great insulating qualities and durability of logs, even when they were hewn and nicely shaped settlers considered them less refined than sawn lumber in frame homes, and they tried to improve the look of their homes as soon circumstances allowed.141 The 1798 direct tax lists noted three sawmills in the valley, including that of Sylvanus Traves (or Travis) who lived on the farm immediately east of the Hale property. She became a physical witness of the plates, reporting that she felt them through a cloth, traced the pages through the cloth with her fingers, heard the metallic sound they made as she moved them, and felt their weight. If it was twelve years before his Rodsmen were organized into a congregation then he was excluded about 1788 or a little earlier. William Drinker and Others Exects of Henry Drinker Deced to Nathaniel Lewis, August 6, 1810, Deeds, Wilkes-Barre, Luzern County, Pennsylvania, 12: 22327. He specifically mentioned in court testimony that one of his neighbors particularly liked his sugar. 299. 264. Nathaniel Lewis brought with him negative experiences with the Rodsmen and treasure digging culture, Isaac Hale arrived in Pennsylvania without the same conflict with his Connecticut roots.93, Uncle Nate, Isaacs brother-in-law Nathaniel Lewis, and Nathaniels wife Sarah, squatted on a farm immediately west of the Hales on the north bank of the Susquehanna River ascending the foot of Oquago Mountain. which was then sanctioned by the government.69 Nathaniel Lewis reenlisted in the navy at Sea Brook, Connecticut, where he served until July 22, 1763.70 But after his father, Gershom, died in Litchfield Township October 18, 1766, 27-year-old Nathaniel returned to Guilford to marry Esther Tuttle January 16, 1767. 241. George Peck covered the sermon book he used in the Hale home with gold and blue wallpaper left over from someones recent construction. The public was sure he had four or five times that amount.64 Conversation in many country taverns centered on Kidds treasure and where it might be located and finding the hidden horde became a popular pastime. Relations between Young and Emma steadily deteriorated. Meat, in fact, became the major form of currency in the region; when Isaac Hale and Nathaniel Lewis first settled the valley, they exchanged meat for help on their farms, and it became the custom to give cattle, or truck, as payment for work.124 During those early settlement years, Isaac Hale could easily have been a model for Nathaniel (Natty) Bumppo, the Leatherstocking in James Fenimore Coopers novel The Pioneers: or, The Sources of the Susquehanna, which reflected a larger than life heroic hunter dressed in buckskin with Indians as his closest friends. 285. Emma Smith N/A: N/A . An individual of David Hale's age range was listed in the Isaac Hale house - hold for the year but may have been living elsewhere on the property. 36. After the Buck difficulty, instead of nearly all the families being pious, not but two or three were to be found entitled to that sacred epithet.175 The community still gathered for social interaction on the Sabbath, but they held their Sunday meetings in the local log schoolhouse and read from Thomas Paines Age of Reasoninstead of the Bible. As Nathaniel Lewis matured, he grew up in a Connecticut full of these stories. 201. Isaac Hale had initially welcomed Smith when he came to Harmony, Pennsylvania where Emma grew up, looking for a place to stay and continue his translation of the Golden Plates from which the Book of Mormon would be translated from. Emma left the Susquehanna Valley and the Hale family for the last time, never to see her parents and many other relatives again. A wing (no longer extant) was added to this house, which Emma operated as a hotel. While travelling there, they saw an elderly man walking alongside the road. Norris Galpin Osborn,Men of Mark in Connecticut(Hartford: William R. Goodspeed, 1906), 340. 1833, Letter to David Hale, 1219February 1841, Travel Account and Questions, November 1837. Blackman,History of Susquehanna County, 9091, 10304; George Peck,Life and Times,6768; Chaffee,History of the Wyoming Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church,4546; John M. Duncan,Travels Through Part of the United States and Canada in 1818 and 1819(Glasgow: Hurst, Robinson, and Company, 1823), 86, 189; J. M. Skaggs,Prime Cut: Livestock Raising and Meatpacking in the United States 16071983(College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1986), 1314, 1618. . Create an account to follow your favorite communities and start taking part in conversations. Without a turnpike heading south from Ouaquaga, Buck and Hale took the Warrior Path, a narrow trail that followed the river south fifteen miles, and then turned west still following the river as it made a great bend through a narrow, crescent-shaped valley roughly 2,000 feet widetypically leaving just enough fertile land for thin farms on the north side of its banksand running for less than thirteen miles before the river turned north and entered New York again. 186. Bushman,Refinement of America,3060. [11] The Latter-Day Saint Biographical Encyclopedia records that Emma Smith "filled [the position] with marked distinction as long as the society continued to hold meetings in that city [Nauvoo]". Emma Hale Smith's Parents: Isaac Hale and Elizabeth Lewis Hale Emma's Siblings: Jesse Hale, David Hale, Alva Hale, Phebe Elizabeth Root, Elizabeth Watson, Judge Isaac Ward Hale, Tryael Morse and Reuben R Hale Year of Marriage to President Joseph Smith: 1827 Mother of: Alvin Smith; Louisa Smith; Thaddeus Smith; Joseph Smith III; It may have reached the end of its usefulness and was torn down. There was no means of earning money in the valley except by hunting or making shingles.122 Wood was more plentiful than wild game and most of the settlers focused on it as their main commodity. Appear in a new and more beautiful edition, The epitaph likely came from an 1840 collection of the writings of Franklin that appeared shortly after Isaac Hale died since it was a modified form of Franklins epitaph first appearing in an appendix of the volume and claiming a Franklin contemporary had reworked the epitaph and showed it to Franklin for his approval. 81. 28. This early 19th century home house the Isaac and Elizabeth Hale family. Isaac and Elizabeth Lewis Hale Home Key Points of Interest The home currently on the property is a reconstruction, built by the church in 2015 Emma Hale Smith, Joseph's wife, grew up here with her parents, Isaac and Elizabeth Hale Joseph first met Emma when he and his father boarded here while working for Josiah Stowell nearby Jesse Hale served in various elected positions including superintendent of the local schools for District 3 while John Comfort served for District 1. Numerous contemporary sources suggest a large group of treasure diggers stayed on the Isaac and Elizabeth Hale property in 1825 and perhaps as early as 1824. Mark Ashurst-McGee argues that as a result of the success Methodism found in America, religious leaders sought to distance it from folk religious practices such as dowsing in order to make themselves socially established. Mark Ashurst-McGee, Zion Rising: Joseph Smiths Early Social and Political Thought (PhD diss., Arizona State University, 2008, 70; see also Marvin Hill, Money-Digging Folklore and the Beginnings of Mormonism: An Interpretive Suggestion,BYU Studies24 (Fall 1984): 48486; and D. Michael Quinn,Early Mormonism and the Magic World View(Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1998), 31. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts. Isaac Hales assessment was not crossed out and lowered with the others, perhaps because his was considered a larger commercial like operation. George Catlin,Last Rambles Amongst the Indians of the Rocky Mountains and the Andes(New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1867), 910. 218. Isaac Hale. . In July 1830 the Lord outlined her mission, in a revelation: Thou art an elect lady, whom I have called. John Lewis eventually moved to Harmony Township, New York, where he became a Methodist Elder, preacher, and a judge in the county, and his son later served as a member of congress. Food remains found on the Hale property include bones from turkey, mammals (such as squirrels), and small birds (such as passenger pigeons).129 A local historian recalled how in some years there were millions of wild pigeons available for food in the valley.130 The Hale family also made money by working leather into products and processing meat for other families in the valley.131 They left behind remains of antlers and animal bones made into handles and other implements to sell in the area.132 The Hale family did well enough relying on hunting that by the opening of the nineteenth century they began to assemble many comforts. Hand-painted tea cup and Saucer, found on Hale Farm. For more information, please see our 70. . Harmony was the home of Isaac Hale, father of Smith's wife, Emma Hale. As a native of Cape Cod and a South Sea man, born to Mary and Gershom Lewis in Gilford, Connecticut, Nathaniel Lewis grew up in shipping and worked for a time as a sailor.63 He also lived on the Connecticut coast within view of Gardiners Island where Captain William Kidd purportedly buried stolen silver before moving to Block Island to negotiate his surrender for piracy. Settlers from Harford, Bridgewater, Great Bend, Windsor, Ararat, and other villages ensconced in the mountains rode on horseback to Hilborns to read his books, leaving home early in the morning, and returning late in the evening.178 While Nathaniel Lewis owned at least one book, and Isaac Hale left a box of books at his death valued at a modest $3.50, for many years what few books were generally available for reading in the narrow valley were available only through Hilborn.179 Eventually, in 1809, Henry Drinker renamed the eastern portion of the valley Harmony Township, reminding settlers of his Quaker ideals.180 By then, Methodism had transformed the entire valley, and the Society of Friends disappeared from the community. This is the same denomination the family belonged to while living in Connecticut. . If Blackman was counting from the date she wrote her account in 1872 it would put Elizabeths conversion to 1822, probably too late since most of her family joined much earlier. It was the effectual, fervent prayer which prevails. But she did not need to offer them prominence in the community. Inez A. Kennedy,Recollections of the Pioneers of Lee Count,(Dixon, Ill.: Inez A. Kennedy, Publisher, 1893), 142; Mark H. Forscutt, Commemorative Discourse on the Death of Mrs. Emma Bidamon,The Saints Herald(July 15, 1879): 20917. Young Joseph (as he became known) was the first of her natural children to live to adulthood. 19. The village post office officially changed the name of the village from Hopbottom to Waterford in 1823 but in 1825 it changed again to Brooklyn although locals continued for many years to refer to it as Hopbottom. These reports are on file in the Historic Sites Division. Mormon prophet Joseph Smith met his father-in-law, Isaac Hale, while using his peep stone in a hat to hunt for buried treasure. In June 1844, the press of the Nauvoo Expositor, a newspaper published by disaffected former church members, was destroyed by the town marshal on orders from the town council (of which Joseph was a member). Along with what Comfort perceived as religious decline, economic decline settled in their valley contributing to an exodus of many of the valleys second generation. Michael Morses property consisted of 27 acres of unimproved land and a log home on the Oquago mountain foothills at the north end of the Hale farm. It now included academically trained ministers rather than uneducated circuit riders and included a formal liturgy and structured meetings where once had been primarily organic and expressive outdoor rural meetings reverberating from the mountainsides at the beginning of the century. George Peck, Memorandums of Circuit Travels, 18161818., 248. They also dressed, grained, and tanned deer hides for their neighbors. and visited at the house of Isaac Hale, Joe Smith's father-in-law, when she was seventeen years old. 76. frozen kasha varnishkes. Besides making no land payments, they grew their own food, and found resources primarily from their own farm or by sharing with neighbors. 63. Collection of the, LDS Church History Department. Sugar houses were specifically listed as taxable operations, but the intent was to tax commercial enterprises instead of family operations. Unlike other members of the Smith family who had at times favored the claims of James J. Strang or William Smith, Emma and her children continued to live in Nauvoo as unaffiliated Latter Day Saints. The Comforts named their son born May 15, 1811, Isaac Lewis Comfort. With increase of families the means of communication increased. During the next weeks, Joseph was arrested, tried, and exonerated in South Bainbridge for "glass looking" based on the state's vagrancy law. During trial testimony, Isaac Hale mentioned walking this specific site barefoot as he took a group of angry neighbors over to the Treadwell home east of his property to confront a member of the family, Trial Notes of Scribe B.. Everyone in the valley assisted each other in their daily tasks during social events where this combination of work and play were known as frolics. Frolics were occasions for dancing, eating, and socializing while settlers raised barns, husked corn, quilted fabric, or other tasks usually completed as a community. He also made arrangements with my son Alva Hale, to go to Palmyra, and move his (Smith's) furniture &c. to this place. Isaac and Elizabeth Hale did not enjoy the same good health as they aged. 263. It is clear in the family correspondence, however, that the death occurred the year before on May 14, 1807 (see Timothy Pickering Jr. to John Pickering May 3, 1807 where Timothy IIIs death is added at the bottom of the letter in pencil noting it occurred May 14 [1807]; cf. 1829, Appendix 1: Agreement of Josiah Stowell and Others, 1 November A family tradition suggests that Isaac Hale overheard his young daughter Emma praying for him in the woods near their home and that this contributed to his spiritual conversion. . Nevertheless, white settlers developed their own mines in search for hoped riches. Joseph Anderson, ed.,The Town and City of Waterbury, Connecticut, from the Aboriginal Period to the Year Eighteen Hundred and Ninety-Five(New Haven: The Price and Lee Company, 1896), 1:398, 581, and 712; and Mary Audentia Smith Anderson,Ancestry and Posterity of Joseph Smith and Emma Hale(Independence, Mo. What had been a small denomination ridiculed by members of the established Churches, a denomination that in Harmony included shouts of praise, falling to the floor in religious ecstasy, and above all direct and immediate answers to prayers, had become the largest denomination in America by 1820. Thy heart shall rejoice in the great work of the Lord, and no one shall take thy rejoicing from thee. Spots not far from the back doors of kitchens were considered prime dumping grounds back then, George Washingtons Incredible Garbage Dump,Popular Archaeology,11 (June 2013): 1,http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/june-2013/article/george-washington-s-incredible-garbage-dump. 191. His sister Emma began attending the Methodist classes that same year.207Emma became a member of a class in the Methodist Episcopal Church when only seven years old.