Visiting Church Historical Sites in Pennsylvania and New York

 A month ago, we were able to visit the church historical sites in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York. This post will cover the last part of our trip.

After visiting the Kirtland, Ohio sites and the Pittsburgh temple, we drove to the Aaronic Priesthood Restoration site in Harmony, Pennsylvania, near the Susquehanna River. There's a visitor's center there and two restored homes:  the Isaac and Sally Hale home and the Joseph and Emma Smith home. Isaac and Sally Hale first built a log cabin on their large property when they bought it. They lived there while having many children before this very nice house was built. Isaac was a hunter and used his large property for hunting. When their daughter Emma was 7, she went to church and the minister asked them to pray. So Emma went into the woods and prayed for her father to have his heart softened that he might start going to church with the rest of the family. Her father heard that prayer as he was going through the woods and started attending church with his family shortly after that. Emma had a beautiful singing voice and loved the music of the church. She also loved horses and canoeing. Joseph and Emma met in the Isaac Hale home when Joseph was hired to come work for Josiah Stoal. Joseph boarded at the log cabin on the Hales' property and got to know Emma. He stayed there just a short time before moving to Coalsville to work but he came back to court Emma. They courted for about a year. Isaac Hale would not give his consent for them to be married because Joseph believed in the vision he had so they got married one weekend when Emma came to visit her sister in Coalsville. Eventually she was reconciled with her father and they came to stay with the Hales so Joseph could translate without persecution. When Isaac found out he was not allowed to see the plates, he didn't allow the plates to be kept in the home so Joseph bought a property next door from Emma's brother and built a house where they could be on their own. Below is the parlor of the Hales' home. A senior missionary was our guide and he did a great job. He was very knowledgeable and passionate about his topic.

Below is the road that the church bought from the state so the sites were not interrupted with a busy road. It was a highway back in the day with lots of traffic. There was also a lot of traffic on the nearby river. 

Near the Isaac Hale home is the Joseph and Emma Smith home. It's a much smaller home. This is where 70% of the Book of Mormon was translated. Emma Smith and Martin Harris were scribes followed by Oliver Cowdery. Samuel Smith also helped a little but mostly he helped by taking care of Joseph's farm which allowed Joseph to translate.

The above picture is a replica of the table where Joseph translated using a seerstone in a hat with the plates wrapped in the cloth. Below is a replica of the box where the plates were kept. They were quite heavy, weighing between 45-60 pounds. The box weighed 46 pounds and Camille had a hard time picking it up.

Joseph added on a summer kitchen by moving over a three-sided cattle shed. He received D&C 4 and 25 here.

The place where the Aaronic Priesthood was restored is in a grove of sugar maples near the houses. A few weeks before we arrived, there was a huge micro-storm that took out a lot of trees.

After visiting the sugar bush, we went down to the Susquehanna River where Joseph and Oliver were baptized.

That afternoon, we drove to Fayette, New York, where the Peter Whitmer home is located where Joseph finished translating the plates.

That night we drove to our Airbnb near Palmyra. The following morning we visited the Palmyra temple which overlooks the Sacred Grove.

In the afternoon, we drove to a bike rental place and rented bikes to ride along the path next to the Erie Canal. We came to some ducks who were sleeping on the path and were perfectly fine to stay there while we navigated around them.

That night we visited the Hill Cumorah which has changed a lot since we were there as part of the pageant. They have taken down all the structures except the visitor's center and the Moroni statue. They are re-foresting the hill to be like it was in Joseph Smith's day. I think it's being rededicated in a few weeks. We didn't see the center which was closed by the time we got there but we enjoyed being on the hill by ourselves watching the sunset. It was very peaceful.

After church the next morning, we visited the Sacred Grove which is quite large and had very few people in it when we were there. This was followed by visiting the two homes Joseph Smith lived in when he was growing up.

In the upstairs attic room is where Joseph slept probably with several other siblings. This is where the angel Moroni appeared to him and told him about the plates.

This is the home that Alvin Smith started building. 85% of the home is original. Alvin died of a ruptured appendix at the age of 25. The family lived here for a while but then lost the home when they couldn't make the payments.

This is a shed next to the house where Joseph Smith Sr. would work as a cooper making barrels.

Joseph hid the plates in the loft of this shed at one point. He wrapped them in a cloth and then hid the box under a floorboard. The mob thought they had the plates when they found the box but he had tricked them.

In the evening, we went to the Grandin Printing Shop. It is an educational tour that teaches you how books were printed in the 1820's. 

Since Joseph didn't trust the original manuscript with the printer, given his past experience, he had Oliver Cowdery make a printer's copy which took him five months. He brought the printer's copy to the print shop section by section, hidden under his coat. The owner of the shop had purchased a new printing press and he used the old printing press to lease out to other people. An editor of a newspaper was there in the evenings, printing his newspaper, and found sheets from the Book of Mormon. He started including excerpts in his newspaper until Joseph Smith proved he had a copyright so he had to stop.

After the printing press, we visited the grave of Alvin Smith whose tombstone has the old one on the back (very faded writing) and the new one on the front.  

The next day we drove back to Cleveland, stopping at Niagara Falls on the way with a tour on Maid of the Mist.

We flew home the following morning. It was a fun and interesting trip and I'm glad we did it.