SMITH, REV. ETHAN.

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—View of the Hebrews; Exhibiting the Destruction of Jerusalem; the certain Restoration of Judah and Israel; and an Address of the Prophet Isaiah relative to their Restoration. By Ethan Smith. Pastor of a Church in Poultney, Vt. Motto. Poultney. (Vt.) Printed and Published by Smith & Shute. 1823. 12 mo. pp. 187.

Another edition enlarged 1825, pp. 285. same imprint.

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Rev. Ethan Smith was born in Belchertown, Mass., December 9, 1762; and died at Boylston, Mass., August 29, 1849. He was graduated at Dartmouth College 1790; read theology with Drs. Burroughs, of Hanover, and Burton, of Thetiord, Vt. He was pastor of various Congregational Churches in New Hampshire, New York and Massachussets, and at Poultney, Vt., 1821 to 1827, which constituted his only residence in Vermont.

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The Mormon, Joe Smith, was born in Sharon, Vt., December 23, 1805, and was treacherously murdered in jail by a mob at Carthage, Hancock County, Ill., June 17, 1844, in defiance of promised protection by Governor Thomas Ford. The parents of Joe Smith were obscure and poor, and when he was ten years of age the family, consisting of the parents and nine children, moved to Palmyra, N.Y., where Mormonism was developed. Of the Book of Mormon we have gathered the following facts from various sources, but largely from information communicated by J. H. Gilbert, published in the "Detroit Post and Tribune," of December 2, 1877.

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It is now pretty well established that the "Book of Mormon" was written in 1809 to 1812 by Solomon Spalding, a Presbyterian preacher, as a popular religious romance. He sent it to Pittsburgh, where it lay in a printing office several years, he not being able to raise the money to secure the printing of it, and after his death it was returned to his widow, about 1824.

By some means, not known, it fell into the hands of Sidney Rigdon, who with Joe Smith concocted the scheme by which it was subsequently brought out as the work of Smith, the dealings with the outside world being manipulated by Hiram [Smith], an elder brother of Joe Smith.