The Trials of Young Josep F. Smith

The Trials of Young Joseph F. Smith

Scott G. Kenney

To understand Joseph F. Smith, the founder of modern Mormonism, we must understand the demons that beset him—and they were many. This article examines the psychological and emotional effects of the deaths of his parents; his anger, guilt, and addictions; and the destructive nature of his first marriage.

Except where noted, primary sources are in the Joseph F. Smith Papers.

Destined for leadership	By birth and temperament Joseph F. Smith was destined for prominence. Born of the "royal lineage"—nephew of the Prophet Joseph and son the Patriarch Hyrum—his zeal for the restoration never wavered. His entire life was spent in the service of "the church and kingdom."
Son of a martyr	Five when his father was murdered, he grew up not only fatherless, but the son of a martyr.
Sentimental	Thirteen when his mother passed away, he became strong and self-reliant, his Victorian sentimentality about motherhood and children bordering at times on the maudlin.
Blames apostates, values loyalty above all	Blaming "apostates" for the death of his father, and the disregard of church leaders and others for the loss of his mother, Joseph esteemed loyalty as the highest virtue.
Effects of parents' deaths	The deaths of his parents dramatically affected Joseph's personality, manifest in a life-long struggle with anger, in melancholy and lengthy, guilt-ridden addictions to tobacco and alcohol—all of which contributed to what was I believe the catastrophe of his life, the failure of his first marriage. Whatever privileges may have accrued to Joseph from his parentage, they were surpassed in spades by the trials he suffered as a young man. Combined, they produced a complex and very human being who, in turn, fathered modern Mormonism.
and this because of thy family
Family church	In its early stages Mormonism could almost be called a family church. Not only were members of the Smith family, immediate and extended, among the first baptized into the Church of Christ, they were early defenders of the faith, missionaries, patriarchs, apostles, high councilmen, city councilmen, and aldermen. "Priesthood" and "lineage" were intertwined, the Smith line being particularly blessed and chosen. Thus, Hyrum was told, "thy duty is unto the church forever, and this because of thy family."	D&C 23:3, (April 1830) The Royal Lineage (Smith)
Church Patriarch	The office of Church Patriarch was a patrilineal position, and until the passing of "Uncle John" Smith (1781–1854), the Church Patriarch was looked upon as the spiritual father of the church.	The office was also referred to as "the Patriarch over the whole Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints," "Presiding Patriarch of the Church," "Presiding Patriarch over this Priesthood," and "Patriarch to the Church."Lost Legacy, 115, 125.
Brigham Young downgrades role of Church Patriarch	When Uncle John passed away without ordaining a successor, President Young called Hyrum's oldest son, twenty-two year old John, to the position. At the same time, Young downgraded the post by changing the sequence of the sustaining vote in general conference, submitting names of the Twelve to the church before the Patriarch, who had traditionally followed immediately after the First Presidency.	Ibid, 123.
Joseph F. restores role	Smiths no doubt took note of the change, as personal and dynastic prerogatives were sensitive issues. As church president, Joseph F. took immediate steps to perpetuate Smith family primacy, reinstating the office of Patriarch as second only to the First Presidency, calling two of his sons and one of John Henry Smith's sons into the Quorum of the Twelve, one son to the Presiding Bishopric, and Bathsheba Smith to be president of the Relief Society. Latter-day Saints who witnessed the emeritization of Church Patriarch Eldred G. Smith also witnessed the demise of the office and the family tradition that loomed large in Joseph F. Smith's life and being.	¶ Royal Lineage (Smith)
stupified with horror
News of the martyrdom	Early in the morning, five-year old Joseph heard tapping at his mother's bedroom window. Then a man's voice from outside. His father was dead. Uncle Joseph too. A mob had rushed the jail and shot them. She screamed in anguished denial, then began to sob uncontrollably.	Joseph and his sister, Martha Ann—barely three at the time—recalled the night differently. Joseph remembered D. B. Huntington announced the news at Mary's window. Martha Ann remembered, in considerable detail, that George D. Grant entered the house before breaking the news. Variant Recollections
B. W. Richmond, eyewitness	As word spread, friends and relatives began to call—among them, B. W. Richmond, a non-Mormon acquaintance.	The Prophet's Death
Hyrum Smith home	Mary "had gathered her family of four children into the sitting room," Richmond wrote, "and the youngest about four years old sat on her lap. The poor and disabled that fed at the table of her husband, had come in and formed a group of about twenty about the room. They were all sobbing and weeping, each expressing his grief in his own peculiar way. Mrs. Smith seemed stupified with horror."	Hyrum had six living children: Lovina (who had just married Lorin Walker), John, Jerusha, Sarah, Joseph, and Martha Ann. Sarah was six, Joseph five, and Martha Ann three.
	Joseph recalled "it was a misty, foggy morning. Everything looked dark and gloomy and dismal."	"Boyhood Recollections," 5.
Bodies arrive	About three in the afternoon two wagons bearing the martyrs reached the outskirts of town. A delegation from the Nauvoo Legion, the city council, and a brass band formed the cortege. Eight to ten thousand distraught mourners lined the streets. When they reached the Mansion House, the pine coffins were unloaded and carried in to the dining room. The families were asked to wait until the bodies could be cleaned.
Families come to view bodies	An hour later, they were admitted with a few friends. Aunt Emma entered first, with her children, but before she could reach Joseph's body, four months pregnant, she fainted and had to be helped from the room. She made the attempt six times, Richmond reported, "and six times she was removed in the arms of her two attendants." At that point, Mary entered with Hyrum's children.	¶ The Prophet's Death
Mary: Hyrum, Hyrum! Have they shot you	She trembled at every step, and nearly fell, but reached her husband's body, kneeling down by him, clasped her arms around his head, turned his pale face upon her heaving bosom, and then a gushing, plaintive wail burst forth from her lips: "Oh! Hyrum, Hyrum! Have they shot you, my dear Hyrum—are you dead, my dear Hyrum!" She drew him closer and closer to her bosom, kissed her pale lips and face, put her hands on his brow and brushed back his hair. Her grief seemed to consume her, and she lost all power of utterance.	¶ The Prophet's Death
The grief of Mary's four children	Her two daughters and two young children clung, some around her neck and some to her body, falling prostrate upon the corpse, and shrieking in the wildness of their wordless grief.	If Richmond is correct, John would have been missing since he was neither a daughter nor one of the "young children" (he was five or more years older than Sarah, Joseph, and Martha Ann).
Emma returns	Finally Emma, "in a half swooning state," returned. As she approached Hyrum's body, Richmond took her hand and laid it on his forehead. Soon "her strength returned," she murmured, opened her eyes, and said,
Emma: Joseph, Joseph …have the assassins shot you?	"Now I can see him; I am strong now." She walked alone to her husband's bed, kneeling down, clasped him around his face, and sank upon his body. Suddenly her grief found vent; and sighs and groans and words and lamentations filled the room. "Joseph, Joseph," she said, "are you dead? Have the assassins shot you?"
Emma's children's grief	Her children four in number gathered around their weeping mother and the dead body of a murdered father, and grief that words cannot embody seemed to overwhelm the whole group. She continued to speak in low tones, but none of the words were audible save those which I have recorded.
Coffins	By 7 a.m. the new coffins, lined with fine white linen, covered with black velvet, and finished with brass nails were ready. The bodies were placed in and protective squares of glass swung on their brass hinges to cover the faces. Then the coffins were put into rough pine boxes and set on tables for the viewing.	History of the Church, 6:627
Mourners	Emma, Mary, their children, and other family members arrived and were seated at the head of the coffins with Mother Smith. At 8 the doors were opened to the public and the mourning multitude began to enter. Dan Jones, who had just arrived from Quincy, wrote, "Sad as the tombs, cheerless groups mourning wend their way by closed stores and windows of former busy life towards the place where lay the bloody cor[p]ses of the martyrs!"	Dan Jones to Thomas Bullock, January 20, 1855, in "The Martyrdom," 108
Hyrum's face	In late June, when the Mississippi river fog lifted, temperatures rose rapidly. In the Mansion House decomposing flesh produced putrid gases and bloating tissue. By noon Hyrum's face was nearly unrecognizable, "the neck and face forming one bloated mass," Richmond observed. Though the gunshot wounds had been filled with cotton, blood and other fluids oozed out, trickling down to the floor and puddling across the room.
Mary, Emma, Lucy	"Kneeling in a pool of the comingling dripping gore of the Martyrs on the floor," Jones wrote, Mary, Emma, and Lucy turned to one another alternately crying, "‘My husband, my husband too.' ‘My father in blood.' ‘And my father is dead too," and ‘My son, my sons.'"
The smell	"Tar, vinegar and sugar were kept burning on the stove lest" the stench overwhelm the visitors, who, "tracking their feet in the prophet's blood" passed through the apartments "from morning till night … and in the house for the live-long day the lament of sorrow was heard."	¶ The Prophet's Death
Farewell	At 5 p.m. the doors finally closed and the families took their final farewells. Mary lifted Joseph up "to look upon the faces of my father and the Prophet, for the last time." Peering through the glass over, he saw faces once so familiar, now bloated and ashen, their jaws tied shut, cotton stuffed into the bullet hole at the base of his father's nose.	Presidents (Nibley), 229
Joseph's reaction unknown	His mother lifting him up to see his father's corpse was one of the few memories Joseph retained of his father. Most of what he knew about him was second hand. He rarely spoke of his father, or of his feelings about his death. However, there are indications that the martyrdom reached deep into his psyche.
Fear of prison	When he was twenty-one, he returned to Nauvoo for the first time, and recalled hiding in the outhouse when strangers came to town, fearing he too would be "taken to prison."	JFS to Levira Smith, June 28, 1860, Joseph was not alone in his fears. His cousin, Rachel Fielding, remembered preparing to fend off potential attackers with farm implements, boiling water, and cayenne pepper (Rachel Fielding Burton autobiography >.)
Urge to kill	Leaving Nauvoo, his companions wanted to visit Carthage, but Joseph refused. As he waited their return, he came close to killing a man he suspected of being sympathetic to those who assassinated his father. As he later told the Twelve, while his companions were gone, he
Urge to kill	met a man who said he had just arrived five minutes too late to see the Smiths killed. Instantly a dark cloud seemed to overshadow Bro. Smith and he asked how this man looked upon the deed. Bro. Smith was oppressed by a most horrible feeling as he waited for a reply. After a brief pause the man answered, "Just as I have always looked upon it—that it was a d----d cold-blooded murder." The cloud immediately lifted from Bro. Smith and he found that he had his open pocket knife grasped in his hand in his pocket and he believes that had this man given his approval to that murder of the prophets, he would have immediately struck him to the heart.	Abraham H. Cannon diary, December 6, 1889, "While they were gone, he sat on a well curb whittling a stick . . . A man came along and began to talk to him. Like a flash the thought came to him, ‘this is the man who killed my father!' Of course, there was no way of telling whether that was actually the case or not. But the impression remained." Leaders in Zion, 169 In 1914, while JFS was editor, the Improvement Era published these lines: "Apostle Smith, a man of deep affections, had fought away from himself the desire for revenge for the beastly murder of his manly father.""Joseph F. Smith Appreciation,"41.
I felt mighty big about it, I tell you
Mary takes in Samuel's children	Hyrum's oldest child, Lovina, had married Lorin Walker on June 23, four days before the martyrdom. Mary would now have to raise John, Jerusha, Sarah, Joseph, and Martha Ann alone. Then, on July 30, Hyrum's brother Samuel died. Samuel's pregnant wife, Levira, needed help, so Mary took in three of their children as well.	Samuel H. Smith Mary Bailey, 188–90.
	Little wonder that, according to Martha Ann, Mary "seldom smiled," and getting her to laugh was "quite a feat."	Hyrum Smith, 426n6, indirectly quoting Mary [Martha] Ann Smith Harris, "Message to My Posterity," March 2, 1881, opened April 6, 1930.
William berates Mary for permitting John to go with Brigham Joseph's helplessness	Emma, Mother Smith, and the rest of the Smith family remained in Nauvoo, but Mary, her older brother, Joseph, and younger sister, Mercy, decided to follow Brigham Young. When William, the only surviving Smith brother learned that Mary had allowed John to join the vanguard, he was furious, berating her for siding with Young against the rest of the family. Listening upstairs, Joseph "longed for age and maturity in order that he might defend his helpless mother from such unwarranted and bitter assaults." At eight, if not before, he believed he should be his mother's protector.	¶ Susa Young Gates: Mary Fielding Smith
Pride in driving the wagon to Winter Quarters	The family left Nauvoo in September, crossing the Mississippi just hours before the cannonading of Nauvoo commenced. Then Joseph would drive a team three hundred miles to Winter Quarters. "I never got stuck once and I never tipped the wagon over, I never broke a tongue or reach or wreched a wheel," he later crowed. "I got through the journey just as well as the old men who drove the teams and I felt mighty big about it, I tell you."	"Boyhood Recollections," 59.
Conditions at Winter Quarters	At Winter Quarters they lived in a clapboard house with a sod roof. The winters were horrid. An estimated six hundred men, women, and children died in the eighteen months before Mary's family got out. By then, Joseph had witnessed more than a boy's share of suffering and death.	house: Joseph Fielding diary, 111–112. Joseph suffered from scurvy, probably malaria, and accidents. ¶ Joseph Fielding diary Over 350 deaths are documented in Winter Quarters, 63, including causes such as consumption (tuberculosis), scurvy, canker, cholera, scarlet fever, and typhus.
Almost a man	He left a detailed account of the trek west—discussed below. Suffice it to say for now that the young boy felt driving a heavily loaded wagon for a thousand miles attested to his manhood. He performed all the chores of a man but night guard duty (which, much to his embarrassment, his mother would not allow).
Hard times in the Valley	In the valley Mary selected a spot on Mill Creek. Before the snow flew she had only time to build a ten by twelve shelter, primarily for cooking, but where she also taught Joseph to read. They lived in the wagons. During the winter food was in short supply. Bread was rationed, and some even boiled leather for soup. Mary's family dined on parched corn and corn-meal, milk and butter, supplemented with nettle greens, thistle roots, and sego lily bulbs.	¶ Joseph Fielding diary Joseph Fielding located a short distance away in Mill Creek Rachel Fielding Burton Reminiscence,
Mary's family	In the spring of 1849 Mary moved the family a mile west, where they began construction of an adobe house, fourteen by twenty-two, for eight persons: Mary; her step-children John, Jerusha, and Sarah; children Joseph and Martha Ann; and two elderly persons, George Mills and Hannah Grinnells, who had been with the family for many years.
Crickets	Crickets destroyed much of the first two years' crops, but the harvest of 1851 was successful, and prospects for the Smith family finally began to improve.	JFS to James E. Talmage, October 28, 1909. At the October 1851 conference President Young exulted, "Tithing is coming in so fast their will not be room to receive it. … Our graineries & store House are full of wheat & good things." Wilford Woodruff's Journal, 4:72.
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