. . . forces the deadbeat Smiths to occupy the place as tenant farmers due to their non-gold plated credit rating, followed by "Lemuel" being returned to his proper place in the "Book of Mormon" as a super satanic devil dude, where he eventually gets his just desserts for being such a lousy landlord who signs an affidavit saying the Smiths are bums and fakers, as the LDS God curses him with a dark skin.
That'll teach him.
At least that's ol' Joe's story--and he and his sheep are stickin' to it.
Now, the rest (and the best) of the story . . .
_____
--Who Was Lemuel Durfee and How Did He Know Joseph Smith?--
Lemuel Dufree was a local Quaker who ended up owning the Manchester farm in which the ne'er-do-well Smith family resided for a time.
Mormon historian Donna Hill writes about life for the Smiths in their new digs (no pun intended)--albeit "on the fringes of society" in Manchester, New York, just across the border from Palymra--and how the Smiths eventually got Durfee to buy it for them, who then rented it back to them:
"The basic structure of their new home had been finished some two years before. Recently they had done the finishing touches on it with the help of a hired carpenter named Stoddard, and according to Lucy were now within a few months of the last payment on the farm, although . . . no evidence has been found that they had a formal contract for it.
"Lucy wrote that Stoddard offered them fifteeen hundred dollars for the house, but the Smiths declined to sell. Soon thereafter, he and two associates told the Smiths' agent in Cananadaigua that Joseph Sr. and young Joseph had run away and that Hyrum was defacng the farm and cutting down the sugar trees. With this they persuaded the agent to give Stoddard the deed to the property upon immediate payment.
"Stoddard offered the deed to the Smiths for a thousand dollars. The Smiths tried desperately to raise the money, but failed. However, they persuaded one Lemuel Durfee to buy the farm, and county records show that he took ownership on December 20, 1825, for $1,135.
"A Quaker of the Hicksite persuasion, owner of a woods near Palmyra in which the little Quaker church stood, Durfee apparently treated the Smith family with sympathy. He gave them a lease on the house and they would remain in it another three years, until December 30, 1828, when they would move to another house a little farther south."
(Donna Hill, "Joseph Smith--the First Mormon: The Definitive Story of a Complex and Charismatic Man and the People Who Knew Him," in Chapter 3, "Courtship, Money-Digging, Marriage" [Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1977], p. 64)
According to a chronology of Oliver Cowdery's times in the trenches, life on the farm for the Smiths didn't work out so well--at least not as owners. Having failed to pay their bills, they were relegated to Durfee's field tenants:
"The Joseph Smith, Sr. family los[t] the the title to their farm in Manchester. Lemuel Durfee, Sr., the new owner, allow[ed] the Smiths to remain on the property as tenant farmers."
("Oliver Cowdery Chronology," in "Oliver Cowdery Pages," at:
http://olivercowdery.com/history/Cdychrn1.htm)
There was another catch, as well.
According to a history of the life of Joseph Smith's younger brother Samuel, Durfee agreed to buy the house if Samuel agreed to work in Durfee's store (Stay tuned. That store will come into play later in the Smith scheme of things):
"When [Joseph Sr.] . . . missed a mortgage payment on the family farm on the outskirts of Manchester Township near Palmyra, a local Quaker named Lemuel Durfee purchased the land and allowed the Smiths to continue to live there in exchange for Samuel's labor at Durfee's store."
(Samuel H. Smith," at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_H._Smith_(Latter_Day_Saints)
How did this Smith mess-up come about in the first place?
Histriographer of the American West Dale Morgan writes that, contrary to Lucy Mack's spin-doctoring, the Smiths were repeat poor performers on their mortgage, not just single-payment defaulters:
"Sometime in late 1826 the Smiths lost their farm. They had been unable to meet their payments and lacked a thousand dollars of completing the purchase when the land agent in Canandaigua foreclosed the property and sold it to Sheriff Lemuel Durfee.
"Although Durfee permitted the Smiths to remain in possession, in consideration of a small annual payment sufficient to pay the interest on the balance, . . . the family was heartbroken--their long ordeal by poverty suffered to no purpose. . . .
"This is the arrangement described by Thomas L. Cook [in] 'Palmyra and Vicinity' (Palmyra, 1930), p. 219, although he pictures Durfee as owner of the property from the beginning.
"Lucy Mack Smith's confused and pathetic account, 'Biographical Sketches' (Liverpool, 1853), pp. 92-98, 129, at any rate agrees that Durfee 'became the possessor of the farm,' and that the Smiths remained on it thereafter only at Durfee's pleasure.
"It would seem that Lucy's pride makes her insist that they missed only the final payment, for it is inconceivable that they could have contracted to buy the farm in no more than five installments, and even more inconceivable that they would have engaged to pay at the rate of a thouand dollars a year, the sum she says they would have needed to save the farm."
("Dale Morgan on Early Mormonism: Correspondence and a New History," John Philip Walker, ed., in Chapter Four, "The Golden Bible" [Salt Lake City, Utah: Signature Books, 1986], pp. 263, 263n1, 378-79)
So, here's the long and short of the Smiths' wanderings around Mancherster-Palymra, as found in an account of Joseph Jr.'s early life:
"The Smith family built a log home, technically just outside their property, in the town of Palmyra . . . .
"In 1822, the Smiths began building a larger frame house that was actually on their new property . . . .
"In 1825, the Smiths were unable to raise money for their final mortgage payment, and their creditor foreclosed on the property.
"However, the family was able to persuade a local Quaker, Lemuel Durfee, to buy the farm and rent the Smiths the property.
"At the end of 1828, the family moved to another house further south, where they remained until 1830."
("Early life of Joseph Smith, Jr.," at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_life_of_Joseph_Smith,_Jr.)
Which meant, in the end, the Smiths went from frame to log, returning to a house they had come from earlier.
Historian H. Michael Marquardt writes:
"Lucy Mack Smith mentions in her history that in 1829 her family had moved out of the frame house, which belonged to Lemuel Durfee and his heirs, and went back into their previous log house in the township of Manchester where Hyrum Smith and his family had been living. . . . In this building, Oliver Cowdery prepared the 'Book of Mormon' printer's manuscript in 1829-30 and here individuals visited the Smith family until the Smiths moved to Waterloo, New York, in the fall of 1830."
(H. Michael Marquardt, "An Appraisal of Manchester as Location for the Organization of the Church," Web version 2004,
originally published in "Sunstone" 16 (February 1992):49-57, at:
http://www.xmission.com/~research/about/manchester.htm)
So, just to keep the record straight (since Mormonism's shameless history-twisters are about to horn in here), Dufree wasn't just some casual acquaintance of the Smiths. He was their landlord for four years, as well as the employer of Joe's young brother Sam, who worked in Dufree's grocery store. Indeed, Dufree eventually went on record as saying he personally knew the Smiths.
But never mind that. Mormon apologist/"historian" Richard Lloyd Anderson attempts to slyly intimate that Dufree was not all that knowledgeable of the Smith family:
"Lemuel Durfee knew the Smiths indirectly as a landlord from 1825 to 1829, but prior to that evidently did not know them at all, according to Lucy Smith's account . . . ."
"Indirectly"?
Anderson goes on to disingenuously suggest that Dufree--who along with 50 other citizens of the Palymra area signed an affidavit in December 1833 attesting to the Smith family's well-known litany of character flaws and bogus schemes--"probably had no more than . . . [hearsay] knowledge of the Smiths."
(Richard Lloyd Anderson, "Joseph Smith's New York Reputation Reappraised," in "BYU Studies," 1970, Vol. 10, No, 3, 1970, pp. 20,, 27n.57 at:
http://byustudies2.byu.edu/JSChronology/Articles/10.3Anderson.pdf)
Truth be told, Dufree, the Smith's local neighorhood grocer who employed one of the Smith kids, also frequently sold liquor to the Smiths.
Rodger I. Anderson, an author specializing in 19th-century religions, sets the record straight where Mormons fear to tread:
"According to [William Smith], 'I never knew my father Joseph Smith [Sr.] to be intoxicated or the worse for liquor, nor was my brother Joseph Smith in the habit of drinking spiritous liquors.'
"William’s . . . statement, made in 1875, was intended to contradict the many witnesses claiming to have seen Joseph Smith and his father drunk, but William only succeeded in proving himself either uniformed or deliberately untruthful.
"Besides the host of witnesses contradicting William’s recollection, there also exist other evidences proving his statement less than candid. If his family was not 'in the habit of drinking spiritous liquors,' it is difficult to explain the entries in neighborhood grocer Lemuel Durfee’s account book recording the sale of numerous barrels of 'cider liquor' to Joseph, Hyrum, and Samuel Smith during the years 1827-28." (Anderson adds that "Durfee’s account book is in the Palmyra King’s Daughters Free Library, Inc.")
Anderson offers a harsh but true judgment of the Smith family penchant for self-aggrandizing folklore:
". . . [R]ather than present to the world a photograph from life, Lucy and William chose to offer an idealized portrait of their family--a task which has since been assumed by [Mormon apologists] Hugh Nibley, Richard Anderson, and others."
(Rodger I. Anderson, "Joseph Smith’s New York Reputation Reexamined." in Chapter 7, "The Recollections of Lucy Mack Smith and William Smith" [Salt Lake City, Utah: Signature Books, 1990], pp. 107-08; 110)
_____
--What Lemuel Durfee Eventually Came to Think of Joseph Smith and His Family--
"Not much" would be a pretty good answer.
In December 1833, Durfee joined 50 other residents from the Palymra area who knew of the Smiths' disreputable behavior, in signing a "group affidavit" harshly criticizing the character, disposition, actions and religious claims of Joe and his family.
This affidavit was among several sworn statements taken by Doctor Philastus Hurlbut, a former Mormon, who, as noted by Roger I. Anderson "was excommunicated in 1833 for, among offenses, saying 'that he decevied Joseph Smith's God, or the spirit by which he actuated.'"
Anderson reports that Hurlbut, being "convinced that Mormonism was a deception," "offered his services to an anti-Mormon group based in the Kirtland, Ohio, area interested in investigating rumors about Smith's early life and the possibly fraudulent origin of Smith's new scripture, the 'Book of Mormon.'
"To accomplish this end, they sent Hurlbut to Palmyra, New York, where Smith had spent most of his youth and early manhood. There Hurlbut collected the signatures of over eighty people testifying to the allegedly bad character of the Smith family and of Joseph Smith in particular."
Anderson writes that "[i]n affidavit after affidavit the young Smith was depicted as a liar and self-confessed fraud, a cunning and callous knave who delighted in nothing so much as preying upon the credulity of his neighbors. A money digger by profession, Smith spent his nights digging for treasure and his days lounging about the local grocery store entertaining his fellow tipplers with tales of midnight enchantments and bleeding ghosts, the affidavits maintained."
Hurlbut's collected evidence hit the Mormons like a flaming salamander striking Joseph Smith in the chest:
"Once published in 1834, Hurlbut's affidavits became especially dangerous to the newly-founded church and its leader. . . .
"Hurlbut's witneses remembers Smith as 'entirely destitute of moral character, and addicted to vicious habits. . . . Hurlbut's Smith was animated by no loftier purpose than the love of money . . . . Hurlbut's Smith was a money digger who told marvelous tales of enchanted treasure and infernal spirits."
What's more, they were among primary sources of credible information on Smith:
" . . . [Hurlbut's sources, along with others] . . . contain almost everything that is known about the young Joseph Smith from non-Mormon sources. . . .
"Faced with . . . the lack of credible testimony discounting the affidavits collected by Hurlbut and others, most scholars outside of Mormonism have tended to accept the non-Mormon side of the issue. The number of witnesses, the unanimity of their testimony, the failure to impeach even a single witness, and the occasional candid reminisence by Martin Harris, Brigham Young, Joseph Smith, Lucy Mack Smith, William Smith, Joseph Knight, or other early Mormons have contributed to the conclusion that Hurlbut and his followers were probably reliable reporters. Even those who suspected that the witnesses against Smith may have been motivated by more than a simple desire to inform have not questioned the depictions of Smith as a basically self-seeking charlatan."
Anderson firmly attests to the soundness and overall reliability of these sworn statements, for the following reasons:
"First," he writes, "I can find not evidence that the primary source affidavits . . . collected by Philastus Hurlbut . . . are other than what they purport to be. The men and women whose names they bear either wrote them or authorized them to be written. Ghost-writing may have colored some of the testimony, but there is no evidence that the vast majority of testators did not write or dictate their own statements or share the attitudes attributed to them.
"Second, every contemporary attempt to impugn these accounts failed. . . . The fact that these efforts resulted in impeaching not a single witness who testifed against Smith, though many of these same witnesses were still alive and willing to repeat their testimony, supports the conclusion that the statements collected by Hurlbut . . . can be relied on as accurate reflections of their signers' views.
"Third," Anderson writes that, with limited exceptions, "there is no evidence that the witnesses contacted by Hurlbut in 1833-34 . . . perjured themselves by knowingly swearing to a lie. In fact, existing evidence goes far to substantiate the recorded stories. The harmony of the accounts, the fact that they were collected by different people at different times and places, and the sometimes impressive confirmations supplied by independent witnesses or documents never intended for public consumption discredit the argument that the work of Hurlbut . . . contains nothing but 'trumped-up evidence'.
"Fourth, there is no evidence that the majority of witness indulged in malicious defamation by repeating groundless rumors. Many based their descriptions on close association with the Joseph Smith, Sr.'s family. They did not always distinguish hearsay from observation, fact, from inference, but they generally state whether or not the source of the information is firsthand, and several witnesses provided enough information to demonstrate that much of what was previously thought to be popular rumor about the Smiths was not wholly groundless.
"Having survived the determined criticism of Mormon scholars Hugh Nibley and Richard L. Anderson, the Hurlbut . . . affidavaits must be granted permanent status as primary documents relating to Joseph Smith's early life and the origins of Mormonism. . . .
"In general terms, the Hurlbut . . . testimonials paint a portrait of a young frontiersman and his family struggling to eke out a minimal existence in western New York, facing the discouraging realities of life on the margins of society. Intelligent and quick-wttted, if not always a hard worker, Joseph Smith, Jr., had been brought up by parents who believed in angels, evil spirits, and ghosts; in buried treasure that slipped into the earth if the proper rituals were not performed to exhume them; in divining rods and seer stones, in dreams and visions; and that despite their indigent status, their's was a family chosen by God for a worthy purpose. . . .
"Nondescript and of little condequence until he started attracting others to his peculiar blend of biblical Christianity, frontier folk belief, popular culture, and personal experince, Joseph Smith was an enigma to his incredulous New York neighbors. For them, he would always remain a superstitious adolescent dreamer and his succes as a prophet a riddle for which there was no answer."
(Anderson, "Joseph Smiths's New York Reputation Reappraised," pp. 2-6, 112-13, 115)
Actually, there was an answer: one of many, in fact, and it came in the form of the Durfee-signed affidavit:
With the above solid endorsement of Hurlburt's evidence-gathering against Smith, here is that affidavit bearing the affirming signature of the Smith's neighborhood grocer/landlord/liquor-provider Lemuel Durfree:
"Palmyra, New York, affidavit,
"Palmyra, Dec. 4, 1833.
"We, the undersigned, have been acquainted with the Smith family, for a number of years, while they resided near this place, and we have no hesitation in saying, that we consider them destitute of that moral character, which ought to entitle them to the confidence of any community.
"They were particularly famous for visionary projects, spent much of their time in digging for money which they pretended was hid in the earth; and to this day, large excavations may be seen in the earth, not far from their residence, where they used to spend their time in digging for hidden treasures.
"Joseph Smith, Senior, and his son Joseph, were in particular, considered entirely destitute of moral character, and addicted to vicious habits.
"Martin Harris was a man who had acquired a handsome property, and in matters of business his word was considered good; but on moral and religious subjects, he was perfectly visionary--sometimes advocating one sentiment, and sometimes another.
"And in reference to all with whom we were acquainted, that have embraced Mormonism from this neighborhood, we are compeled to say, were very visionary, and most of them destitute of moral character, and without influence in this community; and this may account why they were permitted to go on with their impositions undisturbed.
"It was not supposed that any of them were possessed of sufficient character or influence to make any one believe their book or their sentiments, and we know not of a single individual in this vicinity that puts the least confidence in their pretended revelations.
[signed by]
"Lemu[e]l Durfee [and 50 others]"
(Anderson, "Joseph Smith's New York Reputation Reexamined," p. 148)
But that's not all.
Lemuel Durfee may well live on in the fictitious "Book of Mormon" itself.
_____
--How Lemuel Durfee Might Have Made It Into the "Book of Mormon"--
Author Richard Abanes observes that the "Book of Mormon's" Lemuel character conceivably could have been Smith's own backwoods neighbor--one who supplied him booze and later put his name to a court document denouncing him:
"[A] source of inspiration for the 'Book of Mormon' may have been Joseph's own life, neighborhood, family, and friends. . . .
"[T]here are various 'Book of Mormon' names such as 'Lemuel,' a wicked character.
"This may refer to Lemuel Durfee, a neighbor who in 1825 bought the Smith's farm when they could no longer afford it, thus forcing them to live as tenants."
(Richard Abanes, "One Nation Under Gods," pp. 72, . 514n61; see also, Dan Vogel, "Early Mormon Documents," vol. 1, p. 321n128)
To repeat the point for Mormon lurkers on this board:
While "Lemuel" is a Biblical name mentioned in Proverbs 31: 1 and 4, it is also the name of "a neighbor of Joseph Smith, Lemuel Durfee, who signed an affidavit in 1833 that denounced Smith's supposed revelations and accused him of immoral character and vicious habits (See Howe's 'Mormonism Unvailed,' pp. 261-62).
"Lemuel was one of the bad guys that God cursed, causing him and all his descendants to have dark skin."
("Skeptic's Annotated 'Book of Mormon.'" at:
http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/BOM/topics/lemuel.html)
*****
One wonders if the racist Mormon God has since cursed Lemuel Durfee with a brown skin for signing that cursed affidavit.
Edited 7 time(s). Last edit at 05/27/2011 10:14PM by steve benson.