Lucy Mack Smith
(The Mother of the Prophet Joseph Smith.)
Lucy Mack Smith was born July 8, 1775 at Gilsum, Cheshire County, New Hampshire, the youngest of Solomon Mack and Lydia Gates' eight children.
While in Tunbridge she met local farmer, Joseph Smith Sr. After a one-year courtship, they married on January 24, 1796. Joseph and Lucy Smith would have ten children: Alvin, Hyrum, Joseph Jr., Samuel H., Ephraim, William, Don Carlos, Sophrona, Catherine and Lucy.
Lucy was very spiritual and had great faith. She read the Bible to her children. Lucy and a few of her children started attending a local Presbyterian church until Joseph’s first experience with the angel, Moroni in the mid 1820’s.
In 1820, Lucy’s son Joseph Jr. told her a story about God, The Father, and Jesus Christ appearing to him while he prayed in the woods. Lucy believed her son’s story. From then on, she'd be identified with her inspiring support of the Restoration.
Lucy and Joseph Sr. were baptized when the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was organized April, 1830.
Lucy Smith continued to live with Joseph’s widow Emma.
Lucy intended to follow the saints to Utah with Brigham Young, but she was to old a frail. She died at home in Nauvoo in May 1856, at the age of 81.
After Joseph Jr. was given the plates by Moroni, he sometimes hid them at his parent’s house. Lucy Mack Smith was asked if she ever saw the plates during this time. "I asked her [Lucy Smith] if she saw the plates. She said no, it was not for her to see them, but she hefted and handled them."
While she didn’t see the plates, she was shown the Urim and Thummim, the divine interpreters that been hidden with the gold plates which Joseph used to translate them. In her journal she wrote,
"On the morning of September 22, after Joseph had returned from the hill, he placed the article [the Nephite interpreters] of which he spoke into my hands, and, upon examination, I found that it consisted of two smooth three-cornered diamonds set in glass, and the glasses were set in silver bows, which were connected with each other in much the same way as old-fashioned spectacles. . . . He [Joseph Smith] handed me the breastplate spoken of in his history. It was wrapped in a thin muslin handkerchief, so thin that I could feel its proportions without any difficulty. It was concave on one side and convex on the other, and extended from the neck downwards, as far as the center of the stomach of a man of extraordinary size. It had four straps of the same material, for the purpose of fastening it to the breast."
References:
William J. Hamblin, Review of Books on the Book of Mormon, p.517
LDS Biographical Encyclopedia, Andrew Jenson
History of the Church
Encyclopedia of Mormonism
Lucy Mack Smith, History of Joseph Smith
Jaynann Payne, “Lucy Mack Smith: Woman of Great Faith,” Ensign, Nov 1972, 68
Information from & by permission of:
Kelly Bingham
Website: "Moroni's Latter-Day Saint Page"
Edited by Phil Michel