Person

Joseph Fielding Smith

A bust portrait of a man with a full beard. — Smith, Joseph F. (Joseph Fielding), 1838-1918--Portraits
Photo/Public Domain

Joseph Fielding Smith, sixth president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the nephew of its founder, Joseph Smith, was born in Far West, Missouri, on 13 November 1838. He came into the world at a time of extreme tension between Mormons and their neighbors; about two weeks before his birth, Missouri Governor Lilburn Boggs issued Missouri Executive Order 44, ordering all Mormons to leave the state under the threat of extermination. Joseph Fielding’s father, Hyrum Smith, missed his son’s birth because he had been arrested and jailed in Liberty, Missouri, along with his brother, church founder and prophet Joseph Smith. Soon after Joseph Fielding’s birth, most of the Missouri-based Mormons fled to Illinois, where they would await their return to Missouri. Mary Fielding Smith, Joseph Fielding’s mother, left Missouri with her infant son and the five children from her husband’s first marriage in her care. Shortly after escaping from jail in 1839, Hyrum joined his family in Illinois.

The church’s neighbors in the Nauvoo area eventually grew wary of the Mormons’ business practices, Smith’s political aspirations, and the implied threat of his well-drilled and sharply outfitted Nauvoo militia. Violence broke out on 27 June 1844, when local vigilantes killed Joseph and Hyrum Smith while they were jailed at Carthage, Illinois. Joseph Fielding, only six years old, lost his father and uncle. In the aftermath of their deaths, the Latter-day Saints faced a controversial succession crisis. Brigham Young, one of Smith’s most trusted associates, eventually assumed the leadership of the main body of Latter-day Saints and announced plans for the church’s westward migration.

Under Young’s leadership, the initial exodus from Nauvoo began in February 1846, followed by several waves of evacuees in April, May, and June. Only some three hundred Latter-day Saints remained in Nauvoo to see the public dedication of their temple on 1 May 1846. By this time, the violence in and around Nauvoo had risen to such a level that the widowed Mary Fielding Smith decided to flee her home for the safety of her. After exchanging their Illinois property for a wagon and a team of oxen, the Smith family—like many other Mormon families—left Illinois behind and started toward the temporary encampment at Winter Quarters, Nebraska.

Joseph Fielding Smith and his family spent more than a year at Winter Quarters waiting for the rest of the Saints to gather. Every day the entire camp busied itself with the preparations for their mass emigration to the West. Fielding Smith kept company with the large number of children, all of whom had responsibilities that included tending livestock, cooking, watching over their siblings, and doing anything else their elders deemed necessary. In the spring of 1848, nearly two years after Joseph Fielding Smith and his family’s arrival, the many thousands of Latter-day Saints at Winter Quarters organized into companies in preparation for the journey to Utah’s Salt Lake Valley. Mary Smith’s family joined a company led by Heber C. Kimball—whom she would eventually marry. The party arrived in the Salt Lake Valley on 24 September 1848, almost four months after their departure from Winter Quarters.

Mary Fielding Smith died in 1852, leaving the fourteen-year-old Joseph and his seven siblings (five of them from Hyrum Smith’s first marriage) orphaned. Fielding Smith assumed the care of his youngest sister, Martha Ann, and left school in 1854. That same year, on April 24, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints ordained him as an elder and prepared him for missionary work in Hawaii. There he presided as the head missionary on Maui, then at Hilo, and lastly on Molokai before being called back to Utah in 1857. During the turbulent era of the Mormon conflict with the United States, Joseph Fielding Smith joined the Nauvoo Legion, which patrolled the eastern Rocky Mountains. He also served as chaplain in Kimball’s regiment during the confrontations.

By 1858, the LDS Church had ordained Joseph Fielding Smith to higher offices within the church. Joseph Fielding, once a barefoot pioneer boy who drove his mother’s oxen from Nauvoo to Salt Lake City, was chosen in 1901 to serve as the sixth president and prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He filled that position of authority for the rest of his life – until 19 November 1918, when he died from pneumonia, six days after his eightieth birthday.

(Special thanks to UNM PhD candidate Angela Reiniche for compiling this information)

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