Joseph Smith

Joseph Smith Jr. (December 23, 1805 – June 27, 1844) was an American religious and political leader and the founder of Mormonism and the Latter Day Saint movement. Publishing the Book of Mormon at the age of 24, Smith attracted tens of thousands of followers by the time of his death fourteen years later. The religious movement he founded is followed by millions of global adherents and several churches, the largest of which is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church).

Born in Sharon, Vermont, Smith moved with his family to Western New York amid hardships following a series of crop failures in 1816. Living in an area of intense religious revivalism during the Second Great Awakening, Smith reported experiencing a series of visions. The first of these was in 1820, when he saw "two personages" (whom he eventually described as God the Father and Jesus Christ). In 1823, he said he was visited by an angel who directed him to a buried book of golden plates inscribed with a Judeo-Christian history of an ancient American civilization. In 1830, Smith published the Book of Mormon, which he described as an English translation of those plates. The same year he organized the Church of Christ, calling it a restoration of the early Christian Church. Members of the church were later called Latter Day Saints or nicknamed the Mormons.

In 1831, Smith and his followers moved west, planning to build a communal Zion in the American heartland. They first gathered in Kirtland, Ohio, and established an outpost in Independence, Missouri, which was intended to be Zion's central location. During the 1830s, Smith sent out missionaries, published revelations, and supervised construction of the Kirtland Temple. Smith and his followers left Ohio and Missouri after the collapse of the church-sponsored Kirtland Safety Society and violent skirmishes with non-Mormon Missourians escalated into the Mormon extermination order. They established a new settlement at Nauvoo, Illinois, which quickly grew to be the second-largest city in Illinois during Smith's mayoralty.

Smith launched a presidential campaign in 1844. During his campaign, Smith and the Nauvoo City Council ordered the destruction of the Nauvoo Expositor's printing press after it criticized Smith's power and his practice of polygamy. This inflamed opposition to Smith and his followers. Smith surrendered to Illinois authorities but was shot and killed by a mob that stormed the jailhouse.