Craig James Ostler: Standing as symbols of the confusion that existed in the Palmyra area in the 1820’s, churches of four separate denominations sit on each of four corners of Main Street and Route 21 in downtown Palmyra, New York. It is supposed that this is one of the few such occurrences in the United States of churches on each corner of an intersection. As such these meeting houses aptly demonstrate American religious plurality and at time controversy. Moving clockwise from the south/east corner are the Episcopalian, Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian Church buildings. It should be noted that although each of these various sects had membership in the Palmyra community during the time that the Smiths lived in the area, none of the present buildings existed at that time.
When the Smith first moved to Palmyra the lone church building in the village was the Union church house built in 1811, which served a non denominational congregation.1 It sat nearby, just south of the John Swift memorial cemetery. From 1817 the western Presbyterian church occupied it, until they later built the present four corners brick building in 1832.2 During the religious excitement in the region, around 1820, Lucy Mack Smith and her children Hyrum, Sephronia, and Samuel Harrison joined the Presbyterian Church and thus would have worshiped in the earlier building.3 It is also very likely that in his quest to find the truth regarding religion that the young Joseph Smith would have attended meeting with the Presbyterians.4 In addition after the untimely death of Joseph’s oldest brother Alvin Smith, funeral services were held in that old building and Presbyterian reverend Benjamin Stockton preached at the funeral,5 following which Alvin was buried in the Swift cemetery located next to the old church building which later burned down in 1838.6
1 Cook, Thomas L. Palmyra and Vicinity. Palmyra: Palmyra Courier-Journal, 1930. 247.
2 Wayne [Palmyra, NY] Sentinel. Nov. 17, 1838.
3 See Joseph Smith—History 1:7.
4 Berrett and Porter, Sacred Places: New York and Pennsylvania, 182.
5 J. S. Peterson interview with William Smith, 1893, Latter-day Saints’ Millennial Star, 26 Feb. 1894, p. 133.
6 While being used by the Baptist Church, in 1838 the original structure burned to the ground from ashes being deposited in a wooden vessel. Wayne Sentinel [Palmyra], November 17, 1838, cited in Berrett and Porter, 182.
