Another installment on Joseph Smith’s character

Recalling his early experiences with Joseph Smith, Brigham Young remarked,

Who can say aught against Joseph Smith? I do not think that a man lives upon the earth that knew him any better than I did, and I am bold to say that, Jesus Christ excepted, no better man ever lived or does live upon this earth. I feel like shouting Hallelujah all the time, when I think that I ever knew Joseph Smith, the Prophet.[1]

“It must weigh heavily in the balance of history,” remarks Richard Lloyd Anderson, “that Oliver Cowdery, later a discriminating and astute lawyer, lived a school term in the Smith home in Manchester in 1828-9 and defended the Prophet and his family as ‘industrious, honest, virtuous, and liberal to all.’”[2]

Frederic G. Mather, a professional writer and a non-Mormon, interviewed residents of Harmony, Pennsylvania, in about 1880 who still remembered Joseph Smith as “a good and kind neighbor.”[3] The Masonic grand master of the state of Illinois was surprised to find Joseph “hospitable, polite, well-informed and liberal. . . . Instead of the ignorant and tyrannical upstart, judge my surprise at finding him a sensible, intelligent companion and gentlemanly man. In frequent conversations with him he gave me every information that I desired, and appeared to be only pleased at being able to do so.”[4] An English traveler, recounting his visit to Nauvoo in 1843, reported that Joseph was “a kind, cheerful, sociable companion.”[5]

[1] Andrus and Andrus, They Knew the Prophet, 40.

[2] Anderson, “The Reliability of the Early History of Lucy and Joseph Smith,” 23, citing L.D.S. Messenger and Advocate 2 (1855), 200. [Check original.]

[3] Frederic G. Mather, “The Early Days of Mormonism,” Lippincott’s Magazine 26/152 (August 1880): 200-201.*

[4] Quoted in Cannon, Life of Joseph Smith the Prophet, 352.

[5] Quoted in Cannon, Life of Joseph Smith the Prophet, 355.