This year as we have studied the Doctrine and Covenants and church history, I have come to really admire, respect and love the Knight family as well as the other members of the Colesville Branch. I think if I had lived in the 1800's I would have wanted to live in Colesville, New York and be associated with Joseph and Lydia Knight and the other saints. There seems to have been a sense of purpose, unity and love among these saints that is not as prevalent as I would like. Joseph Knight's dedication to the prophet, Joseph Smith, and to the restored gospel and to following Christ is admirable.
So I looked up Colesville and saw that it was pretty close to the Priesthood Restoration Site (which makes sense because Joseph met Emma while working for Josiah Stowell.) I wondered if it might be fun to go to Colesville and see the town. A couple of days before I found a webpage that described the restorations that a nonprofit group had done on the Knight home and decided that we'd try to find it. But looking at the page I found, it didn't seem to have an address (sometimes I wonder about myself...because I looked at it later after visiting and found an address on an attached page...but I really thought I'd opened each page and hadn't found an exact address...ugh.) So we put Colesville into the GPS and headed there. Once we arrived, I could tell we weren't going to find the home by just driving up and down a couple of roads, so I stopped at the city clerk's office and asked for help. The woman was really nice, knew right where it was and gave me directions. It took a bit of time to find the house (I think I left a step out as I was writing down the directions she gave me), but we found the house. They do tours if you call them...but we were running a bit late for our appointment at the priesthood restoration site and Gabby wasn't really interested in a tour...so we just took a few photos. I looked at the river running near their house and got emotional imagining Emma Smith and others being baptized there and then a mob coming to arrest Joseph Smith before they could be confirmed. And I felt a surge of gratitude for the role that the Knights played in the restoration of the gospel. I want to have faith like Joseph and Lydia Knight!
I LOVE the priesthood restoration site! We were a bit late for our appointment, but the missionaries are so nice to make things work! The visitor's center displays are currently closed due to Covid, but the sister missionaries took us to see the Hale home and then Joseph and Emma's home. Then we had time to wander through the "sugar bush" where John the Baptist appeared to Joseph and Oliver and restored the Aaronic Priesthood and later Peter, James, and John appeared and the Melchizedek Priesthood was restored.
It was humid and there were many mosquitoes so we didn't stay very long in the sugar bush, but it felt like we were standing in holy ground...and we were. Then we watched a wonderful film in the visitor center.
The Hales were quite wealthy. While the home is not the original home, they have used documents and descriptions to make it as close to authentic as possible. Emma was well educated and her father was a successful hunter and business man.
The home Joseph and Emma lived in in Harmony was built by her brother. But as his family grew he built a larger house and so Emma and Joseph were given the home and some property by Emma’s father. He didn’t approve of Joseph and didn’t believe in Joseph’s “gold Bible” but I believe he was a good man who loved his daughter. I think he tried to help. When persecution eventually became too great and Joseph and Emma moved to Kirtland she left her family behind and never saw her parents again.
Then we headed to the baptismal site along the Susquehanna River…pretty much across the street from Joseph and Emma’s home.
Gabby enjoyed throwing rocks into the river and we took a few minutes to talk about the importance of these locations.
The nearest town had nowhere to eat (at least nowhere that was open on a Tuesday) so we started heading toward Palmyra and found a town along the way with food and gas. While we were eating a storm suddenly rolled in and the power went out and it began to rain. We started driving again and for a few minutes it was raining pretty hard so I slowed way down and tried to decide whether to keep going or find somewhere to stop. But fortunately after just a few minutes the storm eased and while the rain didn’t stop for about 45 minutes it was a much lighter rain. And we made it safely back to our hotel.
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