Lucy Mack

https://familysearch.org/tree/#view=ancestor&person=KWJR-TZM&section=memories   Baptism: 6 Apr 1830   Name: Lucy Mack Gender: Female Relationship to Primary Person: Self (Head) Father: Solomon Mack Mother: Lydia Gates Birth Date: 8 Jul 1776 Alternate Birth Dates: Jul 08, 1775 Birth Place: Gilsum, Cheshire, New Hampshire, USA Death Date: 5 May 1855 Alternate Death Dates: May 08, 1855 Death Place: Nauvoo, Hancock, Illinois, USA Residences: Palmyra, Wayne, New York, USA Kirtland, Geauga, Ohio, USA Nauvoo, Hancock, Illinois, USA LDS Church Ordinance Data: Baptism Date: April 6, 1830 Fayette, New York, USA Patriarchal Blessing Date: December 9, 1834 Kirtland, Geauga, OH, Officiator: Joseph Smith, SR. LDS Temple Ordinance Data: Endowment Date: December 10, 1845 Temple: Nauvoo, Hancock, IL, USA Endowment Date: December 11, 1845 Sealed to Parents Date: August 27, 1957 Temple: Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA Comments: Lucy spent some time with relatives at Tunbridge, Vermont. Met and married Joseph Smith, 1796. Given wedding present of $1,000. Moved to Randolph to open store, 1802. Loss of property due to sepculation in China trade. Began to attend Methodist meetings. Dreams. Moved to Royalton. Moved to Sharon, Vermont. Rented farm. Moved back to Tunbridge, C. 1807. Moved to Royalton again. Husband’s vision. Moved to Lebanon, New Hampshire. Illness of son Joseph. Moved to Norwich, Vermont. Moved to Palmyra, New York. Account of trip there. Son Joseph’s religious experiences. Death of son Alvin, 1824. Lost farm. Martin Harris and wife. Lyman and Oliver Cowdery. Experiences with printing of Book of Mormon. Organization of Church, 1830. Moved to Waterloo, New York. Account oftrip to Kirtland, Ohio, where family removed, 1831. Settled on farm purchased by son for the Church. Visited her brother in Detroit. Raised means to complete schoolhouse at Kirtland. Circumstances leading to building of Kirtland Temple. Division in the Church. Persecution. Moved to Caldwell County, Missouri. Troubles there. To Quincy, Illinois, 1839. Moved to Commerce, 1839. Illness and death of husband, 1840. Assassination of sons Joseph and Hyrum, 1844. The Twelve take charge of Church. Son William returned to Nauvoo and was ordained a patriarch of the Church, 1845. Includes some extracts from Joseph Smith’s history and other materials published in “Times and Seasons”. Work is as much an autobiography of Lucy as it is a biography of Joseph. Cites also some letters and other written materials as well as reports of dreams, visions, conversations, etc. Comments: #21. Lucy was the mother of Joseph Smith the Prophet. Lucy was the youngest of eight children, four of whom were girls. Her father, Solomon Mack, had just attained his majority when the war between France and England, which grew out of disputed North American territory, was proclaimed. He entered the British army, and had two teams in the service of King George II., employed in carrying General Abercrombie’s baggage, and was present in 1758, at the engagement on the west side of Lake George. He was engaged more or less in military pursuits until 1759, when he was discharged, and married an accomplished school teacher, Lydia Gates, the mother of the subject of this memoir. She was the daughter of Nathan Gates, a wealthy man, living in East Haddam, Conn. She was of a truly pious disposition, and had an excellent education, which peculiarly fitted her for the duties of a preceptress to her children, especially at a period when schools were rarities in the half cleared and thinly settled districts. Lucy profited by the talents and virtues of her mother. Lucy and Joseph received from her brother, Stephen Mack, and John Mudget, his partner, in business, a marriage present of $1,000. Her husband owned a good farm at Tunbridge, on which they settled. The fruits of this marriage were seven sons and three daughters. In 1802, Lucy Smith, with her husband, moved to Randolph, Vermont, where they opened a mercantile establishment. Mr. Smith here embarked in an adventure of gensang, to China, but was robbed of the proceeds, and was much involved thereby. To liquidate his debts, he had to sell his farm at Tunbridge, to which he had then returned, and to use his wife’s marriage present, which till then had remained untouched. From Tunbridge they removed to Royalton. They remained there a few months, and then went to reside at Sharon, Windsor county, where Joseph the Prophet was born. They again returned to Tunbridge and Royalton successively, but, in 1811, their circumstances having much improved, they quitted Vermont for Lebanon, in New Hampshire. Here their children were all seized with the typhus fever, though none fatally, and Jospeh was afflicted with a fever sore. When health was restored to the family their circumstances were very low, and they returned to Vermont, and began to farm in Norwich. The first two years the crops failed, and the third the frost destroyed them, which determined Mr. Smith to remore to the state of New York. His wife and family did not remove until he had made preparations for them in Palmyra. Here the whole family set themselves industriously to repair their losses. Mr. Smith and his sons to farming, and Mrs. Smith to painting oil cloth coverings for tables, and were so prospered that in two years.   From http://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?indiv=1&db=LDSVitalMembership1830-1848&rank=1&new=1&MSAV=1&msT=1&gss=angs-d&gsfn=Lucy&gsfn_x=NP_NN&gsln=Mack&gsln_x=NS_NP_NN&dbOnly=_83004006%7c_83004006_x&uidh=m42&pcat=37&fh=1&h=57600&recoff=4+5+47&ml_rpos=2   Name: Lucy Mack Sources: Page 104; Author: Andrus, Hyrum; Title: Mormon Manuscripts to 1846. A Guide to the Holdings of the Harold B. Lee Library, 34(104); 152(469); 154(474); 171(476, 477); 181(510); 207(580)   From http://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?indiv=1&db=earmornam&gss=angs-d&new=1&rank=1&msT=1&gsfn=lucy&gsln=mack&MSAV=1&uidh=m42&pcat=37&fh=0&h=16264&recoff=3+4&ml_rpos=1   Name: Lucy Mack Sources: Page 120; Author: Church of Jesus Christ; Title: History of the Church, 6 volumes. 1:2, 79; 4:189   From http://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?indiv=1&db=earmornam&gss=angs-d&new=1&rank=1&msT=1&gsfn=lucy&gsln=mack&MSAV=1&uidh=m42&pcat=37&fh=1&h=16265&recoff=3+4&ml_rpos=2   Name: Lucy Mack Sources: Page 188; Author: _____________________; Title: A Profile of Latter-day Saints of Kirtland, Ohio and Members of Zion’s Camp, 60, 62, 63, 64, 65   From http://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?indiv=1&db=earmornam&gss=angs-d&new=1&rank=1&msT=1&gsfn=lucy&gsln=mack&MSAV=1&uidh=m42&pcat=37&fh=2&h=16266&recoff=3+4&ml_rpos=3   Smith, Lucy, mother of Joseph Smith the Prophet, was born July 8, 1776, at Gilsum, Cheshire county, New Hampshire, the daughter of Solomon Mack and Lydia Gates. Lucy was the youngest of eight children, four of whom were girls. Her father, Solomon Mack, had just attained his majority when the war between France and England, which grew out of disputed North American territory, was proclaimed. He entered the British army, and had two teams in the service of King George II., employed in carrying General Abercrombie’s baggage, and was present in 1758, at the engagement on the west side of Lake George. He was engaged more or less in military pursuits until 1759, when he was discharged, and married an accomplished school teacher, Lydia Gates, the mother of the subject of this memoir. She was the daughter of Nathan Gates, a wealthy man, living in East Haddam, Conn. She was of a truly pious disposition, and had an excellent education, which peculiarly fitted her for the duties of a preceptress to her children, especially at a period when schools were rarities in the half cleared and thinly settled districts. Lucy profited by the talents and virtues of her mother. Jan. 24, 1796, she was married to Joseph Smith, and received from her brother, Stephen Mack, and John Mudget, his partner, in business, a marriage present of $1,000. Her husband owned a good farm at Tunbridge, on which they settled. The fruits of this marriage were seven sons—Alvin, Hyrum, Joseph, Samuel H., Ephraim, William and Don Carlos: and three daughters—Sophrona, Catherine and Lucy. In 1802, Lucy Smith, with her husband, moved to Randolph, Vermont, where they opened a mercantile establishment. Mr. Smith here embarked in an adventure of gensang, to China, but was robbed of the proceeds, and was much involved thereby. To liquidate his debts, he had to sell his farm at Tunbridge, to which he had then returned, and to use his wife’s marriage present, which till then had remained untouched. From Tunbridge they removed to Royalton. They remained there a few months, and then went to reside at Sharon, Windsor county, where Joseph the Prophet was born. They again returned to Tunbridge and Royalton successively, but, in 1811, their circumstances having much improved, they quitted Vermont for Lebanon, in New Hampshire. Here their children were all seized with the typhus fever, though none fatally, and Joseph was afflicted with a fever sore. When health was restored to the family their circumstances were very low, and they returned to Vermont, and began to farm in Norwich. The first two years the crops failed, and the third the frost destroyed them, which determined Mr. Smith to remove to the State of New York. His wife and family did not remove until he had made preparations for them in Palmyra. Here the whole family set themselves industriously to repair their losses, Mr. Smith and his sons to farming, and Mrs. Smith to painting oil cloth coverings for tables, and were so prospered that in two years [p.691] they were again comfortably situated. After four years had elapsed, they removed to Manchester. In the alternate scenes of adversity and prosperity, the subject of religion was a constant theme with both Mr. and Mrs. Smith, though the former never subscribed to any particular sect. Both were occasionally favored of the Lord with dreams or visions of the approaching work which he was about to commence on the earth, which prepared them for the mission of their son Joseph, and the important part they were destined to take in it. Lucy Smith and several of her children joined the Presbyterian body, in the year 1819, but after Joseph had received the first visitation of the angel, and had communicated the matter to his parents, she manifested intense interest in it, and from that time her history became identified with the mission of her son. She and her husband were baptized in April, 1830, and she removed to Kirtland, Ohio, in 1831, with the first company of Saints, where she rejoined her husband who had previously gone there in company with his son Joseph. Bro. Smith was several times torn from his wife by the enemies of the Saints, and unjustly imprisoned, but she manifested on all such occasions a calm assurance that all would end well. In 1838, all the family set out for Far West, Mo., a tedious and unpleasant journey, mostly through an unsettled country. They remained in Missouri until the extermination of the Saints from the State, participating in their numerous trials. On the occasion of the last arrest of her sons Joseph and Hyrum in that State, by the mob, in October, 1838, and when a court martial had decided to shoot them and others, she and her husband could distinctly hear the horrid yellings of the mob, which was encamped at a short distance from their house. Several guns were fired, and the heart-broken parents supposed the bloody work was accomplished. Mother Smith thus describes these moments: “Mr. Smith, folding his arms tight across his heart, cried out, ‘Oh, my God! my God! they have killed my son! they have murdered him! and I must die, for I cannot live without him!’ I had no word of consolation to give him, for my heart was broken within me; my agony was unutterable. I assisted him to the bed, and he fell back upon it helpless as a child, for he had not strength to stand upon his feet. The shrieking continued; no tongue can describe the sound which was conveyed to our ears; no heart can imagine the sensations of our breasts, as we listened to those awful screams. Had the army been composed of so many blood-hounds, wolves and panthers, they could not have made a sound more terrible.” Joseph and Hyrum were not shot at that time, but were carried to Richmond, by way of Independence, and thence to Liberty. At their departure from Far West, the heart-stricken mother pressed through the crowd to the wagon containing her sons, exclaiming: “I am the mother of the Prophet; is there not a gentleman here, who will assist me to that wagon, that I may take a last look at my children, and speak to them once more before I die?” With her daughter Lucy, she gained the wagon, and grasped Joseph’s hand, which was thrust between the cover and the wag-on-bed, but he spoke not to her until she said: “Joseph, do speak to your poor mother once more, I cannot bear to go till I hear your voice.” At this he sobbed out: “God bless you, mother;” and while his sister Lucy was pressing a kiss on his hand, the wagon dashed off. Mourning and lamentation now filled the old lady’s breast, “but,” says she, “in the midst of it I found consolation that surpassed all earthly comfort. I was filled with the Spirit of God.” Shortly after this, Bro. Smith removed his family to Quincy, Illinois, to which place most of the Saints had previously fled, and in common with them suffered the hardships and privations which characterized the extermination from Missouri. From Quincy the family removed to Commerce (Nauvoo), where Bro. Smith, after blessing his children individually, closed his earthly career Sept. 14, 1840. Mother Smith was thus left a widow, worn out with toil and sorrow, her house having been filled with sick like a hospital, from the time of the expulsion from Missouri. Many of the sick owed the preservation of their lives to her motherly care, attention and skill, in nursing them, which she did without pecuniary consideration and the extent of which can only be appreciated by those who are personally acquainted with the dreadful scenes of sickness and distress which followed, in consequence of [p.692] the Missouri expulsion. Aug. 7, 1841, she was called upon to part with her youngest son, Don Carlos, a promising young man who died suddenly in Nauvoo. In 1843 she took up her residence with her son Joseph, and was shortly afterwards taken very sick, and brought nigh to death. She had scarcely recovered when she was called to suffer almost overwhelming grief for the assassination of her sons Joseph and Hyrum in June, 1844. When she was permitted to see the corpses of her murdered sons, her sorrow knew no bounds. “I was,” she says, “swallowed up in the depths of my afflictions; and though my soul was filled with horror past imagination, yet I was dumb, until I arose again to contemplate the spectacle before me. Oh! at that moment how my mind flew through every scene of sorrow and distress which we had passed together, in which they had shown the innocence and sympathy which filled their guileless hearts. As I looked upon their peaceful, smiling countenances, I seemed almost to hear them say, ‘Mother, weep not for us, we have overcome the world by love; we carried to them the gospel, that their souls might be saved; they slew us for our testimony, and thus placed us beyond their power; their ascendancy is for a moment, ours is an eternal triumph.'” As if the blow had not been sufficient to crush a mother’s heart, Samuel Harrison Smith, in escaping from the murderers of his brothers, overheated himself, which brought on a fever that terminated fatally, July 30, 1844. Of the six sons which she had reared to manhood, Mother Smith now had but one (William) left, and he was at the time of the martyrdom at a distance from Nauvoo. But recovering somewhat from the effect of her affliction, she composed a very interesting little work entitled “Biographical Sketches of Joseph Smith the Prophet and his Progenetors for many Generations,” which was published in England some years afterwards, and which at the present time is being reprinted in serial form in the “Improvement Era.” At the general conference of the Church held in Nauvoo, in October, 1845, Mother Smith addressed the Saints. She reviewed the scenes through which her son and the Church had passed and exhorted parents to exercise a proper care over the welfare of their children. She expressed her intention to accompany the Saints into the wilderness, and requested that her bones, after her death, should be brought back and be deposited in Nauvoo with her husband’s, which Pres. Brigham Young, and the whole conference, by vote, promised should be done. Mother Smith, however, never came to Utah. From the time of the removal of the Church to the Rocky Mountains until her death, which occurred in Nauvoo, Ill., May 5, 1855, she mostly resided with her youngest daughter, Lucy Miliken, excepting the last two years, when she resided with her daughter-in-law, Mrs. Emma Bidamon, widow of her son Joseph.   From http://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?db=ldsbio&gss=sfs28_ms_db&new=1&rank=1&msT=1&gsfn=lucy&gsln=mack&MSAV=1&uidh=m42    

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