Kishkumen wrote: ↑Fri Feb 10, 2023 11:33 am
I wondered where the chronologically impossible claim that Hyrum knew Ethan and Solomon came from
Moksha wrote: ↑Fri Feb 10, 2023 4:15 pm
Cohorts at Dartmouth along with Solomon Spaulding's nephew.
Having chased this thread before, there are some notes worth mentioning.
Richard Behrens, author of
Dartmouth Arminianism And Its Impact on Hyrum Smith And the Smith Family, wrote
this review of View of the Hebrews on Amazon:
The principle source for View of the Hebrews was his Professor John Smith at Dartmouth. Professor Smith's Natural Philosophy lectures completed in 1780 provide the peopling of America migration schemes and his Theology lectures prepared between 1787 and 1809 provide the theological reasoning. Though it is not recorded whether he revisited the peopling of America theme after 1780, he did articulate the Darmouth Arminian Theology that parallels the Book of Mormon and early Mormon Doctrine quite closely and is the primary source for View of the Hebrews.
These theology lectures were not directly available to Solomon Spaulding who graduated in 1785 and only the Old Testament lectures were directly availble to Ethan Smith who graduated in 1790 and later lectures were available indirectly through Ethan's son Lyndon who attended Dartmouth from 1813-17. Since Solomon Spaulding completed Manuscript Found in 1812 and died in 1816, his nephews James Spaulding who attended the Dartmouth Medical School from 1811 to 1813 and Levi Spaulding who attended Dartmouth College from 1811 to 1815 did not have an opportunity to influence Manuscript Found but were available to play the same type of role in bringing awareness of Manuscript Found to the Dartmouth campus that Lyndon Smith played in bringing Ethan Smith's early theology books started in 1811 to Dartmouth when he arrived in 1813.
Joseph Smith would have been only indirectly aware of ideas discussed at Dartmouth through his brother Hyrum, who attended Moor's School between 1811 and 1815 with Indians. Elijah Lyman a Smith in-law, however, maintained continuous contact with Dartmouth from his nearby Brookfield, Vermont, pastorate where he trained Dartmouth graduates to go on missions to the Indians, including Alfred Finney who graduated in 1814 and trained with Elijah Lyman for a year before going to spend the rest of his life with the Cherokee where he set up the Dwight Indian School.
I did verify that Ethan Smith's son Lyndon attended Dartmouth, and that an Oliver Spaulding and a Levi Spaulding were also there in the 1810s. Oliver tragically drowned while he was at Dartmouth. His brother Levi graduated from Dartmouth in 1815 and three years later, departed on a mission to Sri Lanka in one of the first cohorts of American missionaries to serve missions abroad.
The noteworthy element to this story is a
statement given by a J. L. Howgate, formerly of Wayne County, NY in the Salt Lake Tribune:
Spaulding had a nephew named King, who got a printer to copy the Spaulding manuscript, and then told Hale, a school-teacher, he could start a new religion and make money out of it, outlining his plan, which was to put some metallic covers and gold clasps on it -- to afterward dig it up -- and with a big flourish proclaim it as a new religion from on high. Hale declined the proposition. Joe Smith then took kindly to the plan, and the two, pretending to have visions, then exhumed the book.
I've searched for more information on J.L. Howgate and his relationship to the Smiths and the Spaulding nephews, or the source of this claim of his. Haven't found anything. But it is interesting that a resident of Wayne County seemed to connect the Spaulding nephews to Joseph Smith and the golden plates.
For what its worth, there was a Hale at Dartmouth/Moors at the same time as Levi Spaulding and Hyrum Smith. A Benjamin Hale wrote about an epiphany (flash of light) that Levi Spaulding had experienced while praying in a grove of trees (
source), Hale later taught medicine at Dartmouth, and also taught Hebrew for a couple years around 1827 (
source). Although there were was a school-teacher named Hale and three Spauldings (James, Oliver and Levi) at Dartmouth, I can find nothing about a King Spaulding.
