Alvin Pliny Bean: A Son of Palmyra Who Wrote 'A Modern Mecca'

Alvin Pliny Bean, a son of Willard Washington and Rebecca Bean, grew up in Palmyra, New York, on the Joseph Smith Farm where his parents served for over twenty-four years as caretakers and missionaries for the Church. He wrote 'A Modern Mecca,' an English composition describing the sacred landscape of the Restoration—Palmyra, the Hill Cumorah, and the Smith farm—as a place of pilgrimage for the Latter-day Saints. His writings, preserved with the family biographies, help carry forward the witness his parents gave of the sacred places where the Restoration began. Brother Bean's life is a faith-promoting witness of the rising generation who, born in the places their parents hallowed, carry the story forward in their own words.