MORMONS or SAINTS, a religious society founded by Joseph Smith (q.v.) and associates at Fayette, Seneca County, New York, April 6, 183o. It was organized con formably to the laws of the State of New York, which required no fewer than six persons to constitute a religious society. Joseph Smith's associates were Oliver Cowdery, Hyrum Smith, Peter Whitmer, Jr., Samuel H. Smith and David Whitmer. In addi tion to these, a few others became members of the Church at the time of its organization.
Smith, when a boy between 14 and 15 years of age, claimed to have had, in answer to prayer, a vision in which two heavenly personages appeared to him and proclaimed the opening of a new Gospel dispensation. These personages, he said, were God the Father and his son, Jesus Christ. Afterwards, according to Joseph's account, a heavenly messenger appeared to him, giving his name as Moroni, and revealing the existence of a record en graved upon gold plates and hidden in a hill between Palmyra and Manchester, N. Y., not far from the Smith home; a record containing the fulness of Christ's Gospel, as made known by the risen Redeemer to the ancient inhabitants of America. Four years later, or on Sept. 22, 1827, the plates were delivered into Joseph's hands, and with them instruments called "interpreters" (Urim and Thummim), by which he translated the cryptic characters found upon the plates, and gave to the world the Book of Mor mon—so called because its author and compiler was a prophet named Mormon, father to Moroni, who as a mortal had concealed the record in the hill.
The Book of Mormon was first published at Palmyra, N.Y., early in 183o, in an edition of five thousand copies. Since then it has passed through many editions, and has been translated and published in many languages. The preface to the Book of Mor mon prints the testimony of three witnesses that they beheld the plates and the inscriptions from which the translation was made. Eight additional witnesses testified to the same. Following the publication of the book, came the organization of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, commonly called the Mormon Church, and its members Mormons, because of the Book of Mor mon, believed by them to be of divine authenticity, and of equal authority with the Jewish Scriptures. At the organization of the
Church, Smith and Oliver Cowdery were sustained respectively as its first and second Elders, and the former as Prophet, Seer and Revelator.
Mormonism drew its first proselytes from the rural districts of New England. In the autumn of 1830 it sent missionaries to the Indians living upon reservations in New York State and in newer States. These missionaries—Oliver Cowdery, Peter Whit mer, Jr., Parley P. Pratt and Ziba Peterson—proceeded westward and in Ohio converted a number of white people, including Sidney Rigdon and others who became prominent in the Latter-day Church. They continued onward to Western Missouri, which was then the frontier of the nation.
In the summer of 1831 a Mormon colony settled in Jackson county, Mo., upon lands purchased from the Federal govern ment, and consecrated by the Prophet as a site for the New Jerusalem. Most of these Mormons were from the North and East and were abolitionist in their tendencies, a very serious charge at that time when Missouri was a slaveholding State. Moreover they were poor and brought little property, yet they looked forward to their future possession of the country there abouts as "The Land of Zion." This together with the religious and social differences, aroused the bitter opposition of the older settlers who, having no recourse to law, proceeded by violence and terrorizing to force the removal of the entire colony in the autumn of 1833 to Clay, Caldwell and Daviess counties in the same State.