History of Joseph Smith by His Mother, Lucy Mack Smith- Newly Available Reprint

Description

This loving history of the prophet Joseph Smith by his mother, Lucy Mack Smith, is an intimate look at the Smith family’s history and faith. Detailing beautiful family stories of faith, as well as the prophet’s childhood and family life, it is an inspirational book sure to touch hearts. This edition contains an introduction to the work by Joseph Fielding Smith.

• Lucy Mack Smith Trade Paperback
• Publication Year 2017
• Genre Biography & Autobiography
• Number of Pages 264

The editor of “These Stones, Fastened to a Breastplate”  Here, newly published by Rod Meldrum and Firm Foundation, has received a feeling of new inspiration from this classic Church History Book. “This is my new favorite book other than the Scriptures. I have been so inspired by Lucy Mack Smith’s record.” Rian Nelson Author

“Much of the value of Lucy Mack Smith’s account lies in her offering a wife and mother’s perspective on her family’s role in the early church. She illuminates the family setting that fostered the birth of Mormonism and retells incidents and interactions recounted nowhere else. Though there are errors in the dating of some events and occasionally in place and individual names, overall, her account is of inestimable value, providing a rarely heard woman’s voice as it traces JS’s life from beginning to end.” JSP

When Lucy Mack Smith stood before a congregation of the Saints in Nauvoo, Illinois, in October 1845 at the invitation of Brigham Young, she presented three related messages, all of them centered around family…To save her lungs, she said, and at the invitation of the Twelve, she invited Martha Jane Knowlton Coray to record her memoirs. Lucy’s dictations during the winter of 1844–45 resulted what is now called the preliminary manuscript of her history. Lucy identified it as “The History of Lucy Smith. . . .” https://byustudies.byu.edu/article/the-revised-and-enhanced-history-of-joseph-smith-by-his-mother/

In June 1844, the church suffered the loss of its president and prophet, JS, and his brother, church patriarch Hyrum Smith. The Smith family, already devastated, endured another heartbreak a few weeks later with the death of JS’s brother Samuel. That fall their widowed mother, Lucy Mack Smith, perhaps in part as a salve to her grief, began recording her family’s story. Writing to her only surviving son, William, on 23 January 1845, Smith informed him, “I have by the council of the 12 [Apostles] undertaken a history of the family, that is my Fathers Family and my own.”

Lucy added:

“People are often enquiring of me the particulars of Joseph’s getting the plates seeing the angels at first and many other thing which Joseph never wrote or published I have told over many things pertaining to these matters to different persons to gratify their curiosity indeed have almost destroyed my lungs giving these recitals to those who felt anxious to hear them I have now concluded to write down every particular as far as possible and if those who wish to read them will help me a little they can have it all in one piece to read at their leisure—” https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/lucy-mack-smith-history-1844-1845/1

That of which I spoke, which Joseph termed a key, was indeed nothing more nor less than a Urim and Thummim by which the angel manifested those things to him that were shown him in vision; by which also he could at any time ascertain the approach of danger, either to himself or the record, and for this cause he kept these things constantly about his person.” (History of Joseph Smith, Revised and Enhanced, p. 139, 145)

How could Joseph keep his oath of non-concealment without a curtain. It seems wearing the breastplate under his shirt and blocking the vision of the scribe would be an excellent way of concealment. Lucy also said,” It is composed of pure gold and is made to fit the breast very exactly.” Lucy Mack Smith (in Henry Caswall, The City of the Mormons; or, Three Days at Nauvoo, in 1842, 2nd ed. revised and enlarged, (London: J. G. F. & J. Rivington, 1843), 26)