View of the Hebrews

Ethan Smith (1762–1849), no relation to Joseph, was a prominent New England minister who published a number of sermons and books. From 1821 to 1826, he served as minister of the Poultney, Vermont, Congregational Church, and during that period published his best-known work, View of the Hebrews. This book “combines scriptural citations and reports from various observers among American Indians and Jews to support the claim that the Indians were the descendants of the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel.” By the early twentieth century and down to the 1980s, suggestions of a relationship between View of the Hebrews and the Book of Mormon were made by several authors.

Proponents of this theory have pointed out that the William Cowdery family lived in Poultney when View of the Hebrews was published, and some have claimed an Ethan Smith–Cowdery association. Book of Mormon enthusiast Thomas Stuart Ferguson concluded, for instance, that the Cowdery family “had a close tie with Ethan Smith.” The most intensive examination of the possible Ethan Smith–Cowdery association appears in David Persuitte’s Joseph Smith and the Origins of the Book of Mormon, published in 1985. Persuitte calls attention to a brief note in the Records of Baptisms for the Congregational Church in Poultney:

1818 August 2 Mr. Cowdry’s children viz Rebecka Maria Lucy and Phebe

Noting the connection of the Cowdery family to the Poultney Congregational Church that Ethan Smith would preside over three years later, Persuitte claims, “It is reasonable to expect, then, that Oliver Cowdery eventually became acquainted firsthand with Ethan Smith.” However, Persuitte makes two mistaken assumptions in reaching this conclusion. First, he assumes the Cowderys moved to Poultney soon after William and Keziah’s marriage—an understandable assumption given Lucy Cowdery Young’s letter—and second, that the Cowderys had a long-standing association with the Poultney Congregational Church.

To support this second assumption, Persuitte refers to two church records—an 1810 vote “to give Mrs. Keziah Cowdry a letter of recommendation” and the 1818 baptismal record mentioned above. Persuitte reasons that, since the Cowderys associated with the Poultney Congregational Church from 1810 to 1818, they probably continued in the church until 1825. As shown, however, the family resided in either Middletown, Vermont, or Williamson, New York, from 1809 to 1817 or 1818 and was therefore not at all likely to form a close association with the Poultney church during this period.

Convinced that he has established an Oliver Cowdery–Ethan Smith connection, Persuitte quickly attempts to link Ethan Smith’s ideas to the origin of the Book of Mormon:

Since Pastor Smith wrote his book to convince his fellow Americans of the religious importance of his ideas about the American Indians, we can speculate that he also used his pulpit to expound on them. In the congregation, Oliver Cowdery might thus have heard and been deeply impressed . . . [and] there was a reasonable period of time in which Oliver Cowdery could have supplied Joseph with a copy [of View of the Hebrews]. . . . Though Joseph later claimed that he did not meet Oliver until the spring of 1829, he might have said that to preclude any appearance of collusion. It is also possible that some other individuals were involved in the collaboration and that Oliver worked with them first and not directly with Joseph until later.

In the face of such speculative musing (which is void of documentation), a close look at the historical records proves highly instructive:

• William and Keziah’s three daughters—Rebecca Marie, Lucy Pearce, and Phoebe—were all baptized on the same day, at the ages of seven, four, and one, raising questions of how often the family attended church services. (William’s orthodox parents, by contrast, had him baptized when he was one month old.)

• Keziah’s known contact with the Poultney Congregational Church in 1803 (when she joined), 1810, and 1818 all occurred with the same pastor in office, the Reverend Mr. Leonard, a popular minister who served from 1803 to 1821. There is no record of her having contact with any other Poultney minister.

• Keziah lived in Poultney during the 1790s but was a resident of Middletown in 1800 and also in 1810, when she married William Cowdery. She did not return to Poultney until 1817 or 1818. It is therefore likely that the May 26, 1810, letter of recommendation was obtained (possibly from Poultney church members who had known her years earlier) in relation to the move to New York, which took place in the summer of 1810.

• Although Keziah was a member of the Poultney Congregational Church, and her three daughters were baptized, no other Pearce, Austin, or Cowdery family members are mentioned in church records.

• The baptismal entry in 1818 is the last record of Cowdery association with the Poultney Congregational Church, and no document has been found linking Ethan Smith to any member of the Cowdery family. Even Persuitte acknowledges that Oliver’s three half sisters were baptized three years before Smith became pastor.

• No document has been found linking Oliver Cowdery to the Congregational Church or the writings of Ethan Smith.

All of this does not prove that the Cowderys did not know Ethan Smith or that Oliver Cowdery was not aware of View of the Hebrews. What it does suggest, however, is that the theory of an Ethan Smith-Cowdery association is not supported by the documents and that it is unknown whether Oliver knew of or read View of the Hebrews. (Oliver’s possible acquaintance with Ethan Smith is further diminished by his likely residence in Wells from 1820 to 1822, as discussed earlier.)

Nevertheless, some historians have continued to speculate that Oliver may have somehow obtained a copy of View of the Hebrews in Poultney and given it to Joseph Smith sometime before 1827, when Joseph reported obtaining the gold plates. Persuitte, for example, launches into a lengthy scenario according to which Oliver meets with Ethan Smith and is allowed free access to his library. When Oliver leaves Vermont in 1825, he takes with him the enlarged edition of View of the Hebrews, as well as a romance written by Ethan Smith (although no record exists of this volume). Soon Oliver meets with Joseph, and “the two get the idea of using Ethan Smith’s romance as the basis of a history of ancient America that they can sell for profit.” They incorporate material from View of the Hebrews as well. Persuitte omits specific dates and locations from his Joseph/Oliver conspiracy, which he admits is “purely speculative.” Still, in a book that gives the appearance of treating historical matters seriously, taking such creative license seems out of place.

In a more recent—and more surprising—attempt to link Joseph Smith with View of the Hebrews through Oliver Cowdery, Richard S. Van Wagoner offers another amazing series of speculations. His springboard is an 1830 editorial in the Ashtabula (Ohio) Journal which states, “For we had known Cowdry some seven or 8 years ago, when he was a dabbler in the art of Printing, and principally occupied in writing and printing pamphlets, with which, as a pedestrian pedlar, he visited the towns and villages of western N. York, and Canada.”

Van Wagoner first suggests that young Oliver Cowdery may have been “employed by Smith & Shute, the Poultney firm that printed View of the Hebrews.” Next he conjectures that Oliver was a “traveling agent” for Smith & Shute and that Oliver “had copies of the 1823 edition of View of the Hebrews in his knapsack when he visited his relatives the Smiths.” This, in Van Wagoner’s estimation, explains how Joseph, in the autumn of 1823, began telling his family interesting details about the ancient inhabitants of America.

While Persuitte’s scenario of Joseph receiving View of the Hebrews offers no dates, locations, or documents, Van Wagoner includes four specific details that do not withstand scrutiny.

(1) The Ashtabula Journal’s identification of Oliver as a “pedestrian pedlar” could be a case of mistaken identity. As Scott Faulring has noted, “Benjamin Franklin Cowdery was an older relative of Oliver who went through repeated hard luck in printing ventures in western New York. Before 1830, he had published eight newspapers, and about this time others in the trade evidently felt him ‘poorly qualified to speak for the printers.’”

(2) Oliver Cowdery himself indicated he did not learn the printing trade until 1829. In December of that year, he was assisting with the printing of the Book of Mormon and wrote to Joseph Smith, “It may look rather strange to you to find that I have so soon become a printer.” In addition, a nineteenth-century history of Poultney mentions several people associated with printing in Poultney (including Horace Greeley, who began work as a Northern Spectator apprentice in 1826), but does not mention Oliver.

(3) Oliver Cowdery was only sixteen when the supposed 1823 Smith & Shute employment and trip to western New York would have been necessary. However, there is no record of Oliver being in New York between 1815 and 1824. Had he gone to western New York in 1823, he most likely would have visited his older brother Warren, who had been practicing medicine in the area for at least six years. In his apothecary ledger, Warren noted the names of Dyer, Erastus, and Sally Cowdery, but there is no mention of Oliver. Nor is a boy Oliver’s age listed in the 1820 census record for Warren Cowdery.

(4) There is no evidence that Oliver met the Smiths before 1828 or that he then knew they were related (Oliver Cowdery was a third cousin to Lucy Mack Smith). Similarly, Lucy says the Joseph Sr. family met Oliver for the first time in 1828 and does not mention any awareness of their distant family connection.

Like other attempts to establish an Ethan Smith–Oliver Cowdery–Joseph Smith connection, Van Wagoner’s version lacks support from primary documents.

Conclusion

In the cold spring of 1829, when Samuel Smith and Oliver Cowdery set out on a 130-mile journey from Palmyra, New York, to visit the Prophet in Harmony, Pennsylvania, traveling through miserable weather—“raining, freezing, and thawing alternately, which had rendered the roads almost impassable”—Oliver was only twenty-two years old. Contrary to well-known theories regarding the Wood Scrape and View of the Hebrews, his family history offered no evidence of preparation for the establishment of a new religion. And while his family’s history is well documented, his personal life seemed ordinary, with his birth record as the only primary Vermont document mentioning him by name. All of that was about to change. He faced an extraordinary future, full of “days never to be forgotten.”