Smith, Joseph
NAME: Smith, Joseph
ACHIEVEMENT(S): 19th-century American prophet and founder of the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, known as the Mormon church.
NICKNAME/ALIAS: Joseph Smith, Jr.
DATE/PLACE OF BIRTH: 23 December 1805, at Sharon, Windsor County, VT
DATE/PLACE/AGE AT DEATH: 27 June 1844, in Carthage, IL. Aged 38
DISCIPLINE: Prophet
FIELD: Religion
LANGUAGE: English
PARENTS: Joseph Smith, Sr. and Lucy Mack, married 1796
SIBLINGS: Hyrum and many others
SPOUSE: Emma Hale, married 1827
CHILDREN: Nine children, five surviving infancy - one daughter and four
sons, including Joseph Smith III (1832-1914)
EDUCATION: Little formal education
MAJOR WORK: 'The Book of Mormon', 1830
LIFE AND TIMES: During his teenage years, Smith was troubled by his parents' religious uncertainties and by their inability to agree on a church, and at the age of 14, according to his own account, he prayed for guidance and two beings of indescribable
"brightness and glory" appeared to him, announcing themselves as God and Jesus Christ, forgiving him his sins, and telling him to join none of the churches because none was right.
From this point until the end of his life he recorded his visions and revelations, and they gradually attracted a growing number of believers. In September 1823, Smith again prayed for direction and received another revelation, in which an angel named Moroni appeared at his bedside and directed him to some gold plates buried in a hill close to the Smiths' house. He went to the hill the next day, and reportedly found the plates in a stone box.
He saw Moroni, who told him not to take the plates, but to return the next year. According to his account, Smith returned to the hill on the same day for the next four years, and finally on 22 September 1827 he took home the gold plates, instructed by the angel to translate the engravings - which, he claimed, detailed the spiritual history of the American Indians, describing them as descendants of Hebrews who centuries earlier had sailed to North America by way of the Pacific - in preparation for the restoration of Israel and the return of Christ.
In March 1830, the translation was published as the 500-page 'Book of the Mormon', named for the prophet Mormon whom Smith believed to have written the story of the ancient Americans in the 4th century after Christ, and whose writings would restore to America the ancient, primitive Christian religion.
Within weeks Smith had attracted sufficient believers to form what he called the Church of Christ, with himself and Oliver Cowdery as first and second elders. Smith was also named seer, translator and prophet, and led the new church by direct revelation - one of his earliest revelations commanding him to take the 'Book of Mormon' to the Indian tribes being settled along the frontier in western Missouri.
During the winter of 1830-31 four Mormon missionaries preached to the Indians with some success, until they were prevented from continuing by government agents. During the journey the missionaries had stopped in Kirtland, Ohio where they had made many more converts, apparently attracted by Smith's claims to be restoring the authority and spiritual gifts of early Christianity at a time when many believers were confused by the large number of competing churches.
In late 1830, Smith received a revelation directing the church to move to Kirtland, Ohio, from where he then began to organize the formation of an entire society, a New Jerusalem called Zion as announced in the 'Book of Mormon', in preparation for the Second Coming of Christ.
In the summer of 1831, Smith and his followers travelled to Missouri, where he designated the exact spot of the construction of the New Jerusalem to be near Independence in Jackson County, and he then devoted the next six years to the realization of this dream.
In the autumn of 1833 when the Mormons were driven out of Jackson County by local inhabitants suspicious of the unorthodox cooperative society with its ruling ecclesiastical oligarchy.
Meanwhile, in Kirtland, Smith had reorganized the leadership structure of his growing church by appointing a Council of Twelve Apostles, sent missionaries throughout the U.S. and to England, and built a Mormon temple which was dedicated in 1836. He continued to receive revelations, some of which he claimed to have come from Christ himself, which he published as Doctrine and Covenants' (1835), and which included "the Word of Wisdom" cautioning the Mormons (now known as the Latter-day Saints) to avoid tobacco and alcohol.
However, in 1836 he organized a Mormon bank which failed only a year later, losing money for investors and depositors, and feelings ran so high against him that he and other church leaders were forced to flee from Kirtland to Caldwell County, Missouri in early 1838.
Late in 1839, Smith travelled to Washington in an attempt to obtain redress from the federal government for the loss of his property in Missouri; although this was denied by President Martin Van Buren, Smith did manage to persuade the Illinois legislature to grant a liberal charter for the foundation of a new town, which Smith named Nauvoo, where the Mormons would have control over all the agencies of government.
From Nauvoo, Smith then launched a new missionary effort, and converts came from all over the United States and Europe, especially Great Britain, the population of the town
reaching 20,000, making it the largest city in Illinois.
In March 1844, Smith organized a Council of Fifty composed of leading Mormons to manage the political affairs of the "kingdom", and then announced his candidacy for the U.S. presidency. In April 1844 several dissenters, who had joined forces with anti-Mormons in surrounding towns, organized a new church in Nauvoo and published an opposition newspaper, the 'Nauvoo Expositor', which attacked Smith for his polygamy and political ambition.
However, Smith, as mayor and head of the Nauvoo City Council, ruled that the 'Expositor' was a threat to the peace of the community and ordered the press destroyed. Threats of mob violence followed, and after Smith called out the Nauvoo militia to protect the town, he was arrested on 12 June by county officials and charged with inciting a riot by the destruction of the press.
He was then taken, along with his brother Hyrum, to the Carthage city jail, with promises of protection from the governor of Illinois, Thomas Ford. However, on 27 June 1844, while the Smiths were awaiting trial, a mob of around 150 armed men with blackened faces stormed the jail and shot dead both Smith and his brother. The bodies were returned to Nauvoo the next day, and 10,000 Latter-day Saints gathered to mourn Smith, who was subsequently elevated to martyrdom.
Soon after his death, the president of the Twelve Apostles, <a close friend of> Brigham Young*, who had been a close friend and staunch defender of Smith, assumed
leadership of the Mormon church and in 1846 led the majority of the Saints west to Great Salt Lake, Utah.
ASSESSMENT: Joseph Smith was a 19th-century American charismatic religious leader, who in 1827-30 claimed to have translated from 'Reformed Egyptian' a history of ancient America from its colonization to the 5th century A.D., which he published as the 'Book of Mormon' (1830).
EXTRA CONNECTIONS: None
ONELINER: Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormons
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
EB, ANB
Hill, Donna, Joseph Smith, the First Mormon, 1977