FROM THE TIME OF JOSEPH'S MOMENTOUS DREAM IN THE early summer of 1820, to September 1823, he continued his usual labors with his father on the farm, cutting wood, building fences, herding cows, digging wells, searching for hidden treasures with a "peep-stone," and helping around the family's cake and beer shop. Not much of importance occurred during that interval except the visit, in 1822, of the Rev. Ethan Smith who was some kind of distant relative of Joseph's father.

Ethan Smith was forty-two years old. He was five feet nine, and had chestnut-brown hair and gray eyes. He was nicely dressed and fairly well educated, as became a clergy-man. He had a pastorate with the Congregational Church of Poultney, Vermont, and was married and had a family.

The Joseph Smiths cordially received Ethan, but it was evident that he was not welcome, mainly, it was supposed, because he was a Congregationalist. The one most friendly to Ethan was Alvin, Joseph's oldest brother, a young man then of twenty-five, with an open mind and an inquiring view. Ethan was very friendly with Alvin and told him about young Joseph, who happened to be along, of a book he was writing called, The View of the Hebrews. He also spoke of another book he contemplated writing, a history of the American aborigines, who he thought were descendants of the lost tribes of Israel, and he mentioned to Alvin and Joseph that one of the characters of his new book was to be named "Moroni."

By the time Joseph was eighteen he still had not mastered his sexual weakness, or as he himself later termed it, "weakness of youth and the foibles of human nature." When he got to the nearby villages and saw lovely girls, his heart would beat unusually fast and his blood pressure would rise with his contemplations. At such times he forgot all about religion and his otherwise pious teachings and leanings. It was an appetite of youth and nature that he could not deny.

. . .

The Rev. Ethan Smith stopped at Palmyra in September 1825, to see Alvin's findings, only to learn that Alvin had died nearly two years before. Joseph volunteered to guide Ethan to the "big hill," near Manchester. Returning from the hill in the Smith wagon, they were accosted by four horsemen who threatened Ethan and ordered him out of the country before morning. At the time there was a great conflict going on between Masons and anti-Masons and it is thought that that was the motive behind the incident between the four horsemen and Ethan.

"It is not going to be healthy for the likes of you, preacher, if we ketch you around here any more," the man on the gray horse said to Ethan. "Get going and don't let the sun rise on you around here, 'cause if you do, you won't be able to leave."

"But why should I leave?" protested Ethan, and a frown wrinkled his forehead. "I've done nothing unlawful or wrong. I have molested no one, and have no intention of doing so."

"If you would rather argue than take good advice, argue and make your own choice. Only leaving will be more healthy."

The four horsemen then rode on silently before and behind the Smith wagon.

. . .

After Ethan's visit to the Smiths in Palmyra, he had trouble with his pastorate in Poultney. It seems the trouble finally climaxed in a disagreement with one of his deacons, and Ethan asked to be dismissed. That was granted to him on November 3, 1826, at which time he set out for Palmyra to recover his manuscript and papers from young Joseph Smith. The exact facts concerning him were never fully established, but the body of a man who had been murdered was found in western New York shortly thereafter, and it was tentatively identified as Ethan.

Whether the alleged Masons disposed of Ethan Smith, as they did of William Morgan at about the same time, or whether the Indians eliminated him, or whether he was killed in a robbery, is not definitely known to this day.