Ginseng, Volcanoes, and the Crooked Paths of History
Historians love to put the past in order. They trace the trends and movements in politics, economics, and society that shape events over time. That’s their job. But I’ve always been struck by the disorder of history, the role that happenstance plays in steering events. We might, for example, follow the meandering path of one young couple through the early 1800s.
The Chinese had long used the root of the ginseng plant as a medicine and tonic. In 1802, an ambitious Vermont farmer and his wife went all in on the forest herb. Knowing how valuable it was in the Orient, the Vermonters bought ginseng from local folks, who found the plants growing wild in the woods. The couple preserved the roots in sugar and took out a mortgage on their farm to buy more. They shipped barrels of ginseng across the ocean on consignment, hoping to make a fortune.
Unfortunately, their broker cheated them out of their profits. As a result, the trusting couple had to sell their farm to pay their debts, a devastating turn of events. Landless, they were forced to pay rent on an inhospitable patch of ground. They scrambled to support their growing family.
They were honest people and not averse to hard work, but scratching a living from the rocky soil was a challenge. In addition, their seven-year-old son — the fifth of eleven children — contracted an infection in his leg. Doctors had to chisel out a section of his shin bone — the medical bills added to the family’s woes.
The fortunes of history were not done with the couple. Another chance event in the Far East overturned their lives a few years later. In 1815, a British Navy commander in the Dutch East Indies heard what he thought was cannon fire in the distance. Suspecting pirates, he sent a frigate to investigate. As the ship neared the island of Sumbawa, the sky grew increasingly dark, then pitch black.
It soon became apparent that a volcano known as Mount Tambora had erupted. It was the largest such explosion in recorded history. More than fifty thousand people died in the disaster.
The blast shot so much ash into the stratosphere that by 1816, the sky over New York City was noticeably hazy. What was worse, the debris blocked enough sunlight to turn parts of the globe seriously cooler, setting off “the year without a summer.” Sixteen inches of snow fell in Vermont in June; ponds froze in July; a killing frost damaged crops in August. “Our teeth chattered in our heads,” a New England woman wrote in her diary that summer.
The Vermont family was severely distressed. Crop failures left them unable to pay their rent. It was the last straw. Along with other desperate families, they pulled up stakes and set out for the West. Their partly crippled son, now ten, had to walk most of the way. They went as far as Palmyra, a small village in western New York south of Lake Ontario.
By chance, two unrelated events had placed them in the exact area of the country where the State of New York was about to begin construction on the most remarkable engineering feat in the nation’s history. The 350-mile Erie Canal would connect the Great Lakes to the Hudson River, forming a waterway from New York City to present-day Chicago.
Everyone in the family had to join the effort to start over. The wife painted oil cloths and sold baked goods in town. Her husband and sons worked for area farmers, plowing and digging wells, until they saved enough for the down payment on a small farm of their own.
They were also swept up in the spiritual ferment that broke out along the canal route as New England Puritans suddenly found themselves freed from the strictures of the established churches. The free market in religion encouraged spiritual entrepreneurs to stoke the fires of brand-new forms of religion.
The son who had endured the surgery on his leg began to market his skill as a seer. A mystical gift allowed him to find lost objects or to locate buried gold. For a fee, he led gold-digging expeditions into the woods. Searchers sometimes uncovered the burial sites of indigenous tribes.
When he was eighteen, the young man had a vision. An angel told him where he could find a cache of gold plates buried on a hill near his home. He dug them up. Divine inspiration allowed him to translate the hieroglyphics engraved on the plates. With the help of a wealthy backer, he had the text printed in a book.
The young man’s name was Joseph Smith Jr. He called his translation of the gold plates the Book of Mormon. A new, uniquely American religion was born. The rest, as they say, is history.
Today, sixteen million devotees around the world follow the faith Smith established, officially the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In 2011, The Book of Mormon, a musical comedy, opened on Broadway. It was destined to become one of the most successful shows of all time — as of 2024 it was still going strong. And wild-harvested American ginseng root was selling on Amazon for $75 a pound.
To order a SIGNED copy of the book, click the image:
Hi Jack, I just read your story for the second time about the early times and troubles of Joseph Smith's family. What survivors and how they started over when reduced to nothing. I wonder if we could pull it off if our lives took a turn like theirs. Seems like we have become pretty soft.
Wow, Jack another interesting history story of chain events. I loved it and one I'd never heard of. Thank you