The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
The church was founded by Joseph Smith in 1830 in upstate New York. It was probably due to the Book of Mormon, which Smith said he had translated from gold plates that were buried in a nearby hill. Smith's followers first went to Kirtland, Ohio in 1831. The first temple was built in Kirtland, and by the mid-1830s, there were over 17,000 members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. In 1838, the Latter-day Saints settled in Independence and Far West, Missouri. They were driven out because people in Missouri did not trust Latter-day Saints. The Latter-day Saints then moved to Nauvoo, Illinois. There, Smith started to practice polygamy and tried to start a "theodemocracy," which combined Latter-day Saints rule with American democracy. In 1844, an attempt by Smith to shut down the Nauvoo newspaper led to Smith being accused of treason, followed by him being killed by a mob.