An Account of His Marvelous Experience

In 1832, Smith consolidated and composed his earliest recorded memory of his vision in a short autobiography. It is best understood as an attempt to respond to the earlier rejection. Smith described his experience in terms he hoped would not upset the culture the Methodist minister represented, but in doing so Smith didn’t seem true to himself. So Smith’s 1832 autobiography is best understood as a conflicted consolidation—an unsuccessful attempt to reconcile his experience with a socially safe identity. For more than a century this memory remained outside the collection of items available for consolidating collective memory. For Joseph Smith’s individual memory, however, the 1832 consolidation fixed one point from which he never turned: he prayed to God in the woods, and his ministry began when God answered.