New York: Cradel of the Restoration

A recent article on the Saints in the Rochester area in The Church News, combined with my new Jehovah’s Witness internet friend in that area, has inspired me to write a little about upstate New York as a cradle of the restoration. Now in a cursorily sense when most Americans think about a real religious area in their country, they probably think about the south, but upstate New York can be said to have an even more interesting and varied religious history. At a time when it was part of the American frontier, settled largely by the more ruggedly inclined of the New England population, upstate New York was the center place for the Second Great Awaking. A wave of religious revival hit the area in a cross denominational way. Methodists and Baptists were probably the leading contenders in the contest for souls in the area, but other faiths competed as well, and new ones were born.

In fact upstate New York isn’t just a ‘cradle of the restoration’ it was a cradle of restorations. The various Campbellite restorationists churches, originally self-described ‘Reformed Baptist’s’ that blossomed and divided into the current Church of Christ, Christian Church, and Disciples of Christ denominations got much of there start here. As did the Millerite movement, which eventually produced the Seventh-Day Adventists, who in turn had an influence on the early Jehovah’s Witness, which started out in nearby Pennsylvania. All of these faiths maintained a presence in the area, except for the Mormons who do to persecutions and a natural gathering instinct left the area in the early 1830’s (A small Mormon presence was found in the New York City area starting in earnest around the late 1830’s, but it was mostly a hub for some publishing and coordinating immigration to the west. ).

The Utah War, the Civil War, and later anti-Mormon political sentiment found little Church activity in the whole of New York state from the late 1850’s until the 1880’s, and even then it would remain quite limited in the area for decades to come. In the early 20th Century Church President Joseph F. Smith, the nephew of the late Church founder Joseph Smith Jr., instituted a policy of buying up old Church historical sites. In 1907 the Church purchased the old Joseph Smith Sr. farm sted and some surrounding property, and in 1915 sent former Boxer Willard Bean (1868-1949) and his much younger wife Rebecca (1891-1976) to go and maintain the area and serve as a nucleus for the Church there.

In 1928 the Church purchased the historic Hill Cumorah (where the golden plates from which the Book of Mormon was translated were said to have been buried) and held a pageant there. It was the forerunner of the annual, volunteer produced Hill Cumorah Pageant: Americas Witness for Christ, which started in earnest in 1937 and today attracts thousands of visitors a year. A monument to the angel Moroni was constructed on the site in the 1930’s, and numerous commemorations have been held there over the years. The Church also purchased other historic cites in the area, including the Grandin Building in Palmyra (where the first copy’s of the Book of Mormon were printed) and the site of the Peter Whitmer farmhouse (later reconstructed) in Fayette where the Church was originally organized.

The first Stake (kind of like a Catholic disoces only generally smaller) was organized in the state in 1934, today (2002) there are 14 stakes in the state of New York, including two centered in Rochester, and roughly 65,000 members state wide. During the Hinckley years (1995-present) the Church started to construct Temples at historic sites from Church history such as the pioneer encampment at Winter Quarters (near Omaha) and the reconstructed Nauvoo Temple in Illinois. The first of this series of Temples was built in Palmyra New York, near Joseph Smiths boyhood home. It’s dedication ceremony was given a rare closed circuit broadcast to select meeting houses across the U.S. and Canada. A Temple in Manhattan was dedicated in 2004.