Lucy Mack Smith - Marriage and Children

Marriage and Children

Lucy married Joseph Smith, Sr., in January 1796, bringing a wedding gift of $1,000 from her brother, Stephen, and his business partner, John Mudget. Lucy assumed the responsibility for the moral and religious guidance of her children as well as for their secular education. As a result, she emerges as a major influence in preparing them for their involvement in the charismatic movement which early Mormonism represents.

After six years of marriage, Lucy became very ill, was diagnosed with "confirmed consumption," the disease from which her sisters Lovisa and Lovina had died, and was given up by the doctors (Smith, chap. 11). Lucy did not feel prepared for death and judgment: "I knew not the ways of Christ, besides there appeared to be a dark and lonesome chasm between myself and the Saviour, which I dared not attempt to pass." By making a gigantic effort, she perceived "a faint glimmer of light." She spent the night pleading with the Lord to spare her life so she could bring up her children (Alvin and Hyrum) and "be a comfort" to her husband. She vowed that, if her life was spared, she would serve God with all her heart, whereupon she heard a voice advising her, "Seek and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you. Let your heart be comforted; ye believe in God, believe also in me." From that point on, Lucy began a long search for a religion that would teach her the way of salvation. In so doing, she was following the precepts of her culture. During this post-revolutionary period, religious speakers constantly emphasized the "cultivation" of female piety so that women might more ably fulfill their role as a "moral mother" (Bloch, 118).

Lucy also continued to educate her children in secular as well as spiritual matters. Dr. John Stafford of Palmyra, New York interviewed in 1880, remembered that Lucy "had a great deal of faith that their children were going to do something great" and also recalled that Lucy taught her ten children from the Bible. (Although Lucy Mack Smith gave birth to eleven children with Joseph Smith, Sr, their first died shortly after childbirth in 1797). Stafford did not comment on the spiritual precepts they thus garnered but rather on the children's educational achievements. Joseph Jr. had been "quite illiterate," he said, but "after they began to have school at their house, he improved greatly" (Vogel 2:122). Were Lucy's ambitions for, and faith in, her children's abilities unusual for a mother of that period? Linda Kerber tells how the republican mother was to "encourage in her sons civic interest and participation. She was to educate her children and guide them in the paths of morality and virtue" (283). Nancy Woloch, notes that ministers, after "discarding predestination as an axiom, now suggested that mothers, not God, were responsible for their children's souls" (121). Lucy certainly seems to have taken such responsibilities very seriously in her own family. William Smith later affirmed that Lucy was a very pious woman and much interested in the welfare of her children, both here and hereafter, made use of every means which her parental love could suggest, to get us engaged in seeking for our souls' salvation, or (as the term then was) "in getting religion." She prevailed on us to attend the meetings, and almost the whole family became interested in the matter and seekers after truth. . . . My mother continued her importunities and exertions to interest us in the importance of seeking for the salvation of our immortal souls, until almost all of the family became either converted or seriously inclined (Vogel 1:494-95).

Lucy's piety and principles were major moral influence in her children's lives, but she was also concerned about her husband's spiritual well-being. New England ministers declared that a wife's conversion could also help her perform "her great task of bringing men back to God" (Welter, 162). Various publications of the early nineteenth century pointed out:

Religion or piety was the core of women's virtue, the source of her strength. Religion belonged to woman by divine right, a gift of God and nature. This "peculiar susceptibility" to religion was given her for a reason: "the vestal flame of piety, lighted tip by Heaven in the breast of woman" would throw its beams into the naughty world of men (Welter, 152).

According to Nancy Woloch, "Female converts outnumbered male converts three to two in the Second Great Awakening in New England. . . . By 1814, for instance, women outnumbered men in the churches and religious societies in rural Utica, and they could be relied upon to urge the conversion of family members" (121).

It was Lucy who took the initiative in trying to involve her family in seeking the "true church." In light of Joseph Sr.'s indifference, she sought consolation in earnest prayer that the gospel would be brought to her husband and was reassured by a dream that her husband would be given "the pure and undefiled Gospel of the Son of God" (56). About this time Joseph Sr. began having visionary dreams with highly symbolic content, obviously related to his ambivalence about religious faith and sometimes presaging events to come. These dreams continued after the family's move to Palmyra, New York, until he had had seven in all; Lucy remembers five well enough to quote in detail.