Joseph Smith's Youth

Parent page: Joseph Smith

Orsamus Turner (1852): "to once and a while blacken the face of the then meddling inquisitive lounger-but afterwards Prophet"

Orsamus Turner talks of how he and others made fun of the young Joseph Smith when he came into the office of the Palmyra Register to pick up his father's paper each week:

Once a week [Joseph Smith] would stroll into the office of the old Palmyra Register, for his father's paper. How impious, in us young "dare Devils" to once and a while blacken the face of the then meddling inquisitive lounger-but afterwards Prophet, with the old fashioned balls, when he used to put himself in the way of the working of the old fashioned Ramage press!The editor of the Cultivator, at Albany-esteemed as he may justly consider himself, for his subsequent enterprize and usefulness, may think of it, with contrition and repentance; that he once helped, thus to disfigure the face of a Prophet, and remotely, the founder of a State.. ^[1]

Notes

1. ↑ Orsamus Turner, History of the Pioneer Settlement of Phelps and Gorham’s Purchase and Morris’ Reserve (1852) 214.