Where Science Meets the Doctrine and Covenants: Come Follow Me Lesson: January 13-19: Joseph Smith 1:1-26
We read in Joseph Smith 1:14, “So, in accordance with this, my determination to ask of God, I retired to the woods to make the attempt. It was on the morning of a beautiful, clear day, early in the spring of eighteen hundred and twenty. It was the first time in my life that I had made such an attempt, for amidst all my anxieties I had never as yet made the attempt to pray vocally.”
Hymn #26 in the Hymns of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is entitled “Joseph Smith’s First Prayer,” by George Manwaring (1854–1889). It is a beautiful and popular hymn, but it is historically quite inaccurate. The first verse reads:
“Oh, how lovely was the morning!
Radiant beamed the sun above.
Bees were humming, sweet birds singing,
Music ringing thru the grove,
When within the shady woodland
Joseph sought the God of love…”
Artists depicting the first vision or the sacred grove, such as the Sacred Grove, by Greg Olsen, depicted at the beginning of this Come Follow Me lesson, also depict the scene with leaves on the trees — again, beautiful but inaccurate.
Joseph Smith, himself, stated that “It was on the morning of a beautiful, clear day, early in the spring of eighteen hundred and twenty.” In the early spring in upstate New York, the trees have not yet begun to bear leaves. In 1820, spring began with the spring equinox on March 20 and ended with the summer solstice on June 21.1 According to the Times Union, “Leaves usually begin to sprout between April 5 and 25, depending on the year and location…In Albany County, the latest spring in recent history occurred in 2018, with leaves emerging around April 28. The earliest spring in recent history was in 2012, when leaves sprouted on March 22.”2 Therefore, in the early spring of 1820, trees may have had buds as early as March 22, but almost certainly not leaves as yet.
On the 200th anniversary of the First Vision, KSL News Radio ran a story, wherein BYU church history professor Steven Harper stated, “Joseph Smith would have been working too hard tapping sugar maple trees to have gone to the woods to pray until the temperature got right, and he’d have free time and the first day would have been the 26.” But he cautioned, there are a lot of “ifs” involved in that statement.3
However, I have watched the YouTube podcast describing how Drs. John Lefgren and John Pratt worked together to come up with a date: March 26, 1820, and I find their reasoning to be quite compelling. Lefgren used weather records, understanding of maple syrup making, and the fact that March 26th was a Sunday, the only day Joseph would not have been working to confirm Pratt’s original dating proposal.
Joseph said, as recorded in Joseph Smith 1:20, “…I went home. And as I leaned up to the fireplace, mother inquired what the matter was. I replied, ‘Never mind, all is well—I am well enough off.’” That does not sound like Joseph’s behavior on a work day. Compare that day with the one on the day after the “twenty-first of September, one thousand eight hundred and twenty-three…” (another Sunday) as recorded in Joseph Smith 1:27, 48, “I shortly after arose from my bed [Monday morning], and, as usual, went to the necessary labors of the day; but, in attempting to work as at other times, I found my strength so exhausted as to render me entirely unable. My father, who was laboring along with me, discovered something to be wrong with me, and told me to go home…”
I am fairly confident that Lefgren and Pratt have pinned down the date of the first vision to 26 March 1820. However, in his KSL interview, Harper said “…the exact date isn’t as important as the actual event.” I agree. That vision, which occurred on or about 26 March 1820, changed the course of human history forever.
Trent Dee Stephens, PhD
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