Church History

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On Dec. 23, we remember the birth of Joseph Smith, coming right at a time when in our northern hemisphere the light begins to return to the earth.       

In August of 1894, while on one of his many trips, Junius Wells, a Latter-day Saint leader, took a detour through Vermont looking for something that mattered to him—the birthplace of Joseph Smith.

At the Sharon Town Clerk’s office, he met Harvey Black, a long-time resident of the area, who led him across a field to an old cellar hole. The site consisted of crumbling walls, a few foundation stones and overgrown shrubbery. This was the physical and largely-forgotten remains of the Smith home where the Prophet Joseph Smith was born.

As he rode away from the birthplace, Wells said to himself, “sometime we ought to mark this place with a monument of the faith of our people in Joseph Smith the Prophet.”

Then in March, 1905, Wells found himself again in New England. This time he was contracting for a piece of Vermont granite for his father’s headstone in Salt Lake City. The monument contractor was Riley C. Bowers from Montpelier. In the course of this exchange, Wells mentioned the idea of a monument to Joseph Smith in Sharon, to commemorate the centennial anniversary of his birth in 1805. Bowers thought the idea was certainly workable, so with this endorsement, Wells returned to Salt Lake to share his idea with the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Consider this timing. The centennial was only a few months away, and Wells would be erecting a 38-1/2 foot obelisk of granite weighing thousands of pounds. He would not only be looking for the perfect stone, but having to transport it, at least part of the way, on a wagon across a muddy track. This was all but impossible. Wells would need a miracle—in fact many miracles—to make this happen.

In a letter dated April 1, 1905, Wells made his pitch to President Joseph F. Smith and his counselors. Although the letter has not survived, Wells offered to supervise the project and took the liberty of proposing a monument for the site recommending dimensions, inscription and even included a sketch of the proposal.

The First Presidency was a little more guarded, and instructed Wells that he first needed to verify the location of the Prophet’s birth and then attempt to purchase the land. Only then would they consider the proposal for building a monument. The clock was ticking.

On May 10, 1905, Wells left for Vermont, determined to erect a monument in six months that would typically take ten to twelve months to accomplish.

He was going to need some help.

The Easy Part

Wells settled into the South Royalton House. This would now become his headquarters. The local newspapers soon picked up on his presence in town. They reported that “he made no secret of his purpose which was to settle indubitably the exact spot where Joseph Smith was born and to acquire the premises and to erect a monument thereon.”

Wells recalled that with the help of Daniel E. Parkhurst, a shoemaker, town clerk and Treasurer for Sharon, records were found tracing the Solomon Mack property back to King George III and New Hampshire Governor Benning Wentworth in 1761.   Next, visiting William Skinner, town clerk of Royalton, he found out that the Mack property lay both in Sharon and in Royalton townships.

Wells identified that C.H. Robinson presently owned the land in both townships. On May 19, 1905, Wells visited the site with Benjamin Cole Latham who gave testimony to it being the birthplace site. Others like Maria Griffith and Harvey Smith went on record with their own testimonials. The help Wells had hoped for was pouring in….

Wells bargained with C.H. Robinson for the purchase of 68 acres as well as a narrow strip of land connecting the birthplace site with Dairy Hill Road. The transaction also included two springs, the Solomon Mack foundation site, the White Brook and the “Old Sharon Road”.

Junius Wells then returned to Salt Lake City to attend to the dedication of a headstone he was having erected for his father, built by the R.C. Bowers granite company of Montpelier, Vermont. It was a 15-foot tall obelisk. His father, Daniel Wells, had died in 1891, and Junius was just now finally having the stone put in place. This headstone’s size and shape were all indicative of the life of his father. This would be a “typecast” of what Junius would eventually do at the Joseph Smith monument site.

During the first week of June 1905, Wells prepared for the First Presidency, a report of his activities in Vermont and a detailed sketch of the monument he envisioned. He suggested it would be a 38-1/2 foot shaft of gray “Barre granite”.   He also proposed the tribute that would appear on the Inscription Die and the cap stone.

After some deliberation, the First Presidency approved the project with only one minor inscription change. By July 1, 1905, the announcement of the project was made public. On July 6^th Wells was given full power of attorney to “erect a granite monument in memory of the Prophet Joseph Smith and Patriarch Hyrum Smith”. Wells now had a carte blanche to carry out the project.

This was the easy part, now the fun would begin.

How Do You Find the Perfect Stone?

By July 13^th, Wells was back in Vermont, a state built on a granite bedrock. He went immediately to Barre, where over one-hundred quarry firms were located. On the 24^th of July, Wells awarded the general contract to his friend, the owner of the R.C. Bowers Granite Company of Montpelier.

Wells moved his residence to Montpelier so he could personally supervise the work. He had five months to complete the project and every day was a day closer to the December 23^rd dedication. Wells felt that his job was to “continually be pushing the project along”.

Bowers sub-contracted the quarrying to the Marr-Gordon Quarry in Barre. Wells reported; “The first success came when a piece of granite suitable for the die and capstone was found. Quarrymen soon found a piece sufficient for the first and second base (the monument has two base stones, Inscription Die, cap stone and pillar). But, after removing a large piece for the first base, they found that one corner was cut off, rendering the piece insufficient for the second base. This was very disappointing”. However, a suitable piece was soon discovered for the second base on the opposite side of the quarry.

With work slowly progressing at the quarry, Wells focused his attention to South Royalton.

Wells contracted with surveyors Walker and Gallison to start preparations for the birthplace park, roads, walks and building lots. By mid-August Wells had fifteen Italian laborers working at the site. Wells also contracted with Joseph Perkins to build a Memorial Cottage directly over the old cellar hole, and to incorporate the hearthstone in its original position, into the cottage fireplace. Wells was very conscious of the importance of the hearthstone. He said’ “if Joseph had any association with the hearthstone it was as a child, perhaps it was there that he was washed and dressed as a babe.”  

But, all was not well in paradise. There were pressing issues north in Barre. Workers at the Marr-Gordon Quarry had found four pieces of stone, but the most difficult, the forty-foot shaft still remained to be located. Time was running out. Wells was searching for a “perfect shaft that would be typical of a perfect man. Joseph died at age 38 and a half years, the visible portion of the shaft needs to be 38 and a half feet tall.”

Wells was starting to get concerned and discouraged. Mr. Blakeney, the foreman tried numerous stones and various locations throughout the quarry to no avail. Wells said, “It was now a hopeless hope to me. I had not the faith in me. I had not the impression. I had been going by impressions all the way through. Somehow when I had the right impression it has come out all-right. But I have had no impressions”. With no impressions, no feelings and no revelation there would be no assurances. Wells began to wonder if his dream would ever come to pass.

Wells needed a little miracle and one was on the way.

It seems that while Junius Wells was searching for his pillar stone, the Marr-Gordon Quarry was being purchased. The buyer, Mr. James M. Boutwell, of the Boutwell, Milne & Varnum Company owned an adjoining quarry. Wells recalled that this “company took over his contract with great skill”.

Two days later in the adjoining quarry “a partly disclosed stone was found that showed great promise”. Mr. Farnsworth, the foreman said it would be a week before they could be sure if it was big enough, however, Wells said, “I believed at once we were on the right track”.

It was a happy day for Wells when Farnsworth announced that the shaft was forty-six feet long, sufficient for the monument. The rough stone weighed sixty ton and it took “the ingenuity of both Mr. Boutwell and Mr. Varnum combined to raise it out of the quarry”. A temporary railroad spur was constructed to transport the stone to the main line. It took two days to load the stone on the railroad car because the derrick could only load one end at a time.

The rough stone was sent six miles by train to the Barclay Brothers cutting and polishing shed. Upon arrival, powerful steam cranes and chains lifted the shaft off the railroad car, inverted it, and lowered it into the cutting blocks, where it was cut in just sixteen minutes. Wells marveled at “the difference when knowing how and having the mechanical means and power and not having it”. The stones were cut with remarkable skill and clarity.

It was now the first part of October, the dedication date of December 23^rd was drawing near. Wells worried about the weather. The previous year two feet of snow had already fallen by the first of November.

As October drew to a close the polishing phase was completed. Wells was now faced with the prospect of transporting 100 tons of stone in a world without trucks. The 40-ton pillar seemed especially daunting. Wells recalled that no one before had moved polished stone this far and the time was tight. Fortunately for Wells a railroad line ran from Barre to Royalton. The issue was the six difficult miles from Royalton to the monument site.

Wells awarded the transportation contract to Mr. M.F. Howland of Barre. Mr. Howland recommended that a special wagon he had built for the removal of the stones at St. John’s Cathedral in New York be used to move the stones from Royalton to the monument site. The wagon had 20inch wide tires, axles eight feet long and eight inches in diameter and weighed eight tons.

With anticipation everyone waited at Royalton Village for the arrival of the stones. The base pieces would be the first to arrive.   What Wells was about to learn, was his greatest challenges lay ahead. If it had taken enormous faith to hope that a 40-foot granite stone would appear in the short time frame he had, his faith would be taxed even further when it came to moving this behemoth.

The Greatest Challenge

Unloading in Royalton meant the bridge over the First Branch of the White River in South Royalton would need to be firmed up. This task required “much scavenging all over the state for the right timbers.”

The first load to leave Royalton contained the two base pieces of the monument. Mr. Ellis of Bethel quarries sent twenty horses to pull the load. Two other horses were picked up in Royalton. Once the horses had moved the load to the main road they stopped. Twenty-two horses could not move the 31 ton Base pieces up the simple rises on the White River Road.

A discouraged Mr. Wells returned to the South Royalton Inn and drafted a telegram to President Joseph F. Smith. He asked to ship the stones, to Salt Lake City to have them erected on the Temple Block. He kept the telegram in his pocket, but did not send it.

It was decided that block and tackle would be used, horses pulling in the opposite direction of each other using the largest trees as the hinged point. The winding White River Road was slow going, even with twenty-inch wheels the wagon would sink into the mud. The crew resorted to placing 10”x3” hardwood planks under the wheels. After one week the wagon had traveled two miles to the town of South Royalton.

Slowly the wagon and crew arrived at the base of Dairy Hill Road. Two miles left, unfortunately they had an 800 foot climb in front of them. The crew inched up the narrow, winding, muddy unpaved country road, using block and tackle and trees to serve as the support points.

The road behind was “strewn with trees, some large ones, that were pulled up by the roots, it looked as though a hurricane came down Dairy Hill Road”.   A week later the bases arrived at the monument site.

The bases had landed in late October, but the original plan was to have had the entire monument completed by this time.

The next stone up was the 19 ton, six foot inscription die. They traveled without incident until arriving at the recently reinforced covered bridge over the Tunbridge Branch. The combined height of the wagon and die was 12’2”, but the opening in the covered bridge was 11’4”.   H.C. Leonard of Barre brought down a special low-to-the-ground wagon. The low wagon would enable the die stone to pass under the covered bridge and sit lower to ground so it would not become unstable as they traveled up Dairy Hill road. This was a minor miracle that such a wagon even existed and was nearby.   The large wagon then returned to Royalton to prepare to move the 40 ton shaft.

At this point Wells had four teams of local men working on the project. One team was preparing to move the shaft, one was transporting the die, one was preparing the monument and one was building the first visitors center or “Cottage” over the birthplace site. The crews were being paid well, two dollars a day with dinner furnished.

On November 7, now only a few weeks out from the centennial day when all had to be completed, Wells began to haul the shaft. It was forty feet long and weighed 80,000 pounds (40 ton). It would take thirty-three days to move the shaft to the monument location. They traveled only the length of a football field a day. Wells recalls the day they arrived at the foot of Haynes Hill. It rained all that day. In front of them lay Mr. Buttons bog or mud-hole. A neighbor was seen hurrying his empty hay wagon through the bog, “The wheels sunk deeper and deeper into the miserable little swamp”. With great difficulty four horses were required to remove the hay wagon. Wells dismissed the crew. Was it finally time to send the telegram he had been carrying? When alone, he knelt in prayer asking for a miracle. He returned to his hotel.

Late that night, a miracle happened. From out of Quebec a strong Canadian Clipper formed, a very cold nor-eastern wind blowing south.

As it picked up speed through the notched valleys of Vermont, it began to snow. The temperature dropped 35 degrees in three hours.

The crew reassembled, Mr. Buttons bog seemed to be frozen. The crew decided because of the weight of the stone and the uncertainty of the frozen ground they would lay the hard wood planks under the wheels, 9 inches thick under each wheel. As the horses heaved the weight of the load split the planks into kindling. The ground was frozen as hard as steel. The crew moved the shaft over the frozen mud hole and up the hill so quickly that it arrived a day before the inscription die. Wells asked one of the men riding with him if he believed in miracles, the man replied, “I almost believe it”.

The 10-ton molded cap was the last stone to arrive. It was the lightest of the stones but required a drawn of 14 horses. This was due to the small 6-inch wide wheels. If they stopped at all they would probably not get started again. The stone made the trek in just 6 hours.

It was now November 26, all stones were at the site. It was time to stand the stones. A large derrick had been sent for from Pennsylvania. It arrived the day before. To place the 40-foot shaft, it would have to be lifted 13 feet into the air, turned perpendicular and set into place. This process would take place December 8.

When the signal was given, the assembled crowd started cheering. They were suddenly stopped as they heard wells shouting Stop! Stop! Wells then dropped to his knees at the foot of the monument and offered a prayer of thanks.

He then jumped to his feet and yelled, “All right boys now I am with you, let her go.”   After 137 days of anxious work and miracle after miracle, the Joseph Smith Birthplace Monument was completed, and one man’s quest for the perfect stone was over.