Latter-day Saint Church Founded

In April 1830, Joseph Smith and a small group of followers formally organized the Church of Christ in Fayette, New York. It was later renamed, and today it is known as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Beginning with a few dozen members in rural New York, it grew into a global faith with more than seventeen million adherents, and it is among the most significant religious movements to emerge in the United States.

The church arose from the religious ferment of early nineteenth-century western New York, a region often called the "Burned-over District" because of the waves of revivals that swept through it. Many residents were searching among competing Protestant denominations, and ideas about restoring the original Christian church were widespread. Smith, a young man from a farming family, later said that he experienced a vision in the early 1820s in which he was told not to join any existing church. He also described visits from an angel, who he said directed him to a set of buried golden plates. Historians and believers interpret these accounts very differently, and the original evidence consists largely of testimonies written later.

In 1830 Smith published the Book of Mormon, which he said he had translated from those plates. It presents itself as a record of ancient peoples in the Americas and of a visit by Christ to them. Shortly afterward, on 6 April by the church's traditional reckoning, Smith and several associates met to organize the church under New York law. Followers regarded Smith as a prophet, and they believed that the organization restored the authority and teachings of the early Christian church. Critics from the start rejected those claims, and the new movement met suspicion and hostility.

Opposition shaped the church's early history. The members moved to Ohio, then Missouri, and then Illinois, where they built the city of Nauvoo. Tensions with neighbors repeatedly turned violent. In 1844 Smith was killed by a mob while jailed in Carthage, Illinois. Brigham Young then led most of the followers west, and they reached the Salt Lake Valley in 1847. Smaller groups declined to follow him, and some became what is now Community of Christ.

The church's legacy is large and complex. Its members settled much of the Intermountain West, and Utah became closely tied to its culture. Its practice of plural marriage, publicly acknowledged in 1852 and officially ended in 1890, brought sharp conflict with the federal government. Today the church is known for its missionary work, family-centered teachings, and extensive genealogical records.