March 26, 1820

First Vision

Joseph Smith’s reported First Vision

The date on the calendar entry — 26 March — appears in none of Joseph Smith's own accounts of the vision.

A day nobody wrote down

The best-known account, composed beginning in 1838, dates the experience only to a clear morning early in the spring of 1820. It supplies no day and no month.

26 March is a modern conjecture assembled from calendars, weather records kept in a different location, assumptions about farm work, and that phrase "early in the spring."

No contemporaneous 1820 record of the vision is known; the earliest surviving narrative was written around 1832.

Four accounts, one in his own hand

Smith or his scribes produced four firsthand accounts — circa 1832, 1835, 1838–1839 and 1842. Only the circa-1832 history contains some of his own handwriting.

The 1838 version says he went alone into woods near his home and prayed aloud to ask which church was right, felt overpowered and unable to speak, then saw a pillar of light and two personages, one introducing the other as his beloved Son. He was told to join none of the existing denominations, and said he found himself lying on his back afterwards.

The circa-1832 account stresses instead his search for forgiveness and his conclusion that the denominations had departed from New Testament Christianity, saying he saw "the Lord" — and it places the experience in his sixteenth year, pointing to 1821, a discrepancy the Joseph Smith Papers editors note explicitly.

What history can check

Historians can verify the existence, dates and contents of Smith's later accounts. Historical research cannot independently verify the reported supernatural appearance.

The exact spot is not identified in any of the accounts. The traditional Sacred Grove lies on or near the Palmyra–Manchester boundary by the Smith farm, not in Palmyra village.

No independently documented public or institutional change is tied to that morning; in his retrospective account Smith told his mother that Presbyterianism was not true, and later told a Methodist preacher, who dismissed the vision.

Sources

Researched 24 Aug 2026 6 sources not yet audited Traditional date

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet and rewritten from that sheet. This article has not yet had an independent model audit. How the pipeline works →

Traditional date. Conventionally dated here; the research places it at ~1820.

What the sources leave uncertain

26 March 1820 is a modern conjecture based on calendars, weather records from a different location, assumptions about farm work, and the phrase “early in the spring.” It is not stated in any primary account.
The best-known 1838 account dates the experience to early spring 1820, while the circa-1832 manuscript places it in Smith’s sixteenth year, pointing to 1821. Joseph Smith Papers editors explicitly note this discrepancy.
Historians can verify the existence, dates, and contents of Smith’s later accounts, but historical research cannot independently verify the reported supernatural appearance.
The exact spot is not identified in Smith’s accounts. The traditional Sacred Grove lies on or near the Palmyra–Manchester boundary by the Smith farm.