Cooper Shop
Joseph Smith Sr. was skilled as a cooper, a very important trait for the times, and the industry on the Smith farm included a cooper shop. The family made and repaired a variety of barrels, kegs, buckets, and tubs capable of holding wet and dry goods. This fulfilled not only the family's need for containers as they tapped more than a thousand sugar maple trees, but they also sold their products to other maple sugar producers and apple cider makers.
In the month of October 1827, Joseph Smith used the loft as a hiding place for the safe-keeping of the plates from which the Book of Mormon was translated.
"Joseph soon received another intimation of the approach of a mob and the necessity of removing the record and breastplate again from its hiding place. He took them up and carried them out to a cooper shop across the road and took them out of the box and after wrapping them carefully in cloths, laid them away in the midst of a quantity of flax which was stowed in the shop loft. He then nailed up the box as before and tore up the floor and put the box under it. As soon as it was dark, the mob came on and ransacked the place. . . . The next morning we found the floor of the cooper shop taken up and the wooden box which was put under it split to pieces."-Lucy Mack Smith
Copyright © 2006 Calvin & Rosanna Hamilton. All rights reserved.