<Tr> <Td> <Ul> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> </Ul> </Td> </Tr> <Ul> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> </Ul> <P> Joseph Smith Jr . (December 23, 1805--June 27, 1844) was an American religious leader and founder of Mormonism and the Latter Day Saint movement . When he was twenty - four, Smith published the Book of Mormon . By the time of his death fourteen years later, he had attracted tens of thousands of followers and founded a religious culture that continues to the present . </P> <P> Smith was born in Sharon, Vermont . By 1817, he had moved with his family to what became known as the burned - over district of western New York, an area of intense religious revivalism during the Second Great Awakening . According to Smith, he experienced a series of visions, including one in which he saw "two personages" (presumably God the Father and Jesus Christ) and others in which an angel directed him to a buried book of golden plates inscribed with a Judeo - Christian history of an ancient American civilization . In 1830, Smith published what he said was an English translation of these plates, the Book of Mormon . 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 "Mormons", and in 1838, Smith announced a revelation that renamed the church as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints . </P>

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