What many do not know is that Brigham Young prepared for his life's mission in the state of New York. He was born in Vermont, taken to New York State as an infant, and raised on hard work by deeply religious parents. He lived and worked during most of his thirty years in the heart of the Finger Lakes region.

A willing worker, but lacking formal education, Brigham learned and practiced a variety of trades. At the age of sixteen he was apprenticed to a furniture and cabinet maker in Auburn. Young Brigham became, in time, an expert husbandman, farmer, gardener, carpenter, glazier, mason, furniture and cabinet maker, painter, and boat builder—and even took a turn at lay preaching.

Many of Brigham's closest associates in later life were old friends whom he had first met in New York State. Perhaps the most noted of these was his close confidant Heber C. Kimball, who also came from Vermont parentage. And there was Solomon Chamberlain, with whom Brigham later crossed the Plains. Chamberlain was to become one of the first members of the Mormon church and appears to have been the first unofficial missionary to make direct contact with the Young family.

Inspired by the late Mrs. Mary Van Sickle Wait of Auburn, this work has been carefully researched and chronicled, employing every available resource. Mrs. Wait and her husband, H. R. Wait, for many years spent their summers at a beautiful country home just west of Auburn. They had been told by the former owner that Brigham Young, as a youth, "had something to do with the construction of the house." In legacy to her community, Mrs. Wait set out to gather materials relating to Brigham Young's early life in Cayuga County. Eventually she published a small monograph, Brigham Young in Cayuga County (Ithaca, NY: DeWitt Historical Society, 1964).

Before Mrs. Wait's death in 1973 (and her husband's subsequent death in 1975), the authors were given permission to reprint the earlier work or to revise it based on new findings. The Waits expressed the hope that their work, together with any additional pertinent material, would receive wider distribution than had the initial publication.

The authors' original intent was simply to reprint the Wait booklet, adding pertinent corrections and refinements. After a period of exhaustive research, however, they determined that the significant amount of "new" material would require a completely revised work. In addition, much of Mrs. Wait's research needed documentation. Even now, although every known avenue has been pursued for additional facts, the current monograph is likely not definitive.

Richard F. Palmer, formerly of the Syracuse Herald Journal, is currently editor of the Baldwinsville Messenger weekly, senior editor of Inland Seas (the Great Lakes Historical Society quarterly), and a columnist for the Crooked Lake Review. He is the author of seven books, including "Old Line Mail" Stagecoach Days in Upstate New York, Brigham Young: The New York Years, and Rails in the North Wood. He has published on Mormon history themes in BYU Studies and elsewhere.

Karl D. Butler, Ph.D., Cornell University, is a retired agricultural consultant and longtime Syracuse Post Standard columnist. As president of the AIC farmers' cooperative and assistant to U. S. Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson, he promoted farm products and a farmer exchange program on trips through Africa, Brazil, India, Russia, and Taiwan. He is the co-author of several books, including Brigham Young: The New York Years; has published in Collier's, the Saturday Evening Post, and elsewhere; and is responsible for having helped restore the Peter Whitmer house in Fayette, New York. He currently serves on the board of the Boyce Thompson Southwest Arboretum in Tucson, Arizona.