Living a mere 10 minutes from Hill Cumorah in Palmyra, NY, I can say with
great amusement that I always thought Mr. Smith had found some interesting
mushrooms in the woods.  Perhaps he was looking for pain medication for the
rheumatism.

- Pam

-----Original Message-----
From: Gabriel Orgrease [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Saturday, October 26, 2002 6:18 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Tramp Books


Excerpt from THE STORY OF THE MORMONS: FROM THE DATE OF THEIR ORIGIN TO THE

YEAR 1901 by WILLIAM ALEXANDER LINN

The Smiths are said to have been of Scotch ancestry. It was the
mother, however, who exercised the larger influence on her son's
life, and she has left very minute details of her own and her
father's family.* Her father, Solomon Mack, was a native of Lyme,
Connecticut. The daughter Lucy, who became Mrs. Joseph Smith,
Sr., was born in Gilsum, Cheshire County, New Hampshire, on July
8, 1776. Mr. Mack was remembered as a feeble old man, who rode
around the country on horseback, using a woman's saddle, and
selling his own autobiography. The "tramp" of those early days
often offered an autobiography, or what passed for one, and, as
books were then rare, if he could say that it contained an
account of actual adventures in the recent wars, he was certain
to find purchasers.

* "Biographical Sketches of Joseph S

mith and his Progenitors for
Many Generations," Lucy Smith.

One of the few copies of this book in existence lies before me.
It was printed at the author's expense about the year 1810. It is
wholly without interest as a narrative, telling of the poverty of
his parents, how he was bound, when four years old, to a farmer
who gave him no education and worked him like a slave; gives some
of his experiences in the campaigns against the French and
Indians in northern New York and in the war of the Revolution,
when he was in turn teamster, sutler, and privateer; describes
with minute detail many ordinary illnesses and accidents that
befell him; and closes with a recital of his religious awakening,
which was deferred until his seventy-sixth year, while he was
suffering with rheumatism. At that time it seemed to him that he
several times "saw a bright light in a dark night," and thought
he heard a voice calling to him. Twenty-two of the

forty-eight
duodecimo pages that the book contains are devoted to hymns
"composed," the title-page says, "on the death of several of his
relatives," not all by himself. One of these may be quoted
entire:--

"My friends, I am on the ocean, So sweetly do I sail; Jesus is my
portion, He's given me a pleasant gale.

"The bruises sore, In harbor soon I'll be, And see my redeemer
there That died for you and me."

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