David Hale also served as a school superintendent.308 But while respectable and well off, using their log home as the local school for a period, the Hale family did not all have the same education as did the Comfort family. She was also charged to act as a scribe to Joseph, to expound the scriptures, to exhort the Church, and to coordinate the publication of sacred music in a hymnbook. He was hunting deer and when near this place saw a young Panther about half grown standing on a fallen tree. Chaffee,History of the Wyoming Conference, 36. On September 22, 1827, Joseph and Emma took a horse and carriage belonging to Joseph Knight, Sr., and went to a hill, now known as Hill Cumorah, where Joseph said he received a set of golden plates. Nina M. Versaggi, Director, Public Archaeology Facility, Binghamton University, Personal communication to author, September 13, 2013. John Travas (also spelled Traves and Travis), a neighbor of the Hales, had a 15 x 30 foot home valued at $16, which was likely the value of a single story structure. As a native of Cape Cod and a South Sea man, born to Mary and Gershom Lewis in Gilford, Connecticut, Nathaniel Lewis grew up in shipping and worked for a time as a sailor.63 He also lived on the Connecticut coast within view of Gardiners Island where Captain William Kidd purportedly buried stolen silver before moving to Block Island to negotiate his surrender for piracy. I have named one of the judges Scribe A (see Trial Notes Scribe A) as he recorded the following testimony, confirming the log home still stood in May 1824. 315. agreed with Lucy Smiths account, arguing Joseph began courting while still at the Hale farm, stating a group of money diggers boarded at his [Isaacs] house [when]JS [Joseph Smith] began courting Hales daughter Emma. Michael Hubbard MacKay, Gerrit J. Dirkmaat, Grant Underwood, Robert J. Woodford, and William G. Hartley, eds.,The Joseph Smith Papers,Documents Volume 1: July 1828June 1831(Salt Lake City: Church Historians Press, 2013), 347. In 1807 Francis Asbury, the first Bishop of the American Methodists, planned a trip through the Susquehanna Valley to follow up on recent conversions by ordaining local preachers, organizing congregations, and leading a large revival. Isaac Hale identified this location as the family garden plot in his will. Four of Isaacs children were named after his Ward relatives, an additional three were named after Elizabeths Lewis family, and the youngest child, their son Reuben, was more likely named after Elizabeths brother Reuben Lewis than Isaacs brother Reuben Hale. Arthur B. Deming, ed., W. Nancy Mess has suggested Eclectic Man may have been a brother or son of J.W. . Timothy Lee, before Mrs. [Emma] Smith was born.189 Emma was already born and baptized into the Congregationalists before Reverend Lee arrived in the valley. But Lucy, who was not there at the time, may have misunderstood Josephs recounting the events, since Isaac Hale suggested that it was Afterthese occurrences, [when the treasure diggers abandoned the project and left, that] young Smith made several visits at my house to court his daughter. After Ruper sold his land to Tench Francis; however, the Hales clearly knew who owned their land. Elder Lewis is [in] good health for and old man. Although most of this frame home later burned in an 1865 fire, and was rebuilt into an even larger home by the carpenter James Tillman in the early 1870s, there is enough evidence from the original frame home to determine some significant aspects of its appearance and character. He said it was a young child. Stocker,Centennial History of Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, 530, 532. It was Potters congregation during Isaacs childhood that Jonathan Edwards had tried to call to repentance when he preached his famous sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. The sermon had not taken then, and the congregation had not adopted Edwards conservative stance when Joseph and Antha were married, but the Reverend Potter still had gone too far when he married a black man and a white woman. They frequently walked from five to six miles to be present at prayer-meetings.198The shift in religion was not as universal as he suggested, however, and Bucks congregations down river in Great Bend and up north in Bainbridge continued. The village post office officially changed the name of the village from Hopbottom to Waterford in 1823 but in 1825 it changed again to Brooklyn although locals continued for many years to refer to it as Hopbottom. There was no means of earning money in the valley except by hunting or making shingles.122 Wood was more plentiful than wild game and most of the settlers focused on it as their main commodity. Wendy Schnur, Collections Access and Research, Mystic Seaport, The Museum of America and the Sea, Mystic, Connecticut, Personal communication to author, February 7, 2008. Isaac Hale had initially welcomed Smith when he came to Harmony, Pennsylvania where Emma grew up, looking for a place to stay and continue his translation of the Golden Plates from which the Book of Mormon would be translated from. Drinker, impressed with the good heartedness of his steward named the area HARMONY in respect of the Hilborns who were Quakers, (Abner H. Baird, Deeds, Wills, Maps, Pictures, and Historical Information of the Joseph Smith and Isaac Hale Farms, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Brigham Young University). 122. On December23, 1847, Emma married LewisC. Bidamon, a non-Mormon resident of Nauvoo. The first large scale sawmill in the valley began operation in 1809.239Since the Hales were under pressure from Pickering to build the Lewis home in 1809, and Methodist meetings were held in the Hale home as early as 1810, it is likely the Hale family finished building their own new frame home in early 1810, the same year they gained legal title to their property. 9. Perhaps because their public discussions of religion differed from what was commonly accepted, their neighbors described them as religious agitators. The Hale farm began with Isaac Hale. This is discussed in detail below. Clarke, Methodist Episcopal Church, Lanesboro, Penn. Susquehanna County Historical Society. Lewis, Lewis Family Collection (15501984), gives the dates of birth for the children as, Elizabeth, November 19, 1767; Nathaniel, May 27, 1769; John, October 3, 1770; Esther, May 31, 1774; Jekiel, August 20, 1776; Molly, June 9, 1779; Reuben, January 13, 1782; Amos, April 7, 1785. See discussion below of this Joseph Smith land in 1832 for additional insight. Blackman,History of Susquehanna County,102. 228. See BrianC. Hales, Joseph Smiths Polygamy, 3vols. isaac hale father of emma smith Others also consistently agreed the workmen boarded with Isaac Hale. Emily C. Blackman,History of Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, from a Period Preceding its Settlement to Recent Times(Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsen, and Haffelfinger, 1873), 103. Some historians have emphasized Isaac Hales adversarial relationship with Joseph Smith, and others have suggested there may have initially been a more cooperative relationship between the two. The comforts Lucy observed may have included running water. 152. . Caleb Carmalt & wife to Isaac Hale, July 31, 1833, Deeds, Montrose, Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania. After his dismissal, Pickering decided he wanted to retire from public life, move to the country, and become a gentleman farmer. Most of Isaacs sons were boatmen on the river during their younger days, and these men typically traveled in groups of three to six through the German settlements of southern Pennsylvania.123, While the valley soon produced carpenters, weavers, blacksmiths, and other craftsmen, Isaac Hale spent the majority of his time pursuing the other major profession available to the settlershunting and fishing. A little over a month after Isaac Hale arranged to purchase his land, a change in county government gave the Hale family a larger political voice. But since Moses Comstock was the acknowledged first settler of the valley, the dating of William Smiths arrival is not firmly established. Upham,Life of Timothy Pickering,19. He believed that Smith was not a good match for his daughter and that he would not be able to provide for her financially. Blackman,History of Susquehanna County, 578. Emma served the needy: in Kirtland, she and Elizabeth Ann Whitney coordinated feasts for the poor, and in Nauvoo, she opened her home to the sick, orphaned, and homeless. Black, Susan Easton, and Harvey Bischoff Black, eds. During trial testimony, Isaac Hale mentioned walking this specific site barefoot as he took a group of angry neighbors over to the Treadwell home east of his property to confront a member of the family, Trial Notes of Scribe B.. Isaac continued to be taxed on two homes from 1816 until 1819. isaac hale father of emma smith isaac hale father of emma smith. 135. The following year, when Isaac Hale and John Hilborn were assessors, the Hale sugar house was dropped from the assessment and Isaac was taxed for 300 pounds of sugarsignificantly more than any other individual in the township. The use of witch hazel rods accompanied many families in their move to Vermont. Trial Notes of Scribe A and Trial Notes of Scribe B.. Before Isaac Hale and his family raised a new frame home on their first homes repaired foundations, they slid the log home to a spot nearby (most likely toward the well in the yard to the east of their home where outside work was typically done), where they lived until they finished their new home. Blackman,History of Susquehanna County,136. When the slave Sylvia Dubois was brought into the valley in 1803, she remembered the road that crossed the Hale property was rough, narrow, and nearly indistinguishable from the forest around it.111, None of the townships thirty-six heads of household during the 1790s could make a living farming even after new roads tied their farms to major shipping routes. Silas Gildersleve, letter to Family, September 18, 1823, John Comfort Correspondence, George Fisk Comfort Papers, Syracuse University Special Collections; see also, Charles Wentworth Upham,The Life of Timothy Pickering(Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1878), 4:116. David Syrett, ed.,The Siege and Capture of Havana, 1762(London: Navy Records Society, 1970), xiii. I have interpreted Blackmans fifty years as a round number meaning for a long time. Since Blackman only mentioned Elizabeth as a consistent member and not Isaac, either he was a late joiner or had not initially been consistent. See extended online version of Staker and Jensen, David Hales Store Ledger and later entries in the original ledger. He owned several thousand acres of land, on which he engaged in lumbering, and his lumbermen took sawn lumber to Hales Eddy and from there down the river to Philadelphia. 249. Trial Notes Scribe A.. Their work benefited from regular conversations with staff members of the Historic Sites Division, including Mark Staker, Don Enders, Ben Pykles, and Steve Olsen.