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October 27, 1835

On October 27, 1835, Joseph Smith’s sister-in-law Mary Bailey Smith, wife of Samuel H. Smith, gave birth to a baby girl, Susanna. The delivery, however, did not go entirely well for Mary. Joseph recorded in a journal entry for that day how complications with the delivery rendered his sister-in-law in “a very dangerous situation” that required immediate medical attention.[1] Infant mortality was a heartache that Joseph and his beloved wife Emma knew all too well, they themselves having already lost children in childbirth and early infancy.[2] The threat of losing Mary or her child was real, and the Smiths took no chances. Another Smith brother, Don Carlos, was therefore dispatched to nearby Chardon, Ohio, to fetch Frederick G. Williams, one of Joseph’s counselors in the First Presidency and, importantly, a physician.[3]

While Williams attended to Mary, Joseph “went out into the field and bowed before the Lord and called upon him in mighty prayer in her behalf.” In response, the Lord assured Joseph in the present revelation that his sister-in-law would be spared and would be “delivered of a living child.” True to this divine promise, both Mary and her newborn daughter survived the delivery, the former going on to live for another five and a half years until her death at age thirty-two on January 25, 1841, and the latter living a full life and dying at age seventy on December 14, 1905.[4] Joseph, grateful at the happy outcome of this intercession, recorded that “what God had manifested to [him] was fulfilled every whit.” His sister-in-law and her child safe under the care of Dr. Williams, that same evening the Prophet preached to “a crowded congregation.”[5]

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The word of the Lord came unto me, saying, my servant Frederick G. Williams shall come and shall have wisdom given him to deal prudently. And my handmaiden Mary Bailey Smith shall be delivered of a living child and be spared.

Notes

[1] JSP, J1:75.

[2] Joseph and Emma’s first unnamed child died at birth on June 15, 1828, as did unnamed twins in 1831. Another son, Don Carlos, died in 1841 at fourteen months. A final, unnamed son died at birth on February 6, 1842. Of Joseph and Emma’s nine biological children, only four lived to adulthood. (An adopted set of twins can be counted in the family, with one of them, Julia Murdock Smith, living to adulthood, and the other, Joseph Murdock Smith, dying in infancy.) “Joseph and Emma Hale Smith Family,” Church History Topics, https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/history/topics/joseph-and-emma-hale-smith-family.

[3] JSP, J1:75.

[4] Biographies of both Mary and Susanna are available at www.josephsmithpapers.org.

[5] JSP, J1:76.