This is a picture of the home the Smiths rented right after the successful surgery on Joseph's leg. Even though the back portion of the house was an addition since the Smiths lived in it I'm sure the whole family was excited to have such a lovely new residence in which to start over. During the three years they lived here Joseph was on crutches. Even though the whole family would have looked to the future with optomisim the next three years were not kind to them or their neighbors. They experienced crop failure each of the next three years and the last was what they called 'the year without a summer' here in New England. There was a killing frost every month of the year. We now know that that climate change was caused by the eruption of a volcano in Indonesia named Tambora. As a result of those bad crop years many people along with the Smiths leave Vermont. Vermont historians say it took over a century for the state to recover from that loss of population. Most of the people will move westward and relocate somewhere in the Western Preserve. The Vermonters had been hearing about the fertile soil and longer growing season in western New York and Ohio. And lots of families are settling in or near Palmyra, N.Y. because of its favorable location in relation to the Erie Canal and the major roads through the area at that time. In a sense Palmyra becomes the cross roads of the western frontier during the early part of the nineteenth century. For these reasons and other more significant ones Joseph Smith Sr. will settle his family near Palmyra.