Early saints forced to adjust to many hard circumstances
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While settling in Ohio, early Church members were forced to adjust to circumstances beyond their control, such as sickness, death, inclement weather, and difficult travel conditions.
But even more difficult than those circumstances, according to Karl Ricks Anderson in his soon-to-be published book, Joseph Smith's Kirtland - Eyewitness Accounts, were the challenges that enemies of the Church thrust upon the early members: Economic boycotts, extreme poverty, lawsuits, persecution, and violence."Many persons sold all they had just to get to Kirtland," Anderson wrote. "Others, who had financial reserves, sacrificed greatly to build up the city and the Church."
Once in Kirtland, the saints not only had to figure out ways and means by which they could prosper but also by which they could survive. Since northeastern Ohio in the 1830s was essentially an agrarian area, the saints' livelihood revolved around agriculture.
"Most men spent plodding hours planting, plowing, and harvesting crops and cutting wood," Anderson wrote. "The women tended to domestic matters, including cooking over primitive stoves, sewing and mending, housecleaning, and laundering clothes and bedding. Families had to make their own household materials and equipment, such as soap, candles, clothes, leather and wood items, bowls, pitchforks, and brooms."
Anderson's book recounts some of the typical scenes in and around Kirtland, particularly activities of the Prophet Joseph Smith, whose writings indicate he sometimes fished, hauled hay, plowed and sowed oats, labored in his father's apple orchard, attended school, studied the Greek language, and "at early candlelight . . . preached at the school house to a crowded congregation, who listened with attention for about three hours."
