Smith, Emma Hale (1804–1879)

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Smith, Emma Hale (1804–1879)

Wife of Joseph Smith, founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who was one of her husband's earliest converts but later broke with the church over the doctrine of polygamy. Name variations: Emma Hale Smith Bidamon. Born Emma Hale on July 10, 1804, in Harmony, Pennsylvania; died on April 20, 1879, in Nauvoo, Illinois; daughter of Isaac Hale (a farmer) and Elizabeth (Lewis) Hale; briefly attended public school; married Joseph Smith (1805–1844, founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), on January 18, 1827, in South Bainbridge, Pennsylvania; married Major Lewis Crum Bidamon in April 1847 in Nauvoo, Illinois; children: (first marriage) Alvin (died young); Thaddeus (died young); Louisa (died young); Joseph Smith III (b. 1832, later president of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints); Frederick; Alexander; Don Carlos (died young); another son (died young); David; (adopted twins) Joseph Murdock (died young) and Julia Murdock.

Emma Hale Smith was born in 1804 into a large farming family near the Susquehanna River in Harmony, Pennsylvania, where her parents Isaac and Elizabeth Lewis Hale , originally from Vermont, had been the among the first white settlers. While her education was somewhat sketchy owing to the place and time, she attended grammar school in the area and grew up canoeing and horseback riding. Described as dignified and beautiful, with "enormous hazel eyes," she was still living in her parents' house when Joseph Smith came to board there in 1825 while he worked for a local landowner. Although Isaac Hale was none too impressed with his boarder, Emma was. Isaac twice turned down Joseph's request for her hand in marriage, and in January 1827 Emma and Joseph eloped and were married in South Bainbridge, New York.

The couple lived first with Joseph's parents, Joseph and Lucy Mack Smith , in Manchester, New York, and it was there, on September 22, 1827, that Joseph finally received from the angel Moroni the gold plates on which the Book of Mormon was inscribed. Emma and Joseph moved several times in the next few years as he sought privacy and safety for his translation of the plates. She served as his first copyist in the translation, with Joseph on one side of a curtain reading from the plates with the seer stones, the Urim and Thumim, and translating the plates from the "reformed Egyptian" in which they were written, while on the other side of the curtain Emma wrote down what he said. He never allowed her to see the plates themselves, although she was permitted to touch them while they were covered with wrappings. This apparently became somewhat of a sore spot for her after the first publication of the Book of Mormon in March 1830, which contained sworn testimony from 11 people who claimed to have seen the "reformed Egyptian" written on the plates. Within two months of the publication, over 40 people acknowledged Smith as an apostle of Jesus Christ and the elder of this new church. Emma was baptized into the church in June, and a month later Joseph had a revelation in which she was designated the "Elect Lady," whose calling was to support her husband and exhort the church.

By this time Joseph had already been arrested once (for "setting the country in an uproar"), the first of many such arrests and attempts to keep him quiet. In January 1831, due to growing local hostility, the Smiths moved with the church to Kirtland, Ohio. Three months later, Emma gave birth to twins who died soon after, and adopted the twins of a friend who had died in childbirth. She would give birth to seven more children, only four of whom survived to adulthood. Life in Kirtland was not easy, for though converts flocked to Joseph's church, many non-Mormons in the area were deeply suspicious. Emma once watched him being tarred and feathered by a mob. To support the family, she took in boarders. Among these were some of the men who built Kirtland's first Mormon temple, completed in 1836; around the same time, Emma published a hymnal which she had been charged by one of Joseph's revelations with preparing. Following the economic panic of 1837 and large-scale local hostility, in 1838 the Smiths and the Mormon colony moved to Far West, Missouri, near Independence, where a large colony of Mormons had already been established. Joseph was arrested later that year, and early in the winter of 1839 the colony was hounded out of Missouri. Emma walked across the frozen Missouri River with her four young children and one of her husband's manuscripts (Holy Scriptures, Translated and Corrected by the Spirit of Revelation) safely hidden in her clothes.

In Illinois, the Mormons settled in Commerce, which they renamed Nauvoo and which quickly attracted converts and new settlers. It was granted a charter in 1840, as a result of politicians trying to win the 15,000-strong Mormon vote, and within five years would be the most populous city in the state. Economic and religious institutions were also founded, primary among them the Mormon Temple, completed in 1843. The year before that, the Female Relief Society had been founded with 20 members and a mission to uphold community morals and provide charity. Emma was elected the first president of the society, which grew to over 1,100 members by the end of the year; although its activities were suspended for a time after 1844, it is now the largest women's organization in the Mormon Church. Persecution by non-Mormons continued, however, and in addition, Emma had discovered that Joseph, having received (but not publicized) a revelation about the "order of Jacob"—plural marriage—had begun taking additional "wives." (Among the first of these 50 or more women was Eliza Roxey Snow Smith , in 1841.) Emma's protests and distress were to no avail, and in 1843 he showed her a revelation charging her to "receive all those that have been given unto my servant Joseph" or else go against the law of God.

While the subject was not bandied about, word of the possible practice of polygamy spread and led to increased anti-Mormon sentiment. In 1844, after much religious and social unrest, Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum yielded to the threatening forces of the Illinois militia and were imprisoned in Carthage, Illinois. On June 27, 1844, while they were awaiting trial, the militia, with faces blackened for disguise, attacked the jail and lynched them. Emma Smith obtained the body of her husband and buried it secretly to prevent his grave from being ravaged by the mobs. (Many years later, she replaced it with a more open and stately resting place.) Joseph Smith's position at the head of the church was filled by Brigham Young, with whom Emma entered into a protracted battle over her late husband's property. Young saw most of it as the inheritance of the church, while she was concerned with providing for her children (the last of whom was born five months after Joseph's death). When Young led a majority of the Nauvoo Mormons to religious freedom in Utah in 1847, Emma chose to remain in Nauvoo with her children and a remnant of the Mormon colony. While her difficulties with Young played a large part in this decision, the main sticking point seems to have been polygamy, which Young endorsed and Emma still abhorred. (In 1852, Young published what was presented as Joseph Smith's revelation on plural marriage.)

She remained an otherwise devout Mormon, however, and continued to raise her children in the faith of their father. She remarried at the end of 1847 to Major Lewis Crum Bidamon, with whom she lived happily despite the fact that he was not a Mormon, and cared for Joseph Smith's mother Lucy Mack Smith until her death in 1856. In 1860, her eldest son Joseph Smith III became president of what would come to be called the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints; his son would later succeed him. That the Reorganized Church resisted the practice of polygamy was primarily due to Emma's refusal to accept this as a policy dictated by Joseph and her insight that such practices would only alienate the church more from the surrounding community and society. She remained active in the Reorganized Church until her death in 1879.

sources:

Fischer, Norma J. Portrait of a Prophet's Wife: Emma Hale Smith. Salt Lake City, UT: Silver Leaf Press, 1992.

collections:

Papers relating to Emma Hale Smith, including some letters, are located at the archives of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Independence, Missouri.

Amanda Carson Banks , Vanderbilt Divinity School, Nashville, Tennessee

Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia