According to TP, JS was illiterate c. ~1830.
Pomeroy Tucker, Origin, Rise, and Progress of Mormonism (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1867), 16
At this period in the life and career of Joseph Smith, Jr. or "Joe Smith," as he was universally-named, and the Smith family, they were popularly regarded as illiterate, whiskey-drinking, shiftless, irreligious race of people—the first named, the chief subject of this biography, being unanimously voted the laziest and most worthless of the generation.