The Smith Log Home

The Smith family built a log home and outbuildings on Stafford Road just north of the 100-acre tract they planned to purchase. They had arranged with Zachariah Seymour, the land agent for the heirs of the Nicholas Evertson estate, to work the land. They moved the 2 miles from Palmyra to be closer to it. The log home accommodated their large family of eight children for seven years.

Of this log home Lucy Mack Smith commented, "We were able to settle ourselves upon our own land [in] a snug, comfortable, though humble habitation built and neatly furnished by our own industry . . . Again we began to rejoice in our prosperity, and our hearts glowed with gratitude to God for the manifestations of his favor that surrounded us."

During this time their oldest son Alvin began construction on a frame home a few 100 feet south, also on Stafford Road, but died suddenly in 1823. The family moved into the frame home two years after Alvin's' death. The second son Hyrum made arrangements to purchase the log home with its eighty-acre parcel of land and moved in with his new bride Jerusha Barden in November 1826.

Shortly after three years in the frame home, the Smiths and their younger children were obliged to move back into the log cabin with Hyrum and Jerusha Smith for the next year and a half until they moved on to Ohio.