Emma Smith
Emma Hale Smith Bidamon was a leader in the early Latter Day Saint movement and a prominent member of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints as well as the first wife of Joseph Smith, the movement's founder. In 1842, when the Ladies' Relief Society of Nauvoo was formed as a women's service organization, she was elected by its members as the organization's first president.
After the killing of Joseph Smith, Emma remained in Nauvoo rather than following Brigham Young and the Mormon pioneers to the Utah Territory. Emma was supportive of Smith's teachings throughout her life with the exception of plural marriage and remained loyal to her son, Joseph Smith III, in his leadership of the RLDS Church.
Early life and first marriage, 1804–1829
Early life
Emma Hale was born on July 10, 1804, in Harmony Township, Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, in her family's log cabin. She was the seventh child and third daughter of Isaac Hale and Elizabeth Lewis Hale. She was descended of primarily English ancestors, including seven passengers on the Mayflower. Isaac and Elizabeth arrived in Susquehanna County in 1791 where they bought land and became the first permanent settlers.Isaac and Elizabeth were members of the first Methodist Episcopal congregation in Harmony, where Emma's uncle preached. Beginning at age seven or eight, Emma was involved in the church, reading the Bible and singing hymns. Emma's father stepped away from the church for a time and became a deist, but later returned to the church after Emma's requests.
The Hale family was relatively wealthy. Isaac hunted and Elizabeth hosted lodgers and boarders in their home. The Hale family was known for being honest, hard-working, and generous to their neighbors.
Throughout her childhood, Emma was interested in religion, canoeing, and riding horses. Emma learned how to read and write and was considered to be intelligent. She attended a girls school for a year and taught school in Harmony when she returned.
Courtship and marriage to Joseph
Emma first met her future husband, Joseph Smith Jr., in 1825. Joseph lived near Palmyra, New York, but boarded with the Hales in Harmony while he was employed in a company of men hired by Josiah Stowell and one of Emma's relatives to dig for money on the Hale family property. Rumors about Joseph having a unique ability to find hidden treasure caused Stowell to offer him a high wage. Although the company was unsuccessful in finding the suspected mine and Emma's father eventually turned against the project, Joseph and Emma secretly met without her family's approval several times at a friend's house during the dig and after while Joseph was working as farmhand nearby. When Emma and Joseph spoke to the Hales to receive a blessing on their marriage, Isaac and Elizabeth Hale refused; possibly because Isaac wanted Emma to marry a neighbor and he considered Joseph to be a "stranger" and possibly because of Joseph's failed money-digging operation on the Hales' land. On January 17, 1827, Joseph and Emma left the Stowell house and traveled to the house of Zachariah Tarbill in South Bainbridge, New York, where they were married the following day.On September 22, 1827, Joseph and Emma took a horse and carriage belonging to Joseph Knight, Sr., and went to a hill, now known as Hill Cumorah, where Joseph said he received a set of golden plates. The announcement of Joseph having the plates created a great deal of excitement in the area. In December 1827, with financial support from Martin Harris, the couple accepted an invitation from Emma's parents to move to Harmony.
The Hales helped Emma and Joseph obtain a house and a small farm. Once they settled in, Joseph began work on the Book of Mormon, with Emma acting as a scribe. Emma never witnessed the golden plates, as Joseph only handled the object while concealed. Emma would allege only that she felt an object through a cloth, traced pages through the cloth with her fingers, heard a metallic sound as she moved it, and felt a heavy weight. She later wrote in an interview with her son, Joseph Smith III: "In writing for your father I frequently wrote day after day, often sitting at the table close by him, he sitting with his face buried in his hat, with the stone in it, and dictating hour after hour with nothing between us." In Harmony on June 15, 1828, Emma gave birth to her first childa son named Alvinwho lived only a few hours. He was buried east of their house. For the next two weeks, Emma remained gravely ill.
Due to increased hostility towards Joseph as he worked on the Book of Mormon, Emma and Joseph went to live with David Whitmer in Fayette, New York, to finish the Book of Mormon. While there, both Emma and a schoolteacher named Oliver Cowdery worked as Joseph's scribes. Joseph received a copyright for the Book of Mormon in June 1829 and the book was published in March 1830.
"Elect lady" and the early church, 1830–1839
On April 6, 1830, Joseph and five other men established the Church of Christ. Emma was baptized by Oliver Cowdery on June 28, 1830, in Colesville, New York, surrounded by a group of mocking people. Later that evening before the confirmation service, Joseph was arrested for being a disorderly person and causing an uproar by preaching the Book of Mormon. A few days later, Joseph was acquitted of all charges. Emma was confirmed later by Joseph and Newel Knight.In July 1830, Joseph received a revelation, now known as Doctrine and Covenants Section 25, that highlighted Emma Smith as "an elect lady". The revelation says that Emma would "be ordained under hand to expound scriptures, and to exhort the church." The revelation instructed Emma to "murmur not" and described Emma's duties to Joseph. Emma was also directed to be Joseph's scribe and to create a hymnbook for the new church.
Joseph and Emma returned to Harmony for a time, but relations with Emma's parents remained strained. Emma's father was displeased that Joseph and Emma were living off charity and Joseph was late to return money he borrowed to purchase a farm. Many people in Harmony also openly opposed Joseph. Emma and Joseph returned to live at David Whitmer's farm in August 1830. This marked the last time that Emma saw her parents. Despite the rift that her marriage to Joseph created in the family, Emma did reunite with her family. She communicated with her mother through letters. Some members of her family moved to Nauvoo although they did not accept Emma's invitation to join Mormonism.
Emma and Joseph went back to staying in the homes of members of the growing church. The couple lived first with the Whitmers in Fayette, then with Newel K. Whitney and his family in Kirtland, Ohio, and then in a cabin on a farm owned by Isaac Morley. It was here on April 30, 1831, that Emma gave birth to premature twins, Thaddeus and Louisa; both babies died hours later. That same day, Julia Clapp Murdock died giving birth to twins, Joseph and Julia. When the twins were nine days old, their father, John, gave the infants to the Smiths to raise as their own. On September 2, 1831, the Smiths moved into John Johnson's home in Hiram, Ohio. The infant Joseph died of exposure or pneumonia in late March 1832, after a door was left open during a mob attack on Smith.
On November 6, 1832, Emma gave birth to Joseph Smith III in the upper room of Whitney's store in Kirtland. Young Joseph was the first of her natural children to live to adulthood. A second son, Frederick Granger Williams Smith, followed on June 29, 1836. As the Kirtland Temple was being constructed, Emma spearheaded an effort to house and clothe the construction workers.
While in Kirtland, Emma's feelings about temperance and the use of tobacco reportedly influenced her husband's decision to pray about dietary questions. These prayers resulted in the "Word of Wisdom". Also in Kirtland, Emma's first selection of hymns was published as a hymnal for the church's use. During the Panic of 1837, the Kirtland Safety Society, the banking venture that Joseph and other church leaders had set up to provide financing for the growing membership, collapsed, as did many financial institutions in the United States at that time. Emma herself held stock in the Society. The bank's demise led to serious problems for the church and the Smith family. On January 12, 1838, he was forced to leave the state or face charges of fraud and illegal banking.
Emma and her family followed and made a new home on the frontier in the Latter Day Saint settlement of Far West, Missouri, where Emma gave birth on June 2, 1838, to Alexander Hale Smith. Events of the 1838 Mormon War soon escalated, resulting in Joseph's surrender and imprisonment by Missouri officials. Emma and her family were forced to leave the state, along with most other church members. She crossed the Mississippi River, which had frozen over in February 1839. Of these times, she later wrote:
Early years in Nauvoo, 1839–1844
Emma and her family lived with friendly non-Mormons John and Sarah Cleveland in Quincy, Illinois, until Joseph escaped custody in Missouri. The family moved to a new Latter Day Saint settlement in Illinois which Joseph named "Nauvoo". On May 10, 1839, they moved into a two-story log house in Nauvoo that they called the "Homestead". On June 13, 1840, Emma gave birth to a son, Don Carlos, named after his uncle Don Carlos Smith, Joseph's brother. Both Don Carlos Smiths would die the next year. The Smiths lived in the homestead until 1843, when a much larger house, known as the "Mansion House" was built across the street. A wing was added to this house, which Emma operated as a hotel. She often took in young girls in need of work, giving them jobs as maids.On March 17, 1842, the Ladies' Relief Society of Nauvoo was formally organized as the women's auxiliary to the church. Emma became its founding president, with Sarah M. Cleveland and Elizabeth Ann Whitney as her counselors. She had persuaded John Taylor and Joseph Smith to call the organization the "Relief Society" instead of the "Benevolent Society". The Latter-Day Saint Biographical Encyclopedia records that Emma Smith "filled with marked distinction as long as the society continued to hold meetings in that city ". She saw upholding morality as the primary purpose of the Relief Society. As "protecting the morals of the community" became her mission, Smith supported the public confession of sins; on this subject, Smith called the women of Nauvoo to repentance with "all the frankness of a Methodist exhorter." She served as president of the Relief Society until 1844. According to the minutes of the founding meeting, the organization was formed to "provoke the brethren to good works in looking to the wants of the poor, after objects of charity to assist by correcting the virtues of the female community". Shortly before this, Joseph had initiated the Anointed Quoruma prayer circle of important church members that included Emma. As she had in Kirtland, Emma Smith led "the work of boarding and clothing the men engaged in building ". She also traveled with a committee to Quincy, Illinois, to present Illinois governor Thomas Carlin "a memorial... in behalf of her people" after the Latter Day Saints had experienced persecution in the state.
Rumors concerning polygamy and other practices surfaced by 1842. Emma publicly condemned polygamy and denied any involvement by her husband. Emma authorized and was the main signatory of a petition in summer 1842 with a thousand female signatures, denying Joseph Smith was connected with polygamy. As president of the Ladies' Relief Society, she authorized the publishing of a certificate in October 1842 denouncing polygamy and denying her husband as its creator or participant.
In June 1844, the press of the Nauvoo Expositor, a newspaper published by disaffected former church members, was destroyed by the town marshal on orders from the town council. This set into motion the events that ultimately led to Joseph's arrest and incarceration in the jail in Carthage, Illinois. A mob of about 200 armed men stormed the jail in the late afternoon of June 27, 1844, and both Joseph and his brother Hyrum were killed.