A Promised Land

...after the waters had receded from off the face of this land it became a choice land above all other lands, a chosen land of the Lord; wherefore the Lord would have that all men should serve him who dwell upon the face thereof;

And that it was the place of the New Jerusalem, which should come down out of heaven, and the holy sanctuary of the Lord.

Joseph Smith, Jr.
Ether 13:2–3
Book of Mormon, 1830

---

Summer 1818 Palmyra, New York — Farm of Jeremiah Hurlbut

My arms pained me near as fierce as my crippled leg as I hacked away at the brambles and underbrush that were my chief enemy in the summer of 1818. Rough gloves my mother had sewn from scrap hemlock sole leather were my only protection as I swung a threshing scythe, and my uncovered arms bled in multiple places from wild raspberry and rose thorns. We couldn't afford new shirts should I tear mine to tatters, so I worked bare-chested and my flesh bore the violent fruits of my labor.

The men of my family had taken work clearing ten acres of land for a long-time Palmyra resident by the name of Jeremiah Hurlbut. The once-majestic trees had been girdled a year or two before, the old gnarly pines, oaks, and maples now pale and menacing and spectral. Soon this field would be clear but for the largest stumps, hay or wheat planted all around them.

Father and my older brothers Alvin and Hyrum chopped at the thick trunks of old-growth maples, oaks, and pines whilst I stripped and gathered branches and other detritus into large pyres that we would burn in the coming days. The smoke from other such fires in the area hung thick in the air, burning my throat. We were far from the only folk to have made the journey to Palmyra and other such frontier towns, looking for fertile land in which to plant our own roots. Like us, most had taken to working the land of other folk instead, lacking the funds to purchase land of our own due to the impoverished conditions we had fled, and the rising cost of land due to the influx of seekers.

I took a rest to drink from our jug of water we had placed in the shade of a small willow near a creek that would be left to preserve the integrity of the creek's banks. As I drank, I watched big beads of sweat drip from Father's forehead as he worked his ax on the trunk of a large maple, nearly three feet in diameter.

"No dawdling, Joe Smith! I'm paying you and your boys to clear these acres, not for your company! You'll never pay off those horses at this rate!" Jeremiah Hurlbut called from where he sat his horse on the other side of a stump fence. He wore fine linens and a clean felt hat. His family had been in Palmyra for quite some time, and as such had significant land holdings. Given the recent availability of cheap labor such as ours, Hurlbut and those like him no longer bothered themselves with working fields with their own hands.

Father grunted, then glared a moment at the man. Father was typically a quiet, gentle man, even when worse for drink. True to form, he settled for grumbling under his breath, wrenching the ax from the tree with a powerful jerk of his shoulders. "You act as if you still own them, you scoundrel."

As Father readied the ax for another blow under Hurlbut's watchful gaze, I wrestled with the shame of having watched my father quietly accept the reprimand. I contemplated, as I often did, our misfortune in being reduced to choring for other men. Laboring on their farms, clearing their land, harvesting their crops. Each swing of the ax was a reminder of our humiliation. Father had been a well-off man, once, a landowner and merchant until a dishonest man made off with his hard-won money. We heard the story often, especially in those days as we worked together to purchase a plot of land for our family to farm.

"This world is full of thieves and worse," Father and Mother intoned almost daily, our family's ritual prayer.

Father glared at Hurlbut one more time before felling the giant maple with several more powerful swings of the ax. It creaked, snapped, and finally fell to the ground with an enormous crash of shattered limbs. Removing and bundling the sizeable branches would be my task while the older boys and Father sawed the main trunk into manageable sections to be hauled to the miller.

Breathing hard, Father sat down near his pack and pulled out his customary green glass bottle.

"Is that from the shop?" Alvin asked from where he worked at a tree nearby with his own ax. My eldest brother, now twenty and with the build of a man grown, had already cut down as many trees as Father and Hyrum together.

"It is," Father said, his gaze fixed on the churned earth at his feet.

"Do we have enough whiskey for you to be drinking a bottle of our stock every week, Father?" Alvin asked gently. "We're clearing these trees so the children have food to eat, so we have the means to buy land and build a home of our own. Mother's work with her paintings and selling beer and from the cart in town will be for naught if we are not judicious."

Father grumbled but hung his head, putting the cork back in the bottle and stashing it in his pack. "You're right, my boy. You're right. Help me hitch this tree so the horses can drag it over to the miller's pile. We'll see if the old nags can handle the weight."

---

Jan 12, 1819 Palmyra, NY

The summer and fall passed in much the same manner; the men hiring our work out to neighboring farms, Mother and the younger children making paintings and cakes and beer to sell from our shop in town. Being of an age and physical condition to help with some of the men's work but not all, I tended our beer and cake cart in town more often than not. For several years, we all of us lived cramped in living quarters in the town of Palmyra itself, and as such were well motivated to scrimp and save at every opportunity in our pursuit of a home and farm to call our own.

One particularly miserable January day that winter, I trudged through the frozen muck of Palmyra's main street behind my father, Alvin, and Hyrum. Our aim was the brick building that served as the office of the local justice of the peace. My leg ached as it ever did, and the cold wet had already soaked through my worn boots. I was glad to step into the warmth of the wood-stove warmed space.

A bearded man sat behind a large oak desk, nestled among shelves heaped with books and bundles of stray papers. He scribbled furiously with a quill, only glancing our way to hold up one finger. Finally, he blotted the paper then looked to us with a sigh. "Can I help you?"

Father doffed his hat to hold it in both hands in front of him, a frown on his stubbled face. "I reckon you can, Justice Spear. I've a complaint against Jeremiah Hurlbut on account of selling me two unsound horses and withholding payment for services rendered to him on his and his mother's farms. I've a list of the services right here, and the agreed payments we should have received for each. But the main thing is the fraud with the horses. We bought them last year, but the old nags couldn't hardly walk after a single season in the field."

Justice Spear nodded, his brown eyes serious. "You have the note for the horses?"

Father sighed deeply as he shook his head. "No, sir. Mr. Hurlbut still possesses the promissory note for the horses we'd like to protest, as well as settle for the work we done for him on his farm. Not to mention the good crops we signed over to him. We are not a family of means, having lost everything in the freezes up in Vermont."

Justice Spear stroked his graying beard. "Aye, we've got many folk newly arrived going through hard times. I know Hurlbut, and he's never been one to pay more than he had to. Not like his father. Captain Hurlbut was a good man." He snatched a clean sheet of paper, secured it with one hand, and readied his quill and ink. "I'll have to file a summons and declaration, and we'll get Jeremiah in here as soon as possible to settle things with you folk. You live here in town?"

Father nodded. "We own the cake and beer shop near the edge of town. My wife, Lucy, does the cloth paintings. Perhaps you've seen them?"

The Justice shrugged, then turned his attention back to his writing as he continued speaking to Father. "Mayhap I have, but I don't keep much account of such. Good day to you, Mr. Smith. A constable will be 'round to schedule with you after the summons have been served to Jeremiah."

---

Late February, 1819 Palmyra, NY

The bell clinked at the front of our little family shop and a gust of frigid air that smelled faintly of horses pricked the hairs on the back of my neck. I turned from organizing a shelf full of jars of dried fruits to find a man just inside the door, surveying that day's cakes displayed on the counters, then the oilcloth paintings hanging on the walls. Fresh snow blanketed his double-breasted wool overcoat and tall brimmed hat.

It was my day to mind the front counter. "Can I help you, good sir? We've got fresh corn cakes and a nice table beer on tap this morn."

The man turned to fix me with a stare and asked without responding to my inquiry, "Are you one of the Smiths?"

I nodded. "Yes sir, I am. Joseph."

"Named for your father? Is he about?"

"Yes, I think he's in the back."

The man flicked his eyes to the rough door that led to the tiny kitchen and storeroom in the rear of the small building. "Fetch him for me, please. Tell him the sheriff needs to see him."

A jolt of worry pained my breast, but I did as he asked. Father was sorting through various goods and noting their quantities on a piece of paper. "Father, a man says he's a sheriff is here for you."

Father's brows drew down but he set down his notebook and followed me to the front of the shop.

"How can I help you, Sheriff...?"

"Bates. Joseph Smith, Senior, I presume?"

He waited for Father's nod before proceeding. "I've got a writ with your name on it, and an Alvin Smith. Know him?"

"Yes, he's my eldest son," my father responded slowly. "But Alvin's gone to work on the canal. He won't be back for some months, most like. What's all this about?"

The sheriff shrugged. "Says it all here on the writ. I'll leave this copy with you." He held the paper in front of his face, his voice falling into monotone as he read haltingly, "You and your son Alvin are to appear at the next court of common pleas in Canandaigua, on the third Tuesday of May next, to answer unto Jeremiah Hurlbut in a plea of trespass on the case to his damage of one hundred and forty dollars."

Father guffawed. "How can that be? We settled that matter in front of a jury of twelve respected men. Hurlbut paid us forty dollars for selling us lame animals. That's that."

Sheriff Bates frowned. "That's for the court to decide, Mr. Smith. He must have appealed. I just serve the writs and apprehend absconders for the courts. Good day to you." He tipped his hat and stepped into the driving snow outside.

It was yet another insult added to the many pecuniary injuries my family had suffered. It seemed then and does now that the whole world was dead set against our efforts to make a comfortable life for ourselves. Even the rightful judgement against Hurlbut that had only partially remunerated us for his frauds had been called into question and would be subject to the whims of a judge in Canandaigua. A friend of the Hurlbuts, most like. Being as young as I was, I never did learn the outcome of that appeal, or it has been whittled from my mind by the passage of time. Judging by the Hurlbuts' lasting enmity for our family and by my family's continually improving worldly means, however, I surmise that my father must have prevailed once again.

---

c. 1820 Manchester, NY (then known as Farmington)

For four long years in Palmyra, we tended our shop and took many such jobs on neighboring farms to build funds sufficient for a down payment on a piece of land to call our own. Clearing trees, ploughing fields, digging wells, raising barns, we did all work available to us. When we had the time between such labors, we stalked the forested hills looking for just the right parcel to tame by the sweat of our brows when the necessary means were prepared.

When we first arrived at the land that would eventually become our farm, on Stafford Road two miles south of Palmyra, just near the town line where Palmyra becomes Farmington, Father knew straight away that we had found our new home.

"This is it," he said just moments after stopping the old horses that drew our wooden cart full of spades, picks, chisels, saws, and various other tools of our common labors. "This is going to be our land, boys. I can feel it. Seymour is asking seven hundred dollars for each portion of the Evertson lands and I do believe this particular parcel to be worth the price."

Father drew a long breath in through his nose, dramatic as you'll ever see outside a theater or a tavern. "I can smell the sweetness in the air! You see all of these sugar maples? We'll have a thousand pounds weight of sugar every year from those. A thousand pounds!"

I felt it too. My father's enthusiasm was infectious, sending tingles of optimistic anxiety through every part of my body. What would become our farm was full of old growth hardwoods when we bought it, towering oak and maple and hickory. Huge bushy willows blanketed the marshes. Many of the trees were as wide as a grown man was tall, true frontier old growth timber. Squirrels and rabbits and sign of deer were thick throughout, promising plenty of game meat and skins to be had. We thought that we had found our paradise, the place where our family would grow and live for generations to come. It was the most beautiful hundred acres in all the world, to us.

For hours, my older brothers and I followed Father as he stalked from place to place, declaring that a gentle slope to the west of Stafford Road would make a fine orchard, the marsh next to the deeper creek could be drained and made into a field for wheat and another dry field would be for cows and horses, and so on. He carried with him a spade, digging into the earth here and there to test the soil.

"Come here, Joseph," he called to me, kneeling beside a hole he had just dug. "Here, take a bit of this soil in your hand."

I scooped up a handful of rich black dirt as directed while my brothers Alvin and Hyrum watched, knowing smiles on their faces.

"What do you make of it, my boy?" Father asked.

"It's dark, wet, and crumbly," I offered after a careful moment, conscious of his and my brothers' attention. Nerves fluttered in my belly. I wanted nothing more than to make my family proud of me. If I were an honest man, I'd tell you that this has likely been my purest motivation for all of my life, for there is no bond or obligation greater than that of blood.

"Yes, it is dark and crumbly," my father said in his kind, smooth baritone. "Dark and wet and soft. This is what soil should feel like, my boys. My father and brother and I had a fine piece of land up in Tunbridge with dirt not half this rich. We can grow anything in this earth. Wheat and barley for bread, hops for the beer, fruit trees and corn for spirits. Animals for meat and labor. Everything a man and his family need to live in comfort."

We eventually made our way back to where Crooked Creek cut through the property just to the west of the road. Father bent down to scoop a handful to his mouth. "This'll do fine for the animals and washing and such," he declared. "We'll want wells for drinking, though."

At that, Father sought out a forked stick from the many fallen branches that surrounded us, finally finding one that was to his liking. He then walked close to the road, where he held the rod gingerly, his face pinched in perfect focus. When he reached a small depression in the landscape, he veered to the side suddenly, still following the promptings of the rod in his hand. I could not hear all of what he muttered to himself, but I knew that "oh Lord" was said frequently.

Of a sudden, he stopped and rammed the forked rod into the ground with a shout. "This spot will have water. I can feel it. We'll build our home here."

This was the first time in my young life I had seen my father channel the divine via a rod to direct his hand, and I was completely taken with the magic of it.

"Where did you learn how to do that?" Alvin asked before I could.

Father smiled, wiping sweat from his balding brow. "When I was a young man, about your age. Before I met your mother. I spent some time with men of great knowledge, men able to harness the power of the divine to find all manner of things. New Israelites, we called ourselves, though I suppose that was a bit of the foolishness of our youth. Nathaniel Wood was our leader, but many of us had our various gifts from God. Rodsmen, stone peepers and prophets, even folk who could speak in tongues. I was one of their chief rodsmen, for a time, until they got mixed up in building a false temple and other dishonest pursuits."

He paused to grunt as he reminisced, his eyes unfocused as he replayed memories in his mind. "Nevermind all that. I am not often wrong about water. You'll see."

Hyrum, solemn and curious as ever, had questions. "How does it work, Father? Is there a science to it?"

Father shrugged. "Perhaps there is, Hyrum. I don't have the schooling you do, but the Lord works in mysterious ways, and his ways are not always our ways. Some would say there's more magic to it than science, but I say it's a gift from God just as he gave to Moses and Aaron and any number of His servants throughout time. Whether that means it's his angel or some other spirit guiding the rod, I know not. I only know that I can feel it as clearly as I feel any other thing, and it works."

Alvin smiled in appreciation. "Can you teach us?"

"What sort of father would I be if I didn't?" Father laughed, handing the sticks to his eldest child. "Now, it'll help to close your eyes and call out to the Lord in any manner as comes to your mind. Feel carefully for any nudge of the rods this way or that, no matter how light, and follow when they lead together."

As long as I could remember, they had a special bond, two men cut from the same cloth. Strong, confident, loyal men who lived only to care for their family. I freely admit that I am but a pale shadow of the man that Alvin was meant to be, and I see now that it would have been better had he lived to become the man I am.

I couldn't take my eyes off of the sight of the two men I most revered practicing this ancient magic, this gift from God. Hyrum put his arm about my shoulders, and we shared a sweet smile, his blue eyes twinkling with a depth I've rarely seen in another man. We have ever been a perfect complement, Hyrum and I, two halves of a whole, and I felt it keenly in that moment. He takes after our mother, with her sharp mind, and I after our father's strong will and passion for grand possibilities. Some might say obstinate and vainglorious. And I fear that they'd probably be right.

And sure enough, within minutes Alvin had worked around in a circle and come back to nearly the exact spot Father had found. His eyes had stayed shut the entire time. What could I not accomplish with powers like my father had just now revealed to us?