Perhaps you have heard or read that I gave a talk called “Beyond Petticoats and Poultices: Finding a Women’s History of the Mormon-Missouri War of 1838” at the Beyond Biography: Sources in Context for Mormon Women’s History conference at Brigham Young University.  My paper sought to address the history of how women experienced the violence in Missouri, particularly as victims of sexual violence.  As part of that research, I examined the case study of Eliza R. Snow as a possible victim of a gang rape that might have left her unable to have children. I looked at a few of the rapes and attempted rapes in Missouri, recalled by various witnesses, legal testimonials, and personal accounts, with a discussion of why women are not specifically named in most sources. The scarcity and limitation of sources has presented historians with the difficulty of uncovering a history of sexual violence in Missouri, and of identifying actual victims. So I concluded with an examination of a primary source that amazingly came to me only three weeks prior to the conference, via a colleague who received it from a member of the family where the source is held. That source gives a description of Eliza’s rape, and its larger meaning in Snow’s life and possible motivations for her polygamous marriage to Joseph Smith.

The case of Eliza R. Snow has received considerable media attention in the last four days, and has invited many questions from those who have read the brief report in the Salt Lake Tribune and other outlets. A brief newspaper report, while introducing readers to this information, could not possibly address the larger history, context, and methodology I offered in my paper.  So, to that end, this post is meant to respond to those questions in brief, while also opening an important and ongoing conversation about the history of sexual violence in Church history, and the particular case of Eliza R. Snow.

The account comes from a portion of the autobiography of Alice Merrill Horne written in her later years. Horne was a member of the Utah State Legislature, a board member of the General Relief Society, and a famed art critic and patroness. Born in 1868, she was the granddaughter of Apostle George A. Smith and Bathsheba W. Smith, the 4th General Relief Society President, who was one of the original members of the Female Relief Society in Nauvoo in 1842, and close friend to Eliza R. Snow and other high leadership of the Relief Society in Utah Territory. Bathsheba’s granddaughter Alice remembered visiting her grandmother as a young girl, and hearing the elderly women of Mormonism reminisce about the early days of the Restoration. I quote here using Alice Merrill Horne’s own words: “The most important Mormon women of the nineteenth century often gathered at the Smith home abutting the Church Historian’s Office.” Alice would “sit on her grandmother’s lap and listen, catching . . . the whispered word unraveling, spelling, and signs made by those ladies.” It was there, at one of these rendezvous of feminine confidences, young Alice overheard the account of the brutal gang rape of Eliza R. Snow. “There was a saint—a Prophetess, a Poet, an intellectual, seized by brutal mobbers—used by those eight demons and left not dead, but worse. The horror, the anguish, despair, hopelessness of the innocent victim was dwelt upon. [W]hat [sic] future was there for such a one? All the aspirations of a saintly virgin—that maiden of purity—had met martyrdom!” In this case, the rape left its victim not only emotionally scarred, but also permanently affected. Eliza R. Snow would never be able to have children.

Horne links Eliza’s inability to bear children in part to the decision to marry Joseph Smith polygamously in Nauvoo, Illinois. To her, the connection was clear: “The prophet heard and had compassion. This Saint, whose lofty ideals, whose person had been crucified, was yet to become the corner of female work. To her, no child could be born and yet she would be a Mother in Israel. One to whom all eyes should turn, to whom all ears would listen to hear her sing (in tongues) the praises of Zion. She was promised honor above all women, save only Emma, but her marriage to the prophet would be only for heaven.”

So, with that brief introduction to the source upon which I am basing my argument for Eliza R. Snow’s rape, I want to address the four most significant questions that I am receiving from online forums, colleagues, and friends.

1. The first question has to do with the authenticity of the source itself. Admittedly, the source is problematic, as a hearsay account written forty or fifty years later from the memory of a young girl, listening to elderly women describe something that had happened thirty years before. Without apparent corroboration from Eliza herself or other sources, this source on its own might be worthy of dismissal. Audience attendees, as well as online commenters, have sought clarification on this point. And justifiably so. Here are some of my thoughts, lettered a through f:

a. What I “revealed” last Thursday is not necessarily new information. I first heard of the rumor probably ten years ago from Eliza’s biographer, Jill Mulvay Derr, who discussed it with me when the question of the Emma-Eliza stairs story came up at an MHA conference. Further, Derr had at times discussed Eliza’s possible rape in some semi-public forums, which were then reported in various blogs. What made my presentation unique from Derr’s is that I had access to and presented the official source publicly at this official conference.  Further, Derr has argued that Eliza’s poetry about Missouri exposed a particular rage, as well as carefully-worded and brutal descriptions of the Missouri mob violence, while not going into specifics about herself. Not a smoking gun, but certainly contextually significant. I discuss some of these poems and interpretive frameworks in my paper.

b. Horne’s account is not distant and vague; its language and tone are personal, intimate and familiar.  Horne gives no indication at all that she didn’t get the information from Eliza herself. In fact, later in the document, Horne describes in detail her personal relationship to Eliza R. Snow, as a mentor and friend and Relief Society leader. By virtue of being the granddaughter of one of Snow’s best friends, and in spite of her age difference to the elder leader, Alice apparently enjoyed some kind of intimacy with the Presidentess. I consider it unlikely that Horne would have reported an account of this severity without some kind of prior communication and verification from Eliza herself.

c. The source comes from Alice Merrill Horne, not some easily discounted anonymous or outside observer. In other words, she was no yahoo. Horne was well-respected, educated, influential, widely published, and connected to the highest circles of church leadership. By virtue of her reputation and her social and religious credentials, it is difficult to dismiss the source outright as the ramblings of an unknown, a fame-seeker, or a gossip.

d. Alice’s motives are not to debase or disrespect Eliza R. Snow, but to describe how she overcame great trial and struggle to become the spiritual, political, and artistic leader that she was. Horne viewed Eliza’s life as a triumph over tragedy and constructed it as such. Given that construction, what possible other motives could she have in describing it as she did? As a private autobiography that went unpublished, she did not receive money or fame for the disclosure. But she apparently intended it, in part, as an instructive lesson for her descendants or the larger membership of the Church, on how an important Mormon leader and the most famous Mormon woman was able to overcome a violent crime and still make a successful life.

e. The importance of “institutional” family memory is worth consideration here. Memory is tricky, especially when disseminated through families, it becomes like a game of telephone, with details and interpretation changing with each telling. And yet, in each family,  life-changing events of the past become part of the self-identification and group construction of that family, and are sometimes remembered quite clearly. I can’t remember when my father’s family first told me about the tragic death of their grandmother in 1925 from complications related to childbirth. And yet, I heard the story so often that I knew it completely changed the trajectory of my grandmother’s life and the lives of her siblings. So much, that the stories of two step-mothers, some child abuse, and the young children shuttered from home to home during the Great Depression were often the subject of dinnertime conversations and family gatherings well until my grandmother’s death. And at some time in my young life, I remember hearing my grandmother’s own account of the day her mother died. She went into her parents’ bedroom, saw her mother lying on the bed (there might have been blood on the sheets or not, that is unclear in my memory) and my great-grandmother softly said, “Bee, I need you to go get your daddy.” My great-grandmother died that day. If I ever write my family history, I will include a tragic moment witnessed and remembered only by an eight-year-old girl in 1925, without corroboration, shared with a granddaughter in the 1980s, and written down here in 2016. Similarly, Horne’s 1930s account of Eliza R. Snow’s 1838 rape invites us to consider the possibilities and limitations of individual and institutional memory and how it is transmitted.  Perhaps Horne remembered details of Eliza’s rape incorrectly:  were there eight assailants, or just one?  Were there more? The various accounts of gang rapes from the Missouri period list many different numbers.  Lack of clarity on details doesn’t mean that the rape didn’t happen at all, since it was significant enough for her to include fifty years after first hearing it.

f.  If readers are still not convinced of the authenticity of this source, I readily invite those concerns in the comments here.  But, as a preview, I offer the (hopefully) future publication of my research, which will include at least one corroborating source on Eliza that has been given to me in the last few days.  I am eager to explore other primary accounts of the Missouri violence as Mormon women experienced it.  Further, I am keen to consider what a rape account might look like, if passed down through family memory.  I think it would look exactly like this one.

2. Eliza and Emma and the infamous stairs story. This story is persistent and tenacious. It was the very first question I received in the Q & A following my presentation, and I have received many more questions about it. It boils down to whether Eliza’s ability to have children could possibly have been “damaged” from Missouri, when she was supposedly pregnant and miscarried in Nauvoo. The stairs story has largely been discounted by many historians, including Richard Bushman, Linda King Newell, Valeen Tippetts Avery, and Derr herself, as apocryphal, as motivated by anti-Emma sentiments in the 1870s, and as a way of sensationalizing the Nauvoo polygamy experience. It is impossible to cover the Emma-Eliza stairs story here, but I offer for your consideration, JI’s Amanda’s overview here, as well as Brian Hales’s examination of the same here. I am sure that comment on this post will address this event, and I invite those discussions as we complicate Eliza’s narrative in light of the account of her rape.

3. Eliza’s supposed infertility or inability to have children. No one knows why Eliza R. Snow couldn’t have children. She was 34 years old when she experienced the Missouri violence, and 38 when she married Joseph Smith, and 41 when she married Brigham Young.  Her age might have precluded being able to conceive as easily had she been in her twenties. But, without the obstetric knowledge that might have diagnosed some kind of trauma to her reproductive organs, or some other condition unrelated to age or rape, it is highly improbable for historians to give her a posthumous diagnosis. But, if the Horne account is accurate, it appears that Eliza herself considered the Missouri rape to be the cause of her infertility. Does that mean the rape was so violent that her internal organs were damaged? Does it mean that she was unable to have intercourse at all, either from emotional or physical trauma? Or did she perhaps acquire a sexually transmitted disease like chlamydia or gonorrhea?  Both of which are known to cause pelvic inflammatory disease that can scar the fallopian tubes, cause inflammation of the uterus, and make it impossible to bear children.  In a pre-antibiotic era, such an infection would have gone unchecked to the point of incurable damage.  It is impossible to know. But this account offers an alternate explanation for Eliza’s infertility that counters the dubious stairs-miscarriage story.

4. The fourth question I have heard is whether I am using the Eliza case to defend or justify polygamy, according to Horne’s description, and my Tribune statement, which has received much criticism for being an apology for polygamy. I did not intend it that way. Let me be quite clear on this point: The origins and practice of Mormon polygamy, as introduced by Joseph Smith in Nauvoo, are complex, multi-faceted, and difficult to pin down with uniformity or consistency. Before I had seen the Horne source, I had often wondered at the connections between the traumas that women experienced in Missouri and the origins of polygamy, in that Mormon male leadership had felt incapable of protecting women from mob assaults. The vulnerability that women felt perhaps fostered a climate whereby celestial marriage offered solace, protection, or some kind of spiritual connectivity that kept the community cemented together in the face of danger. The Horne document presented me with evidence of the possibility that Joseph offered, and Eliza accepted, a polygamous marriage as a way of providing spiritual comfort in the absence of earthly justice. I am interested in exploring this question, but I also invite readers not to project their issues with Joseph Smith onto a topic which I have intended to bring historical attention to very real and violent crimes committed against Mormon women. I am merely trying to understand how Eliza viewed her polygamous marriage to Joseph Smith as a response to her own personal circumstances, and that is a fair historical question to ask.

Finally, I hope that readers will consider the impact of knowing Eliza’s status as a rape victim.  I worried, even agonized over revealing this brutal part of her past, that those who cherish her memory would consider her identity somehow changed by this. I am mindful of those who think I was wrong to reveal this at all, but I stand by what I did. If we seek to conceal this crime against her out of some kind of protective impulse, I believe that we are perpetuating the idea that rape brings shame to its victims.  What are your thoughts on this, readers?  I do think Eliza would want to be remembered for the wholeness of her amazing life, her poetry and hymns, her Relief Society leadership, her role in significant Restoration and pioneering events, and her contributions to Mormon women then and today.  Her story humanizes and feminizes an event that has always been told as a story of male war, male imprisonment, and male victimhood.  She unsilences the silenced.  And yet, her victimhood does not and will not define her, but this new knowledge has the potential to bring hope and healing to other victims of sexual violence among our Church membership and others, for whom Eliza provides an emulative model of strength, hope, faith, and resilience.  Whether as a historian or a Mormon woman, that is my main purpose in sharing Eliza’s story.

Guest Author

Of the many hardships Joseph Smith Jr. and his wife Emma endured, the one that was perhaps the most difficult, especially for Emma, was losing so many of her precious babies. Only 5 of her 11 children lived past the age of 2, and her only biological daughter died at birth. After her husband was killed in 1844 and the majority of the Saints moved West, Emma was left in Nauvoo to raise their surviving children alone. Find out what happened to each of the Smith children and where the surviving ones ended up in their adult years.

Alvin Smith

The first of many tragic deaths, Joseph and Emma’s first baby was born and died on June 15, 1828, in Harmony, Pennsylvania, during the time that the 116 pages given to Martin Harris were lost. According to the family Bible, the baby was named Alvin, likely after Joseph Smith’s older brother, who died shortly before Joseph received the gold plates. However, the name was recorded by someone other than Joseph and Emma, and the headstone merely states “In Memory of An Infant Son of Joseph and Emma Smith.”

Thadeus and Louisa Smith

These twins lived for only three hours, born on April 30, 1831, in Kirtland, Ohio. Though they were given the names Thadeus and Louisa in the family Bible, the handwriting is not Joseph or Emma’s, and Emma Smith was recorded to have said in 1879 that the twins had not been named.

A set of twins born to John and Julia Murdock the same day were adopted by the Smiths shortly after losing their own when Julia Murdock died after giving birth to them.

Joseph Murdock Smith

One of the twins adopted by Emma and Joseph Smith Jr., he was probably named after his adopted father. Little Joseph died when he was 11 months old. His death was likely the result of a combination of the measles and exposure to the cold air when a mob attacked the Prophet Joseph at the John Johnson farm in Hiram, Ohio.

Julia Murdock Smith

Julia and her twin brother Joseph were adopted by Joseph and Emma when they were nine days old, after their mother died giving birth to them and their father could not care for them. Though her brother did not survive his first year of life, Julia lived to be 49. She was 13 when her adopted father, the Prophet Joseph, was killed in Carthage Jail and she was left with her mother, grandmother (Lucy Mack Smith), and siblings in deserted Nauvoo.

She married Elisha Dixon somewhere between the age of 17 and 18, against the wishes of her family. She soon after moved with him to Texas, where he died a few years later in a steamer ship accident. After his death, she returned to live with her mother, Emma, in Nauvoo. It was there she met and married John J. Middleton in 1856. During her marriage to Middleton, she joined the Catholic Church, of which her new husband was a devout member. They eventually moved to St. Louis, Missouri. After 20 years, in what came to be a very difficult marriage, Julia officially separated from Middleton and moved back to Nauvoo to live with and take care of her ailing mother.

After her mother’s death in 1879, Julia went to live with her brother, Alexander, for a time and later with some of her friends, the Moffitt family. While living with the Moffitts, she died of breast cancer in September 1880, leaving no posterity.

Joseph Smith III

The second namesake of his father, Joseph Smith III was born on November 6, 1832, in Kirtland. He was baptized at age 11, about 7 months before his father was killed. He married Emmeline Griswold on October 22, and had five children with her during their 13 years of marriage.

A strong opponent of polygamy, he started the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (now the Community of Christ) on April 6, 1860, in Illinois and became its first Prophet-President. The followers of the RLDS church believe it to be a continuation of the one Joseph III’s father had established decades before.

After his first wife died, Joseph III married Bertha Madison in 1869. She died in October 1896, leaving him nine more children. He met and married Ada Rachel Clark two years later in January 1898 in Ontario, Canada. They eventually moved back to Missouri and had three children together.

Joseph III died at age 82 on December 10, 1914, and has a large posterity.

Frederick Granger Williams Smith

Named after Joseph’s close friend and first counselor in the First Presidency, Frederick G. Williams, the second surviving son of the Joseph Smith Jr. family was born in Ohio on June 20, 1836. He was only 8 years old when his father was killed and his family forced to flee mob violence yet again. He eventually married Anna Marie Jones in 1857 and had one child with her. He fell ill in his early 20s and died in April 1862. His daughter, Alice Fredericka, never married, leaving no living descendants from this Smith son.

Alexander Hale Smith

Alexander Hale was born in Far West, Missouri on June 2, 1838, at the height of the early Saints’ persecution. Believed to have been named after the Church’s legal counselor and Joseph’s friend, Alexander Doniphan, Alexander Smith was only 6 years old when Joseph and Hyrum were killed and grew up with little memory of his father.

He married Elizabeth Agnes Kendall in June 1861 and was baptized into the RLDS church by his older brother, Joseph Smith III, the following year. He served several missions for that church, and occasionally even traveled to Utah. He held many callings within the RLDS church throughout his life, and was eventually appointed as a counselor to the RLDS church president and later as the RLDS patriarch before he died in Nauvoo in 1909.

He had nine children with Elizabeth and has a large posterity today.

Don Carlos Smith

This sweet Smith child, named after Joseph’s youngest brother, lived to be only a little over a year old. He was born on June 13, 1840, and died on August 15, 1841, from an illness that was sweeping through Nauvoo.

Emma Snith Holding One of Her Children

Image of Emma Smith with one of her children. Most likely David Hyrum Smith.

Unnamed Son

The last of Emma’s children to die in infancy, this little boy was stillborn on February 6, 1842, in Nauvoo, just two years before his father would be killed.

David Hyrum Smith

Born in November 1844, nearly 5 months after Joseph and Hyrum’s martyrdom, David never knew his father, or the uncle for whom he was partly named after. He was 3 when Emma remarried and 16 when his brother began the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He was ordained an elder in the RLDS church in 1863.

He married Clara Charlotte Hartshorn in May 1870 and had one child, a son, with her. He was called to serve as the second counselor to his brother Joseph Smith III in the RLDS church presidency, but his declining mental health led his family to place him in the Illinois State Hospital for the Insane in 1877. He remained a patient there until he died in August 1904 at age 59.

Lead image and all portraits from Wikimedia Commons. Alvin Smith gravestone image from findagrave.com.

Guest Author

The descendants of Joseph Smith are gradually returning to their roots. Joseph Smith was the first prophet of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, whose members are sometimes nicknamed Mormons.

Joseph’s descendants spent many generations away from the Church. The children of some of his brothers’ families were members—largely those of brother Hyrum—but most had gone in other directions.

The division of the family began early on. Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum were murdered by mobs in 1844. This led to a division in the Church over who should become the next prophet. In the end, a miracle led to the people recognizing Brigham Young as the new prophet, but not everyone was happy with that. Several splinter groups formed. The mainstream group of Mormons fled Illinois and headed for what later became Utah, following Brigham Young. Hyrum’s widow took his children and joined the Saints in the West; this group is the one whose descendants are largely in the Church today.

Joseph Smith’s Descendants Leave Mormonism

Joseph’s widow, Emma, had some disagreements with Brigham Young, possibly fueled by the grieving process and the complex need to separate family and church possessions. When the Saints moved on to Utah, Emma chose to remain behind. Joseph’s mother, who was widowed, also stayed, too old and frail to make the difficult journey, and Emma helped to care for her.

One group of dissidents felt that the Church leadership should be handed down from father to son. They wanted to hold the leadership for Joseph Smith’s oldest surviving son until he was old enough to take over. He was initially not interested, but eventually agreed to accept the position. This church became the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and still operates today, although under a new name and a growing process of distancing itself from its roots.

Joseph’s brother William had been excommunicated and his brother Samuel died just over a month after Joseph and Hyrum died. Samuel had suffered injuries trying to warn his brothers of danger. His widow went west, but continued on to California. Joseph’s other brothers were all dead and the sisters stayed in Illinois.

The family was now scattered around the country and in days of difficult communication, those who did not go to Utah largely did not stay members of the Church or did not raise their families to stay. After a few generations, many had forgotten their roots.

Joseph Smith’s Descendants Becoming Mormon

Then things began to change. Kenny Duke is a descendant of Joseph Smith’s sister Catherine. He learned about his heritage from an uncle who was a leader in the Reorganized Church. Kim Smith learned about Joseph Smith, her direct ancestor, from her grandmother, who had pictures of Joseph and Emma in her home. Kim felt drawn to them and learned that there was a great deal of animosity in the family coming from this lineage. She was taught to hate Brigham Young and was even taught that Brigham had planned Joseph’s murder, but she began to research the subject for herself. The result of this research was that she found the truth, became converted, and became a Mormon.

Michael Kennedy was given a school assignment to write about an ancestor. His father showed him a box of things related to Joseph Smith. It was the first Michael had heard of his third-great grandfather. As he was looking through the box, two men knocked on his door. He answered and learned they were from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They asked to speak to his father. While they waited for his father, the missionaries noticed the items spread out and asked about them. He explained they were related to his ancestor, Joseph Smith, who had founded the Mormon Church. He did not know the church the missionaries belonged to was sometimes inadvertently called the Mormon Church, but the missionaries became quite excited and obtained permission to return with discussions that would help Michael learn about the church his ancestor had led.

The miracle of two missionaries showing up just as he was examining these items was even greater because the missionaries were there only as part of a test designed to decide which areas to open to missionary work. The test determined that his area was not productive enough, since only two families agreed to learn about the church, his and one other. A girl in the other home, Darcy Dodge, was so enthusiastic she wanted to be baptized the day she met the missionaries, although they insisted she finish the lessons.

However, Michael had not had a good relationship with organized religion and quickly lost interest. The missionaries learned that Darcy knew him and asked her to help interest Michael. She got his mother to invite him to stay in the discussions, which he did. However, he told the missionaries he would decide when he was eighteen. He got baptized and then left for college, thinking he was done with the Mormons.

At the very moment his father called to tell his aunt, who had been the person behind collecting the artifacts, about the baptism, a man sent by the prophet to find all of Joseph Smith’s descendants was sitting in her house. He reported the baptism to the prophet, who was then Harold B. Lee. President Lee asked to meet with Michael. In time, he became the first descendant of Joseph Smith to receive the Melchizedek priesthood, fulfilling a prophecy made that said that priesthood would be restored before the family would be gathered together again.

Read Michael Kennedy’s telling of his conversion.

Gradually, other descendants of Joseph began to find their way back to their family’s religion. These descendants also made peace with Brigham Young’s descendants. The Smith descendants now hold regular reunions. Initially, there was an agreement to avoid the topic of religion at these reunions, since most were not Mormons, but today, so many have been baptized that a church service is part of the reunion.

The annual reunions and the gradual return of descendants to the Church are God’s answer to a prayer uttered by Joseph Smith long ago:

O God, let the residue of my father’s house…ever come up in remembrance before thee and stand virtuous and pure in thy presence, that thou mayest save them from the hand of the oppressor, and establish their feet upon the rock of ages, that they may have place in thy house and be saved in thy kingdom, even where God, and Christ is, and let all these things be as I have said, for Christ’s sake. Amen (Joseph Smith, Jr., Documentary History of the Church 1:466–467).

Sources:

The Michael Kennedy Conversion Story

Scot and Maurine Proctor, Why Prophets Have Prayed for Joseph Smith’s Posterity, August 9, 2013

Terrie Lynn Bittner

The late Terrie Lynn Bittner—beloved wife, mother, grandmother, and friend—was the author of two homeschooling books and numerous articles, including several that appeared in Latter-day Saint magazines. She became a member of the Church at the age of 17 and began sharing her faith online in 1992.

Emma Smith was born in 1804 in Pennsylvania and had unusual opportunities for a girl in her time. She was well-educated and taught school. She even owned cows and other items, possibly given as payment from students. Her family had a fair amount of money. Imagine, then, her family’s concern when she developed a fondness for Joseph Smith, who was from a poor farm family and had almost no formal education—just that which his father had given him at home with a small amount of traditional schooling. He had no steady occupation and was involved intensely with religion. He was not, however, a member of her family’s faith and in fact, had received a vision at age fourteen telling him not to join any existing church because none were completely right.

Emma saw in him what her family missed. She, like others who knew him well, saw an innate intelligence, a willingness to work very hard, and great integrity. Those who hired him found him to be the best employee they’d ever hired. He attended school as they courted, trying to live up to her. Despite her parents’ disapproval, she eventually eloped. They lived with his family and then with hers for a time.

She worked hard to support his mission. When the time came for Joseph Smith to retrieve the golden plates hidden in ancient times by an angel—a book today called the Book of Mormon—she went with him, praying at the wagon while he went to open the box. She joined in his efforts to protect them from thieves and acted on occasion as his scribe. He was not sufficiently educated to write the translation of the plates, so while he translated through the Holy Ghost, she wrote his words. Other scribes would do the majority of the translation, but she filled in as needed.

She had sufficient faith to avoid looking at the plates even when they were in her bedroom or kitchen, although she frequently felt them and moved them out of her way as she worked. Later witnesses would be permitted to view the plates, but God asked Emma to accept them on faith, a testimony that God recognized her as a woman of great faith.

Emma Smith would make tremendous sacrifices for the gospel of Jesus Christ, for her husband, and for the church. She was not perfect and made choices that seem hard for us to understand today. There can be no question, though, that she made sacrifices far beyond what most Mormons would be asked to make, and that she experienced more than her fair share of suffering.

She would lose many of her children. Her first three died so quickly they were not even named. After losing twins, she adopted a set of twins, but one died after being exposed to the cold when a mob invaded their home while the children were ill. One child died at the age of fourteen months and another died less than a year later.

She would leave her parents in 1830, never to see them again as she and her family were forced to move from place to place to avoid persecution and violence. Her husband was arrested, essentially for being Mormon, leaving her alone to care for her children. She wrote to him that only God knew how hard it was for her to flee her home with her children, abandoning all her possessions and leaving her husband to endure whatever was to come.

Time and again, she was uprooted, often without warning and frequently without time to pack her belongings. She endured the jeering and insults of mobs. The comfortable and peaceful life she had led as a girl had done little to prepare her for this new life, but she faced it with faith. She comforted other women, instructed them, and helped them to build their own faith. She frequently found herself living in the homes of others and just as frequently took complete strangers into her own home. When a group of black Mormons arrived after a very difficult and painful journey fraught with danger and racial prejudice, their feet bleeding because they no longer had shoes, she sat them at her own dinner table and took them all into her home as guests until they could find work. When one was unable to find employment, she hired Jane Manning herself.

She led the Relief Society, an auxiliary for the women of the church that was organized to educate the women and to allow them to serve others. She compiled the first hymnbook.

She handled nearly every trial with grace. She was often anxious and sad, but she coped. Eventually, however, she encountered a trial that became more than she thought she could handle. It is possible that polygamy would have come more easily if it had not been added to an already extraordinary number of other trials and if she had not been the first wife to face it in the Church. She had no example to follow and no real support group, as later women would have.

Initially, when Joseph admitted to her that he had received a revelation about polygamy and was told he absolutely must carry it out, she accepted it. Later, when Brigham Young was the prophet, the practice would be refined so that the first wife had to approve each subsequent wife, but as we also see in the Bible, refinements of new practices often come over time as prophets continue to pray for guidance. Emma did, from time to time, offer approval of specific marriages. At other times, she found she could not handle the choices she had made, much as Sarah in the Old Testament first encouraged her husband to marry her handmaiden and then discovered it was more than she was prepared to handle.

According to historian Richard Bushman, Joseph saw polygamy simply as a way to join families together for eternity. Mormons believe family life continues after death. When eternal marriage was first introduced, many families carried out “sealings” with friends and those they wanted to be eternally associated with, not entirely understanding what the revelation meant. Many wished to be associated with the prophet for the eternal blessings they felt this would bring. He did not court the women or put his proposals in romantic terms. In fact, he generally took another man with him or even asked a father or brother to approach the woman. He instructed them to have the women pray about the request.

Modern DNA has ruled out all children Fran Brodie had proposed were his through other marriages. Since he did father many children with Emma, parenthood was possible, but there is, at this time, no biological proof of traditional marriage relationships and the only accounts came from others, not the women or Joseph. For him, it appears the marriages were fairly impersonal and meant to fulfill the requirement given him by an angel and to join certain families together in the eternities.

Whatever the situation, Emma eventually found herself unable to cope with polygamy. Bushman reports that Emma and Joseph had many intense discussions about his polygamy and their relationship was periodically strained.

All the same, she continued to have a testimony of his role as a prophet and she carried out her duties faithfully. She became the first woman to receive the temple endowment involving the making of sacred covenants with the Savior. She then became a temple worker, helping others with their first temple experiences. During this time, their relationship improved and Joseph may have agreed to stop taking on additional wives.

Although their marriage was often troubled following the introduction of polygamy, Emma continued to care for Joseph. When he was murdered, she bent over him and expressed her sorrow that they had taken him from her. She had a lock of his hair cut and given to her. She wore it in a locket the rest of her life, even after she remarried.

She was left alone with her five children, including her adopted daughter and four sons. Her financial state was precarious because there had not been a clear line between the family money and the church money, with Joseph often going into debt to help support the church. She made an understandable effort to keep some of the property and this put her at odds with Brigham Young, since it was unclear which of those properties belonged to the church and which to her. Some church members inappropriately rejected her because of her rejection of polygamy and her outspokenness on the subject. The Church was already in a period of great stress and grief as people struggled to decide who the next prophet would be and they faced the realization that they were again in great danger with an uncertain future. This most likely caused people to behave differently than they might have in gentler circumstances. With discomfort on both sides, she soon found herself outside the mainstream of the church.

When the Mormons left for Utah, she elected to remain behind. She moved away from Nauvoo for a while to avoid danger, but eventually returned to her former home. She was able to utilize the properties she owned to support her family, but with difficulty, particularly since she was left to cover Joseph’s many debts. She later married Major Lewis Bidamon, who had supported the Mormons during the trials, but was not a member. He had one illegitimate child and after marrying Emma had another, which she raised, making her a most extraordinary woman. They had a reasonably good relationship despite these challenges.

When her son became an adult and headed up the Reorganized Church, as it was then known, she joined. However, she was never really an active member of that church, nor did she become active in any other church. She admitted that she had been reluctant to give her children any formal religious life—just personal reading of the Bible and Book of Mormon—because she was afraid of a return to the many trials she had faced. She helped to care for Joseph’s mother and her mother-in-law noted that few women had endured as many trials as she had with so much grace.

Emma’s life was a complex one. Her refined childhood and girlhood was not designed to give her the skills she needed in adulthood, and yet she managed nearly everything thrown at her. She held on to her faith in God, in the gospel, and in Joseph Smith as a prophet throughout it all. She was not perfect, but what is amazing is that she was as perfect as she was given the powerful trials and persecutions she experienced. Her heartaches were very real and would have been a challenge to any woman, particularly without the lens of understanding time brings. They were enough to wear out any woman and if she, in the end, was tired of fighting her way through life, that can be understood.

Modern Mormons are beginning to come to terms with Emma as the elect lady God declared her to be in a revelation, but a very real and human one at the same time who fought for God as long as she had to before choosing the calmer life she longed for. She stood by her husband even when they faced strains in their marriage. After his death she resisted encouragement to deny his role as a prophet. Since she left no journal, we don’t really know what the entire truth about Emma Smith is…but we do know she was remarkable.

Sources:

Turley, Richard E., and Brittany A. Chapman. “A Comfort unto My Servant, Joseph.” Women of faith in the latter days. Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret Book Company, 2011. 343-362. Print.

Bushman, Richard L., and Jed Woodworth. Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. Print.

Terrie Lynn Bittner

The late Terrie Lynn Bittner—beloved wife, mother, grandmother, and friend—was the author of two homeschooling books and numerous articles, including several that appeared in Latter-day Saint magazines. She became a member of the Church at the age of 17 and began sharing her faith online in 1992.