utomobiles and accessories, tool steel, candles, farm
implements, clothing, chinaware, cement, chemicals and mining machinery.

348 M. PALMYRA, Pop. 2,480. (Train 51 passes 3:38p; No. 3, 4:57p; No.
41, 9:30p; No. 25, 9:56p; No. 19, 1:42a. Eastbound No. 6 passes 1:25a;
No. 26, 2:17a; No. 16, 6:46a; No. 22, 9:14a.)

The town of Palmyra is intimately connected with the early history of
the Mormons or "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints." Joseph
Smith (1805-1844), the founder, lived a few miles south of Palmyra at
the village of Manchester near which, in the "hill of Cumorah," he said
he found the plates of gold upon which was inscribed the book of Mormon.
Smith had the book printed in 1830 in Palmyra.

[Illustration: Joseph Smith Preaching (_From an old Mormon print_)

Joseph Smith (1805-1877) early began to gather his proselytes
about him, and even succeeded in interesting a few bewildered
Indians, but the new sect had great difficulties, aggravated, it
is said, by the licentiousness of the founder. Persecuted in N.Y.
State, Smith sought to found his New Jerusalem in Ohio, where,
however, the natives objected with such definiteness to his way of
salvation that he and one of his followers were tarred and
feathered in Hiram, O. Missouri was chosen as the next place of
refuge, but here, too, Smith's profligacy aroused the hostility of
the Missourians, which was increased by propaganda among the
Mormons for a "war of extermination against the Gentiles." In
Illinois, whither many of the "Saints" now removed, Smith had a
revelation approving polygamy, which pleased him very much, but
which roused opposition among his followers as well as his
persecutors. In 1844 he and his brother Hyrum were arrested on a
charge of treason in the town of Nauvoo which they had founded and
imprisoned at Carthage. On the night of June 27, a mob, with the
collusion of the militia guard, broke into the jail and shot the
two men dead. In the meantime there had arisen a leader of
considerable genius, Brigham Young (1801-1877), who probably saved
the sect from dissolution, and led them to Salt Lake City in 1844.]

Joseph Smith was born at Sharon, Vt., Dec. 23, 1805, from which
place in 1815 his parents removed to N.Y. State, settling first
near Palmyra and later at Manchester. Both his parents and
grandparents were superstitious, neuro