Solomon Chamberlain Guided by Spirit to Palmyra — Meets the Smith Family

In the spring of 1829 Solomon Chamberlain, then living about 20 miles east of where the golden plates were found and working along the Erie Canal, recorded that he felt a distinct spiritual impression directing his travel to Palmyra. Traveling by canal boat toward Lockport (on a visit that included Upper Canada), Chamberlain wrote that “when the boat came to Palmyra, I felt as if some genii or good spirit told me to leave the boat.” He obeyed the impression, left the boat, and was led by the same unseen guide to walk a southward course of roughly three miles. It was about sundown when his guide told him to put up for the night at a farmhouse. In the morning the people of that house asked if he had heard of the “Gold Bible,” and Chamberlain reported that “when they said Gold Bible there was a power like electricity went from the top of my head to the end of my toes.”

Chamberlain, a stranger in that neighborhood, soon found himself at the home of the Smith family. Hyrum Smith was present, and through conversations there Chamberlain learned of Joseph Smith, the golden plates, the ongoing translation, and the impending publication of the Book of Mormon. Different tellings of the episode (Chamberlain’s autobiography and later published collections) preserve the core sequence: a powerful spiritual prompting to leave the boat at Palmyra, being guided south for about three miles, sheltering overnight at a farmhouse, a startling bodily sensation on hearing of the Gold Bible, and an introduction to the Smith family and their work on the plates.