The New Church

Story by Claire Harrison

Photos by Surya Vaidy

For Sister Lani McCoy and President Tom McCoy, living in Palmyra is an opportunity to walk around the holy places they have heard about their entire lives. 

They know the story of the cozy family cabin warmed by burning logs, the grove of trees offering comfort to a conflicted teenager, the hill where he sought clarity. Though these details are familiar, the McCoys’ tenure in Palmyra has offered a new perspective.

“These are significant historical places, but the people become real,” Sister McCoy said. “These people have become very real to us as we walk the places that they’ve been.”

Two hundred years later, Palmyra’s Main Street still resembles the town Joseph Smith would have seen. The red cobblestone main street is flanked by stout brick buildings, and just two blocks away stands the lifeline of 19th-century upstate New York: the Erie Canal.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is rarely linked with the Erie Canal, but without the Canal, it’s hard to imagine the Latter-day Saints making it across the country to Utah.

The Mormon faith’s beginnings may seem familiar — a conflicted individual looking for answers and receiving divine guidance. But the spread and development of the church because of the Canal make it a uniquely New York story.

Surya Vaidy

Atop the temple is a statue of the angel Moroni holding a horn.

Palmyra, located 20 miles east of Rochester, is a microcosm of upstate New York in the early 19th century. The town was at the intersection of the dawn of the Erie Canal and the Second Great Awakening, an enormous religious revival that led to the rise of several new religions like spiritualism and Adventism. The small towns around which the Canal was constructed were forever changed by both things. 

Palmyra’s economy was largely agricultural before the Canal was built. But the engineering marvel brought new industries and catalyzed further growth for the town, earning it what Tracy Murphy — the executive director of Historic Palmyra — called the title “queen of Canal towns.”

Unlike many other towns along the Erie Canal, Palmyra was already established before the Canal was dug: Gen. John Swift founded the town in 1789, according to the town’s website. When the Canal was first built, Palmyra’s booming Main Street already backed up onto the waterway. 

The Canal changed Palmyra, and the town made an impact on the United States and the world by being the birthplace of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 

During every stage of the Latter-Day Saints’ development, the Erie Canal played a role in spreading the church’s message, recruiting new members and finding new homes. The church was officially founded in nearby Fayette by Joseph Smith Jr. on April 6, 1830, but the spiritual awakening that inspired the new religion started 10 years earlier just outside of Palmyra. 

Towering over the intersection of Main Street and Canandaigua Road are four steeples, once belonging to churches of four separate faiths: Episcopal, Presbyterian, Methodist and Baptist. Though none of today’s buildings was around when the Smiths lived in Palmyra, their imposing presence represents the religious explosion spreading in upstate New York in the 1800s.

Western New York was swept up in the Second Great Awakening in the early 1800s. The spread of new religious ideas was made easier by the Canal because places once disconnected could be quickly navigated using the Canal. 

Amid so many choices, the Smith family was religiously divided, and different members belonged to different churches with different levels of devotion, said David Bolingbroke, associate historian in research and outreach for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ Church History Department.

Church history explains that a 14-year-old Smith, confused about which church to join, turned to prayer for answers. He walked through the woods by his family’s house and found a secluded spot, referred to as the Sacred Grove, to pray in the spring of 1820. 

Though the church doesn’t know exactly where Smith was on the property, it was in the grove that Smith received a vision from Jesus Christ and God, according to church history. He was told not to join any church and to instead wait for future guidance. 

“People were looking for a more personal relationship with God, and I think the Canal factored into also having increased movement and migration,” Bolingbroke said. “A lot of times people, when they come to a new place, they’re looking for community. … And so you have an explosion of different preaching communities in this region.”

A few years later, Smith was visited by an angel, Moroni, and guided to the golden plates, which contained the content of the Book of Mormon. After a long process of converting the plates, written in “reformed Egyptian,” to a manuscript, Smith and early members of the church had to find someone to print the Book of Mormon to share their gospel. 

Smith approached E.B. Grandin, a printing apprentice in Palmyra, about producing the first copies of the book. Grandin was hesitant at first because of his religious convictions, but he eventually agreed to print 5,000 copies of the text on his new Smith press. 

Because the brand-new, state-of-the-art press was so heavy, the only way to get it into the shop was via the Canal, Bolingbroke said. In 1830, when the printing began, the print shop on Main Street backed up right to the Canal, and Grandin and his employees got the heavy press into the building’s third floor using a pulley system.

Those first 5,000 copies of the Book of Mormon primarily went to Smith’s friends and family who believed in his preaching, Bolingbroke said. But they eventually made their way down the Canal with missionaries on early proselytizing efforts to Missouri and Ohio.

In the spring of 1831, Smith was called to move the church westward, and it eventually took hold in Kirtland, Ohio, according to church history. Later on, new converts from England reached the church’s new station in Nauvoo, Ill., in the 1840s via the Canal. 

“The Canal was a really important highway, really important pathway for Latter-Day Saints during this time period,” Bolingbroke said.

Western New York might be best known for Niagara Falls and Buffalo Bills games for many, but for the 17 million Latter-Day Saints around the world, it’s also revered as sacred ground.

The church has not been headquartered in New York since 1831, but it still maintains five historic sites in New York and Pennsylvania. Around 100,000 people visit these sites per year, a church spokesperson estimated.

To maintain the sites and provide tours to the public, members of the church serve missions in the area, and Sister Lani McCoy and President Tom McCoy are Palmyra’s mission leaders. Together, they are responsible for overseeing the missionaries — as many as 72 of them during the peak season — and the maintenance of the properties.

Upon rejoining the church as an adult, President McCoy discovered he was a direct descendant of Joseph Smith Jr., he said. He believes the couple was called to this mission because of his connection to the Smith family.

Each missionary pays their own way and leaves family behind, which President McCoy called a “service of love.” 

“Service is a great thing,” Sister McCoy agreed. “If you just sit home and grow old, that does not make for a great life.”

Surya Vaidy

Sister McCoy stands for a portrait in Grandin Building’s storefront. The storefront replicates the bookstore that would have been the sales front of the Grandin print shop.

Before Palmyra, the McCoys served two missions in Nauvoo as a couple, and they feel the experience of being missionaries brought them closer. 

And while leaving behind their own eight children and 27 grandchildren is difficult, Sister McCoy said, serving at such a key place in the restoration is significant to them.

“It feels like every day we’re walking on holy ground,” she said. “Where else can you go where God the Father and Jesus Christ have stood on that ground? It is a sacred privilege to be here.”

Though people come from all over the world to visit the church’s historic sites, Bolingbroke said he thinks many church members overlook the Canal’s impact. 

The McCoys said they knew a little about the Canal before beginning their mission but have taken the opportunity to look more into its significance, which Sister McCoy called eye-opening.

The Erie Canal is not part of the teachings of church history, but with the 200th anniversary of the Canal approaching, the church is trying to change that, Bolingbroke said.

“We’re hoping that visitors to our historic sites can learn a little bit more about why the Erie Canal was so important and shaped the economy, the religious environment,” he said. “Without the Canal, you probably don’t have many of the factors that contributed to the growth of the church in those early days.”