By Richard Neitzel Holzapfel

Joseph F. Smith was born during one of the most difficult periods of Latter-day Saint history on 13 November 1838 at Far West, Missouri. Named after his uncle (Joseph Smith the Prophet) and after his mother (Mary Fielding Smith), Joseph Fielding Smith was known as Joseph F. Smith.

Far West, Missouri (Late Fall 1838)
Far West, a Mormon community located in northwestern Missouri amidst the rolling country side, was the site of turmoil and distress. Just two weeks before Joseph F.’s birth, Missouri Governor Lilburn W. Boggs issued an order that all Mormons should be driven from the state.

On 31 October, George Hinkle, commander of the Caldwell County Militia and a member of the Church, negotiated an agreement with state militia officers under which the leaders of the Church at Far West were to be surrendered and tried. Per this agreement, members of the Church were required to forfeit their property to pay for damages and costs involved in the so-called Mormon War, give up all their arms, and leave the state.

On 1 November 1838, Joseph F.’s father, Hyrum Smith, was arrested and summarily tried by a military court for treason. He was ordered to be shot the following day at the public square at Far West.

Through the intervention of Alexander W. Donaphin, another Missouri militia officer, Hyrum Smith and other Church leaders, including the Prophet Joseph Smith, were saved from the firing squad. A day later, Hyrum, along with his brother Joseph, Sidney Rigdon, Parley P. Pratt, Lyman Wight, Amasa Lyman, and George W. Robinson, all of whom had been arrested earlier, were taken to the public square of Far West, Missouri. There they were allowed a brief visit with their families before being taken under shackle to Independence, Missouri, to await a civil hearing.

When Hyrum left, there was no assurance that Mary Fielding Smith would see her husband again; and now, within days of the delivery of her first child, she was left to fend for herself.

Physically and emotionally exhausted, Mary fell gravely ill and was utterly defenseless during this period relying on family members and friends for help. At this critical period, a local Methodist minister entered the Smith family home with a group of men and ransacked it. Joseph F. recalled:

I, being an infant, and lying on the bed, another bed being on the floor, was entirely overlooked by the family . . . during the fright and excitement. So when the mob entered the room where I was, the bed on the floor was thrown onto the other completely smothering me up, and there I was permitted to remain until after the excitement subsided. When thought of, and discovered, my existence was supposed to have come to an end; but subsequent events have proven their suppositions erroneous, however well-founded!(1)

Childhood in Illinois (1839-44)
The Smith family made its way to Illinois and found shelter and hospitality in Quincy, Adams County. Following nearly six months of incarceration in Liberty Jail, the prisoners were allowed to escape the dark and dirty prison. Hyrum finally joined his family in Illinois on 22 April 1839 and, within a short time, moved them up river to Commerce, Illinois, the new Mormon gathering place, later known as Nauvoo.

Joseph F.’s relative happy childhood ended before he was six years old when his father and uncle were murdered on 27 June 1844. The date, as Leonard J. Arrington noted, “was imprinted indelibly on the memory of the little Joseph.”(2) Years later, Joseph F. still recalled his mother’s screams when she heard the sad news and then the weeping and sobbing that lasted through the terrible night.

While standing inside Joseph and Emma Smith’s home on a visit to Nauvoo in 1906, President Joseph F. remembered, “In this room, the bodies of the martyrs lay in their coffins. After they had been brought from Carthage and dressed for burial, I remember my mother lifting me up to look upon the faces of my father and the Prophet for the last time.”(3)

At forty-three, Mary Fielding Smith was left alone with five children of Hyrum’s from his first marriage; and now she had two of her own–Joseph F. and a baby girl, Martha Ann, born on 14 May 1841.

After a short lull in the storm of conflict in Hancock County, attacks and counterattacks increased to an extent that the Latter-day Saints knew they could not remain in western Illinois. By mid-February of 1846, Church leaders initiated an exodus from Nauvoo, hoping to avoid a catastrophe similar to the one experienced by the Saints in Missouri. Hyrum Smith’s family remained in Nauvoo until the summer of 1846, however. As pressure mounted against the remaining Saints in the city, Mary Fielding loaded her few possessions on a wagon and, with her children, crossed the Mississippi River to Iowa, beginning the long trek to the Missouri River Valley.

Exodus to Winter Quarters (1846)
Though Joseph F. was only eight years of age at this time, he drove one of the ox teams most of the way from Montrose to Winter Quarters, some three hundred miles. The family remained in the Mormon staging ground in the Missouri River Valley until spring of 1848.

According to his own recollections, Joseph F. learned some important lessons about life while in Winter Quarters. On one occasion, he went looking for some lost cattle but was unable to locate them. As he approached the wagon to report his failure, Joseph F. found his mother in the attitude of prayer. While standing there, he heard her plea with the Lord to help them recover their cattle so they could continue their journey in safety. As she arose from praying, Joseph F. recalled: “The first expression I caught upon her precious face was a lovely smile, which discouraged as I was, gave me renewed hope and an assurance that I had not felt before.(4)

This provided him with one of the “first practical and positive demonstrations of the efficacy of prayer,”was a pivotal moment in Joseph F.’s spiritual development, and became a guide throughout his life.(5)

On to the Salt Lake Valley (1848)
The family struggled, after two winters in the Missouri River Valley, to prepare for the journey to the Great Basin, where Church leaders established the new Latter-day Saint gathering place. Joseph F.’s reminiscences tell of hardship and suffering during the trek west. At eight years of age, he was required to help the family, and he worked hard during the journey.

Joseph F. felt that those in charge of their particular group not only were unhelpful but also made the family’s trip more difficult than it should have been.

Years later, in speaking of this situation, President Joseph F. remarked to a group of Boy Scouts that the leader told Mary Fielding: “If you start out in this manner, you will be a burden on the company the whole way, and I will have to carry you along or leave you on the way.”(6) Mary responded that the Smith family would not burden the company and forcibly prophesied that they would beat the company to Salt Lake City.

Despite the tension between Mary Fielding and the company’s captain, the trip was full of adventures. It was during this trip that the family ox was healed–a story that has become a legend. Finally, the company reached the top of East Mountain just east of Salt Lake City from where they glimpsed their first view of the valley. Near here, the Smith family spent its last night on the trail. As they awoke the next morning, they discovered that their cattle and oxen had strayed away from the campsite.

While family members were searching for the lost animals, the pioneer company began its march to the valley. As Joseph F. sat considering all they had been through, almost instantaneously a large, dark, and heavy cloud arose in the northwest heading directly into the path of the slowly moving wagon train. Within minutes, the cloud burst with such anger that the cattle in the train could not face the storm. Out of necessity, the company’s captain ordered the company to halt and settle in for the mountain storm. The unhitched cattle bolted and headed down into Parley’s Canyon. By this time, the Smith family cattle had been found and reclaimed. As they began to move out, Joseph F. asked his mother if they should wait for the company, to which she replied: “Joseph, they have not waited for us, and I see no necessity for us to wait for them.”(7) Such were the stories that helped shape Joseph F.’s mind, attitude, and personality.

In Salt Lake Valley (September 1848)
On 23 September 1848, the Smith family entered the Salt Lake Valley, reaching the old fort around ten o’clock in the evening. At a Pioneers’ Day celebration on 24 July 1917 at Ogden, Utah, Joseph F. noted that it had been sixty-nine years since he drove his team into the Valley. He fondly recalled:

My team consisted of two pairs, or yokes, of oxen. My leaders’ names were Thom and Joe–we raised them from calves, and they were both white. My wheel team were named Broad and Berry. Broad was light brindle with a few white spots on his body, and he had long, broad, pointed horns, from which he got his name. Berry was red and boney and short horned. Thom was trim built, active, young, and more intelligent than many a man. Many times while traveling sandy or rough roads, long, thirsty drives, my oxen, lowing with the heat and fatigue, I would put my arms around Thom’s neck, and cried bitter tears! That was all I could do. Thom was my favorite and best and most willing and obedient servant and friend. He was choice!(8)

Like many other pioneer families, the Smith’s arrival in the Salt Lake Valley did not end all the trials and struggles. Locating in Mill Creek south of Salt Lake City, the family began to scratch out a living from the soil.

It was during this period of time that another story–now engraved into the institutional memory for the Saints–occurred. Joseph F. recalled that Mary Fielding had the boys load up the best of the potatoes to take to the tithing office as her offering to the Lord. Joseph F. recalled that upon their arrival, one of the clerks came out and said, “Widow Smith, it is a shame that you should have to pay tithing . . . [indicating that she was] anything but wise and prudent; and said there were others able to work that were supported from the tithing office.”(9) She, of course, stood firm and indicated that she planned to pay her tithing and expected to receive the blessings promised for the faithful.

Recalling the incident with the tithing clerk, Joseph F. went on to say:

When [he] told my mother that she ought not to pay tithing, I thought he was one of the finest fellows in the world. I believed every word he said. I had to work and dig and toil myself. I had to help plow the ground, plant the potatoes, hoe the potatoes, dig the potatoes and all that sort of thing, and then load up a big wagon-box full of the very best we had, leaving out the poor ones, and bringing the load to the tithing office. I thought in my childish way that it looked a little hard, especially when I saw certain of my playmates and associates of childhood, playing, riding horses and having good times, and who scarcely ever did a lick of work in their lives, and yet were being fed from the public crib. . . . Well, after I got a few years of experience, I was converted. I found that my mother was right and that [he] was wrong.(10)

A Year of Tragedy (1852)
On 21 May 1852, at age thirteen, Joseph F. was baptized a member of the Church in City Creek (near the northeast corner of the Temple Block in Salt Lake City). He later recalled:

I felt in my soul that if I had sinned–and surely I was not without sin–that it had been forgiven me; that I was indeed cleansed from sin; my heart was touched, and I felt that I would not injure the smallest insect beneath my feet. I feet as if I wanted to do good everywhere to everybody and to everything. I felt a newness of life, a newness of desire to do that which was right. There was not one particle of desire for evil left in my soul. I was but a little boy, it is true, when I was baptized; but this was the influence that came upon me, and I know that it was from God, and was and ever has been a living witness to me of my acceptance of the Lord.(11)

It was an important day for him, but another event during the year shook the very foundation of his world. Only four months after his baptism, his beloved mother died, leaving him and his sister orphans, without parents or grandparents. Joseph F. was less than fourteen years of age, and his sister, Martha Ann, was less than twelve.

Joseph F. remembered this period in a candid letter to Samuel L. Adams, written in May 1888:

It was in 1852 that my blessed Mother passed away; leaving me fatherless & motherless, but not altogether friendless at the early age of 13 years. . . . After my mother’s death there followed 18 months–from Sept 21st, 1852 to April, 1854 of perilous times for me. I was almost like a comet or fiery meteor, without attraction or gravitation to keep me balanced or guide me within reasonable bounds.(12)

It was during this period that a now-famous confrontation between Joseph F. and a teacher took place in a little one-room school on the Utah frontier. Joseph F. saw the school master pulling out a leather strap to punish his younger sister, Martha Ann. When the principal told Martha to hold out her hand Joseph spoke up: “Don’t whip her with that.”(13) Without warning, the school master turned on Joseph F. However, the young teenage boy “licked him good and plenty.”(14) Naturally, Joseph was immediately expelled from school.

Apparently, Church leaders and relatives were concerned what might become of a teenager who had experienced the personal tragedies and struggles Joseph F. had gone through in his short life. In a brilliant stroke of inspiration, Brigham Young decided to call him on a full-time mission.

Continuing on with the theme that this was a “perilous time,” Joseph F. added: “My four year’s mission to the Sandwich Islands restored my equilibrium, and fixed the laws and metes and bounds which have governed my subsequent life. I shall always thank God and Pres. Heber C. Kimball for that mission, altho’ it was the hardest one I ever performed.”(15)

Others agreed that the mission redirected his energy. George A. Smith stated at the time of Joseph F.’s call to the apostleship: “His father and mother left him when he was a child, and we have been looking after him to try and help him along. We first sent him to school, but it was not long before he licked the school master and could not go to school. Then we sent him on a mission, and he did pretty well at it. I think he will make good as an apostle.”(16)

First Mission to Sandwich Islands–Hawaii (1854-57)
After the call was announced from the pulpit at general conference, Joseph F. was ordained an elder by his uncle, George A. Smith, received his endowments, and was set apart for his mission by Parley P. Pratt.

Of twenty-one Pacific Islands missionaries, Joseph F. was the youngest among them. He left Salt Lake on 27 May 1854, taking the southern route out of Utah. During the journey to southern California, the party slept on blankets in the great western outdoors. During a visit to central Utah in 1917, President Joseph F. remembered one of the nights on the journey: “I lay there and looked up at the stars, rather a home-sick youth, realizing for the first time in my life that I was just about to cut loose entirely from all the associations that I loved and honored and revered in all the world; to go out into the world–I knew not where, nor did I know the circumstances in which I would be placed.”(17)

In southern California and later in San Francisco, the missionaries worked to earn the necessary money to continue their journey. Finally, in early September, they took passage on a clipper ship, Vaquero, which left San Francisco Harbor on 8 September 1854.

As Joseph F. first caught sight of the shoreline of the beautiful Hawaiian Islands, he could never imagine how his life would be intertwined with the native people he was about to be introduced to on this very first trip across the Pacific. His first mission lasted until 1857; he returned again on a special mission in 1864; as Church President, he visited the islands in 1915, 1916, and 1917; and he dedicated the first temple site in the Pacific there.

To Be Continued…

Notes
1. Joseph Fielding Smith, comp., Life of Joseph F. Smith: Sixth President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1938), 123-24; hereafter cited as LJFS.

2. Leonard J. Arrington, “Joseph F. Smith: From Impulsive Young Man to Patriarchal Prophet,” John Whitmer Historical Journal 4 (1984): 32.

3. Preston Nibley, Presidents of the Church (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1941), 229

4. LJFS, 133-34.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid., 148.

7. Ibid., 155.

8. Ibid., 155-56.

9. Ibid., 159.

10. Ibid., 159-60.

11. Joseph F. Smith, Gospel Doctrine: Selections from the Sermons and Writings of Joseph F. Smith, Sixth President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1966), 96.

12. Joseph F. Smith to Samuel L. Adams, 11 May 1888, as cited in Joseph Fielding McConkie, ed., Truth and Courage: Joseph F. Smith Letters (n.p., 1998), 8; hereafter cited as TC.

13. LJFS, 229.

14. Ibid.

15. Joseph F. Smith to Samuel L. Adams, 11 May 1888, as cited in TC, 8.

16. LJFS, 229.

17. F. W. Otterstrom, “A Journey to the South,” Improvement Era 21 (December 1917): 106.

© 2001 Meridian Magazine. All Rights Reserved.