Family Background

1838. November 13: Born Joseph Fielding Smith at Far West, Missouri, to Hyrum Smith and Mary Fielding. He was a stepson of Heber C. Kimball, nephew of Joseph Smith, and half-brother of Church Patriarch John Smith.

Joseph F. Smith married Levira Annette Clark Smith April 5, 1859, and later Julina Lambson, niece of George A. Smith (1866); Sarah Ellen Richards, daughter of Willard Richards (1868); Edna Lambson (1871); Alice Ann Kimball, daughter of Heber C. Kimball (1883); and Mary Taylor Schwartz, niece of John Taylor (1884). He had forty-eight children, including five adopted children.

His father was in the Richmond, Missouri, jail when Joseph F. was born. As a mob ransacked their Far West home looking for papers, a mattress was thrown over the infant and he nearly suffocated. Young Joseph was not seen by his father until several months later, when Hyrum was transferred to Liberty Jail.

1844. June 27: When Joseph F. was five years old, he heard a man knock on his mother's window and announce that his father had been killed. Memories of his grieving mother's moans remained with him throughout his life.

1848. When he was nine, Joseph F. drove a team of oxen from Winter Quarters to the Salt Lake Valley, arriving in September. From 1846 to 1854 he was a "teamster, herd boy, plowboy, irrigator, harvester, with 'scythe or cradle,' operator of a fanning mill, logger, and 'general roustabout'— and always penniless."

Orphaned in 1852, Joseph F. was persuaded by his surrogate father, George A. Smith, to attend school in Sugarhouse. When the teacher tried to "put the strap" to Joseph F.'s younger sister, the hot-tempered youth intervened. The teacher turned on Joseph F., but "instead of him whipping me, I licked him good and plenty."

Missionary

1854. Expelled from school, Joseph F. was sent on a mission to the Sandwich Isles (Hawaii) at fifteen years of age. The mission had been opened in 1850 and under George Q. Cannon had experienced phenomenal growth.

Smith, who remained in Hawaii for four years, learned the language in three months. Receiving no support from home, he lived in poverty with the natives. For weeks the missionaries had little to eat, and for a while Smith and his companion had only one suit of clothes between them; one stayed home while the other wore the suit to meetings.

Joseph F. Smith served three missions to England (1860-1863, and, as president of the European Mission, 1874-1875 and 1877), a second mission to Hawaii (1864), and a historical research mission to the Eastern States with Orson Pratt (1878).

Husband and Father

1858. Returning from Hawaii, Joseph F. served briefly in the militia called out to oppose the federal Expeditionary Force. He courted his sixteen-year-old cousin, Levira Annette Clark Smith, daughter of Samuel Smith. "I am aware that our acquaintance has been short," he wrote. "To you, I do not know how pleasant. But allow me to say that since I saw you first, the admiration and respect I first conceived for you have daily grown, till they have changed to something stronger and more fervent." They were married April 5, 1859. He served briefly on the Salt Lake Stake High Council, then left on a mission to England in April, 1860.

Joseph F. was absent on missions nearly five of their first six years of married life. He wrote often, sometimes bouyantly: "Wake up snakes! and come to Judgment! for Mormonism is destined to rule the warts!" sometimes good-naturedly: "What would you think of me for a rational sensible 'Lord' and husband if my every sentence was "'Sugar, Honey, Cherub, Duckey, Darling, Precious, and Bewildering Beauty.' Bah! Soft-soap, vinegar, crab- apple, and sauerkraut."

But his letters failed to console his depressed, childless, impoverished wife. The news that he had adopted a four-year-old boy without consulting her did little to improve their relationship. By the time he returned in the fall of 1863, she was suffering from a nervous breakdown. Joseph F. remained with her constantly for six weeks, occasionally restraining her physically.

In January, 1864, he left on another mission to Hawaii. Levira sought medical treatment in San Francisco, where relatives cared for her. When Joseph returned in November, they fought often.

1866. May 5: After a brief acquaintance, Joseph F. Smith married seventeen-year-old Julina Lambson, who had been living with her uncle George A. Smith while Joseph F. worked for him in the Church historian's office.

1867. June 10: Levira and Julina apparently got along well personally, but Levira ultimately could not accept plural marriage. After a separation of eight months she obtained permission from Brigham Young to have their marriage dissolved. Levira asked Joseph F.'s permission to keep one letter and picture of him: "They will awaken saddest, sweetest, memories of the past tho the life history of one of earth's poor daughters had been burned to ashes. And why? Because one of earth's brave and noble sons could not appreciate or stoop to the musings of a gentle girlish heart."

In 1868 Levira obtained a divorce in California, charging that her husband had "been guilty of the crime of Adultery with several different women." Joseph F. Smith was the last divorced president of the Church.

He did not hesitate to scold his wives or children for violating his standards. After one Christmas, he wrote to his wife Edna, accusing her of being extravagant with the children's girls. She fired back his letter with a post-scripted note: "How kind, how loving! This is from your heart and it has sunk deep in mine. But it is cruel and unjust. How can I be so horribly extravagant on $25 per month?"

Hugh B. Brown recalled Joseph F. Smith as "a very rugged man who had been raised in the school of hard knocks. … In some ways Joseph F. Smith seemed to me to be the man that I would like to have for my father, but I know if I had, that his severe discipline would have been hard on me." But Joseph Fielding Smith recalled his father as "the most tenderhearted man I ever knew."

Counselor to Four Prophets

1866. July 1: Following the regular Sunday prayer circle of the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve, Brigham Young suddenly said, "Hold on. Shall I do as I feel led? I always feel well to do as the spirit constrains me. It is my mind to ordain bro. Joseph F. Smith to the Apostleship, and to be one of my Councilors."

Though an apostle, Joseph F. Smith was not admitted to the Quorum of the Twelve until 1867, replacing Amasa Lyman. Knowledge of the secret ordination was kept even from Heber C. Kimball, Brigham Young's first counselor—and Joseph F. Smith's stepfather.

Joseph F. Smith served in the First Presidency for thirty-eight years, longer than any other man. He was counselor to Brigham Young, John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff, and Lorenzo Snow.

"Hawaiian Exile"

Between 1884 and 1891 President Smith spent five years in exile to escape arrest for polygamy. Most of the time was spent in Hawaii. To his wife Sarah he wrote, "I cannot see the use of mothers with whole flocks of little helpless children being driven about the country for fear of a mob of deputy marshals. If they call on you, my darling, to go before the Grand inquisition or court—I want you, and I mean it too, to tell the God damned fiends that you are my wife now and forever, and they may help themselves."

Republican Partisan

1867. January 25: Admitted to the Council of Fifty.

Joseph F. Smith served as Salt Lake City councilman (1866-84), Provo City councilman (1868-69), Utah territorial legislator (1865-74, 1880-82), and member of the Utah Constitutional Convention (1882). According to the 1882 Edmunds Act he should have been disqualified from holding public office because of his plural marriages, but he continued to maintain a low profile as Salt Lake City councilman for two more years.

Although most Utah Mormons in the 1860s were sympathetic to the Democratic Party, Joseph F. Smith voted for Republican Abraham Lincoln in 1864. When the Church disbanded its People's Party in 1891 and urged the Saints to join either of the two national parties, Smith declared himself a Republican. For the next twenty-eight years he ardently defended Republican causes and candidates, put administrative hobbles on Democratic general authorities, and urged Latter-day Saints to vote straight Republican.

Sixth President of the Church

1901. October 17: Set apart as president of the Church, with John R. Winder and Anthon H. Lund as counselors.

Joseph F. Smith was the first president born in the Church, the only president, excepting Joseph Smith, not previously sustained as president of the Quorum of the Twelve, and the only president to have a son who also became president of the Church.

In addition to serving as Church president, he also became general superintendent of the Deseret Sunday School Union, a position he held until his death. Church auxiliaries under his leadership established the Improvement Era, the Children's Friend, and the Relief Society Magazine.

Thanks largely to the efforts of his predecessor, Lorenzo Snow, the Church's heavy financial debts were paid by 1906. The new solvency paved the way for an expanded Church building program including construction of the Church Administration Building and Hawaii and Alberta temples. Historic sites were purchased, including Joseph Smith's birthplace in Vermont, the Smith home and Sacred Grove near Palmyra, New York, the Carthage Jail in Illinois, and twenty-five acres near the temple site in Independence, Missouri.

1904 March: President Smith became the first Church president to appear before the U.S. Senate when he was subpoenaed to testify at the Reed Smoot hearings. Although he had apparently sanctioned and even performed plural marriages after the 1890 Manifesto, Joseph F. Smith accepted responsibility only for his personal violations of Church and legal decrees against polygamous cohabitation since 1890. He denied authorizing, performing, or even knowing about any plural marriages contracted after 1890.

April 6: President Smith issued an edict commonly called the "Second Manifesto," which defined the Wilford Woodruff Manifesto as having abolished plural marriage worldwide, not just in countries where it was illegal. Excommunication proceedings were initiated several years later, under the auspices of the Quorum of the Twelve, against Latter-day Saints who had entered polygamy after 1904, but Joseph F. Smith firmly resisted Reed Smoot's persistent urgings to prosecute those who had entered the system prior to 1904.

1911    April 11: Replying to Senator Reed Smoot's urgent appeal for an official statement on post-Manifesto polygamy, President Smith wired: "If the President inquire about new polygamy, tell him the truth, tell him that Prest. Cannon was the first to conceive the idea that the Church could consistently countenance polygamy beyond confines of the republic where there was no law against it, and consequently he authorized the solemnization of plural marriages in Mexico and Canada after manifesto of 1890, and the men occupying presiding positions who became polygamists since the manifesto married in good faith under those circumstances. This being the case could we consistently be expected to humiliate them by releasing them?"

Vision

1918. October: Six weeks before his death, Joseph F. Smith experienced a "vision on salvation of the dead and visit of the Savior to the Spirit World," which was added to the Pearl of Great Price in 1976 and became section 138 of the Doctrine and Covenants in 1981.

Death

1918. November 19: Died of pneumonia at 175 East South Temple in Salt Lake City. Due to the dangers of public gatherings during the national influenza epidemic, no public funeral was held. Buried in the Salt Lake City Cemetery.

Sources
Allen, James B., and Leonard, Glen M. The Story of the Latter-day Saints. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1976.
Arrington, Leonard J., and Bitton, Davis. The Mormon Experience: A History of the Latter-day Saints. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979.
Arrington, Leonard J.; Esplin, Ron; and Rigby, Christine. "Joseph F. Smith: From Impulsive Young Man to Patriarchal Prophet." Address presented at the Joseph Smith Family Reunion, 1975.
Campbell, Eugene E., and Poll, Richard D. Hugh B. Brown: His Life and Thought. Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1975.
Conference Reports, April 1906, April 1930.
Clark, James R., ed. Messages of the First Presidency of the Church. 6 vols. Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1965-1975.
Jorgensen, Victor W., and Hardy, B. Carmon. "The Taylor-Cowley Affair and the Watershed of Mormon History." Utah Historical Quarterly 48 (Winter 1980):4-36.
Nibley, Preston. The Presidents of the Church. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1971.
Quinn, D. Michael. "Organizational Development and Social Origins of the Mormon Hierarchy, 1832-1932: A Prosopographical Study." Master's thesis, University of Utah, 1973.
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____. Joseph F. Smith Papers.
Salt Lake City, Utah. University of Utah. J. Willard Marriott Library. Joseph Fielding Smith Family Papers.
San Francisco, California. Fourth District Court, Case 14685, Levira A. Smith vs. Joseph F. Smith.
Smith, Joseph F. "Christmas and New Year." Improvement Era January 1919, pp. 266-267.
Smith, Joseph Fielding. Life of Joseph F. Smith. Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1938.