My Dad sent me this book while I was on my mission over ten years ago, but I never got around to reading it. I just finished this book two days ago. I really liked it.
The book is not accurately titled. It is the history of the Smith family more than anything. Joseph is discussed often, but surprisingly not really more than anybody else. I liked that even though he was the Prophet, his mom didn't seem to play favorites between him and his siblings. And to confirm my stance that the book is not properly titled, the Introduction to the book informs us that it was originally titled "The History of Lucy Mack Smith, by Herself." I suppose they re-titled it to get more readers?
This book just has so much to offer. As Joseph F. Smith says in the Introduction, this book "contains much interesting and valuable information, found in no other publication, relating to the life of the Prophet Joseph Smith" There are lots of cool details and stories that don't get the publicity that they perhaps more rightly deserve.
I want to mention just a few of some of the things I found of interest:
- Lucy had three sons in a row born on March 13th. It's true. She doesn't point this out directly, but had merely provided an Old Testament-style genealogy of her family as well as Joseph Smith Sr.'s family listing names and birth dates. Samuel born March 13 1808, Ephraim born March 13 1810, and William born March 13 1811. Crazy. Got to be some kind of record.
- Also listed in the genealogy chapter is the fact that Joseph Smith had a son born like 5 months after he was killed. I didn't realize Emma was pregnant when he was killed.
- Joseph Smith Sr. was quite the spiritual giant, even before Joseph being called as a Prophet. I guess that's why he was chosen to be the church's first patriarch of this dispensation. He would have these spiritual dreams and even had a very 1 Nephi 8 Tree of Life-esque dream. I bet he was pretty pumped when he read that chapter in the Book of Mormon.
- Hyrum is amazing. Here's this about when Joseph was a boy and had his way bad leg infection: "Hyrum sat beside him, almost day and night, for some considerable length of time, holding the affected part of his leg in his hands, and pressing it between them, so that his afflicted brother might be enabled to endure the pain"
- Another detail I didn't know about was how much Joseph was going through during the time when Martin Harris lost the 116 translated pages. Martin Harris took the pages home for 3 weeks. During those three weeks, Joseph had his first child born. This child also died before this three week period expired. I've always heard how the ordeal with losing those pages was one of the most trying experiences of his life. I just never knew that, on top of that, he was also dealing with the death of his firstborn baby. Unreal.
- The whole Smith family was just so amazing. As Joseph Smith Sr. said to Lucy right before he died: "Mother, do you not know, that you are the mother of as great a family as ever lived upon the earth?" I enjoyed learning about the other family members. Like Samuel. He was sent on missions non-stop. The story about the Book of Mormon he first gave away which led to the conversion of several people, including Brigham Young, is great.
- There is this epic 22-page chapter that is entirely Hyrum Smith's testimony before a Municipal Court in 1843 detailing the trials and sufferings suffered at the hands of the Missouri mobs. The abuse and persecution is pretty mind-boggling.
- I also didn't know that Samuel Smith died a month after his brother's Hyrum and Joseph were killed. He died from over-exertion after fleeing for several hours from the mob who killed his brothers. He got this pain in his side that night and was confined to his bed for a month and then died. As Lucy says, "I had reared six sons to manhood, and of them all, one only remained." For those keeping score, that's Alvin who died before Joseph received the plates after receiving treatment from a "quack doctor", Don Carlos who died of consumption after working in a damp room for long periods to produce the Times and Seasons, Hyrum and Joseph killed by a mob, and Samuel died a month later. William was the one who remained. Interestingly enough, when Joseph Sr. was giving his final blessings to his children, he told William that he would "live as long as thou desirest life."
- Eliza R. Snow wrote really cool poems upon the deaths of Joseph Smith Sr., Don Carlos Smith, and Hyrum and Joseph. I share a snippet from the poem upon the deaths of Hyrum and Joseph:
"Great men have fallen, and mighty men have died;
Nations have mourned their favorites and their pride;
But two, so wise, so virtuous, great, and good,
Before on earth, at once, have never stood
Since the creation. Men whom God ordained
To publish truth where error long had reigned,
Of whom the world itself unworthy proved.
It knew them not, but men with hatred moved,
And with infernal spirits have combined
Against the best, the noblest, of mankind."
- One final quote: "Joseph continued to receive instructions from the Lord, and we continued to get the children together every evening, for the purpose of listening while he gave us a relation of the same. I presume our family presented an aspect as singular as any that ever lived upon the face of the earth - all seated in a circle, father, mother, sons and daughters, and giving the most profound attention to a boy, eighteen years of age, who had never read the Bible through in his life: he seemed much less inclined to the perusal of books than any of the rest of our children, but far more given to meditation and deep study."
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