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Jenkins, my son-in-law, my heart, as it were, bleeds for thee.
—Joseph Smith Sr.

ALL SEEMS TO BE FLOURISHING in the Church of Christ during those early years in Kirtland. Katharine relished the opportunity to be at the hub of church undertakings when she stayed with her parents in Kirtland. She enthusiastically wrote that the “church prospered greatly” in Ohio, “and members were added unto us daily.”[1] Further to the west in Missouri, where Joseph Jr. had hoped to establish Zion, prospects were less encouraging. Katharine was distantly apprised of the Saints being driven from their homes in Jackson County.

At Kirtland, Katharine played an active role in assisting the dozens of missionary companionships sent in different directions throughout the country. That soon included her own husband. On Tuesday, March 12, 1833, during a meeting of high priests assembled on the top floor of Newel K. Whitney’s store, Jenkins received his first proselytizing assignment. Joseph Smith appointed him to labor with Truman Waite, a convert of less than two months, on a mission “to the East.” After accepting the call, Jenkins was ordained an elder by his brother-in-law Hyrum Smith during the same meeting.[2]

With little time to prepare, the missionaries left Kirtland just three days later, on March 15.[3] Katharine described the appearance and efforts of Jenkins and her brothers as they departed on their missions and left “on foot without purse or scrip.” These early elders in the Church of Christ “only took their cane and their knapsack on their back, with a few books and one change of clothing,” recalled Katharine. “When they were tired and footsore they would sit down by the way side or by a stream of water and bathe their blistered feet and call on the Lord for strength and then arise and travel on.”[4] She obviously admired her brothers for the sacrifices they had made to make new converts and was thrilled that her husband was now willing to make a similar contribution.

Truman Waite summarized their missionary efforts in a report he wrote up after they returned, indicating they initially traveled northeast until they reached the town of Westfield, Chautauqua County, New York, where a branch of the church had already been established. After spending a few days preaching at Westfield, they continued further east to Warsaw and then southeast to Prattsburg, New York. Prattsburg was the furthest east the elders traveled, as they stopped and spent most of their mission laboring in the region.[5] Jenkins likely targeted that area of New York because it was only sixteen miles from where he grew up and most of his family was still in the area. The elders likely stayed with and attempted to proselytize Jenkins’s family, but there is no evidence that any of his family ever joined.[6] However, the Salisbury family was warm and welcoming to traveling missionaries in subsequent years. In the summer of 1835, Jedediah Grant and Harvey Stanley were welcome guests at the Salisbury home during their mission several years later, evidence that the family was at least tacitly supportive of Jenkins’s decision to join the Church of Christ.[7]

Prattsburg Presbyterian Church and Franklin Academy. Date and photographer unknown.

Jenkins was drawn to Prattsburg because he knew the town had long been a center of religious activity in the region, largely controlled by the Presbyterians since the early 1800s. A massive sixty-by-forty-foot Presbyterian church dominated the town’s landscape, joined by a recently completed parsonage for the Presbyterian clergymen. A large academy stood adjacent to the church and parsonage, which was overseen by a local reverend and used by Presbyterian leaders for study and training.[8] As the elders entered the town seeking an audience, they were immediately met by several Presbyterian leaders who whisked them away into a room in the academy under the pretense of listening to the basic tenets of their faith.[9] Salisbury and Waite were ignorant of the religious tension that had pervaded the community since the Methodists and Baptists had made inroads in town during the previous decade, infiltrating the Presbyterians’ stronghold. One example had been the Stephen and Clarissa Prentiss family, who had been staunch Presbyterians since they arrived in Prattsburg in 1805, but family members eventually broke with the faith over local leaders’ strict attitudes about disciplining its members and the Temperance movement. Their daughter Narcissa Prentiss Whitman, who was born at Prattsburg and was just a year older than Jenkins, followed her father’s lead in breaking with the church in the mid-1820s. She later gained notoriety for becoming a prominent missionary to the Indigenous population in Oregon country, being one of the first two women to cross the Rocky Mountains. Losing such a prominent and religiously committed family had agitated the presiding Presbyterian Reverend George Rudd and made him increasingly more protective of his adherents.[10]

Unaware of the tension existing in town, the elders naively thought the clergymen were interested in their message or that they were at least tolerant enough to allow them to preach in their spacious meetinghouse. After Reverend Rudd and several of his colleagues sat down with them in their academy room, the meeting quickly turned hostile. Waite recalled that two of the men “abused” them to such an extent that they were “obliged to leave the house.” Reverend Rudd was known for his volatility while preaching with vigor and energy, even using “forcible gestures” during his sermons. Such tactics evidently frightened the much younger missionaries. Waite did not specify whether there was a physical altercation or if the “abuse” meant Rudd simply denigrated their teachings but recorded, “We were very ill treated by the Pharrisaical [Pharisaical] Presbyterians.”[11] The clergymen likely felt justified in their treatment of the traveling missionaries, as they sought to protect their flock from the upstart religion. They had undoubtedly heard of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon by that juncture because Palmyra was only forty miles to the north.

We do not know if the two made any converts during their mission. Judging from the fact that Waite traveled a similar course during a second mission the following year, meant they likely had experienced at least some success, even if that simply meant plowing new ground. When Jedediah M. Grant and Harvey Stanley preached in that same region of New York in the summer of 1835, locals remembered Salisbury and Waite’s earlier mission, evidencing their influence.[12] After three months, the elders returned to Kirtland in mid-June, having traveled more than six hundred miles.[13]

Village blacksmith, ca. 1850s. Courtesy of Library of Congress.

In the ensuing years, Jenkins’s skill as a blacksmith proved invaluable to the Saints. Construction on the temple had begun in earnest by that summer, and most Saints contributed substantial amounts of time in constructing the edifice. “When he [Jenkins] came home [from his mission] he found that he was greatly needed in the shops,” remembered a granddaughter. “New wagons were being made and old ones mended. The wagons were needed to transfer material from the quarries to the temple site.”[14] Jenkins must have been a skilled blacksmith if he worked on wagons and carriages in Kirtland. A novice blacksmith could shoe horses and manufacture typical farm implements such as shovels, hoops, pales, plows. A more skilled blacksmith had the additional expertise of “making machine parts, mill irons, and barouche (or carriage) irons as well as repairing equipment in steam mills and sawmills.”[15] His extended apprenticeship in New York provided him with an indispensable trade in the frontier communities where the Salisburys lived. The exception would have been the communities of Kirtland and Chardon, which were well established by the time the Saints arrived, likely making it more difficult for Jenkins to launch his own business or to find work outside of the temple’s construction. Moreover, despite the necessity of a blacksmith in bustling communities throughout the country, they were typically among the lower socioeconomic class in nineteenth-century America.[16]

Construction and repair on the wagons used for the temple’s construction probably provided Jenkins a meager livelihood. The Saints’ generous donations for the temple not only paid for materials but also provided much-needed income for those who otherwise would have been unemployed.[17] Considering the limited resources among the Saints during those early years in Kirtland, pay for his efforts constructing and repairing wagons was probably only minimal. He also lent his assistance in transporting stone and mortar for the temple’s foundation and walls, working alongside his brother-in-law William Smith.[18] The Salisburys probably stayed with members of the Smith family for portions of the week, rather than make the daily twenty-mile round trip from Chardon to Kirtland. The Smith family also traveled to Chardon with regularity. Joseph visited his sisters at Chardon in late November 1832, recording in his journal that he “found them all well,” and again on January 16, 1834, when Joseph spent the night at the Salisburys’ home.[19]

Notwithstanding his work contributions on the temple, some members of the church began to have reservations about Jenkins’s conduct. On December 27, 1833, a bishop’s court convened to investigate unspecified complaints made against Jenkins. However, because the accusers did not show up in person to the trial, his case was dismissed. Judging from subsequent accounts of his behavior, the accusation was likely credible, but the specific complaint made against Jenkins that December was never reconsidered.[20] Those accusations regarding his standing in the church in December 1833 were a factor in his being summoned again by leaders the following year.

As early as the summer of 1831, Joseph Smith had received a revelation appointing Jackson County, Missouri, as a place of gathering and began appointing Saints in Ohio to relocate eight hundred miles to the west to help settle the area. After establishing themselves in the region, the Saints almost immediately began to clash with the Missourians due to political, cultural, and religious differences, until locals forcibly drove them from the county. By the year 1834 the situation remained at an impasse, until Joseph received another revelation to organize a company (later designated Zion’s Camp) to assist in reclaiming the Saints’ properties in Jackson County.[21]

Whatever his difficulties had been that winter, Jenkins enlisted in Zion’s Camp in the spring 1834, where more than two hundred volunteers marched to Missouri to redeem Saints properties in Jackson County, Missouri, after having been driven out the previous November. Jenkins joined his brothers-in-law Hyrum, Joseph, and William Smith, who were all part of the trek. Writing to his wife Emma from Indiana, Joseph Smith mentioned two of his cousins, Jesse and George A. Smith, along with Jenkins and William Smith, who were all “well and are humble [and] are detirmined to be faithful.”[22] While Joseph spoke positively of Jenkins when he included a general report of his Smith relatives, others in the extended Smith family evidently did not share that same view. Sixteen-year-old George A. Smith felt that Jenkins’s reputation on the expedition was not above reproach. Smith recalled:

During the [day] being fatigued with carrying my musket, I put it into the baggage wagon. . . . When I arrived in the evening my gun could not be found, . . . and I was ridiculed for carelessness; Jenkins Salisbury took the most pleasure. I afterwards learned that my gun was pawned for whiskey by one of our company, and have always believed that Jenkins Salisbury was the culprit.[23]

George A.’s supposition was not without foundation because Jenkins later admitted to his penchant for drinking strong liquor. He appears to have struggled intermittently with excessive drinking during his marriage to Katharine, and it may explain his unpredictable and temperamental behavior.[24] His behavior was not entirely exceptional because heavy alcohol use was common in the early 1800s and nearly always present at any major event or town celebration. “During the first third of the nineteenth century the typical American annually drank more distilled liquor [up to 90 proof] than at any time in our history,” summarized one historian, and such use led to an increase of reported family abuse, desertion and assaults.[25] Still, Jenkins’s use of alcohol crossed those societal norms.

Growing up without his parents’ example and discipline during his teen years apparently had its impact because Jenkins seemed to struggle with providing adequately for his family throughout his and Katharine’s marriage, and he began to drink heavily in his early twenties. Though Jenkins’s sister loved him and remembered his kindness in providing her with gifts when they were children, she pointed to a weakness evident in his personality that had earlier been a problem. Writing Katharine much later in life, Samantha Salisbury Arnold expressed her sympathy to her sister-in-law when she disclosed her view that her brother had likely “been unsteady throughout the better part of their marriage.”[26] That perception could have been something that Samantha gleaned from Jenkins’s correspondence with his family after his marriage, but neither Jenkins, nor Katharine for that matter, appear to have kept in close contact with the family after they left New York. More likely, her observation of his inconstancy was something she detected after he moved into adulthood after he had completed his apprenticeship and returned to the family. It appears she had become aware of his drinking habits before he left for Ohio in 1831 because Samantha was astute in her assessment of her brother.

Wilkins Jenkins Salisbury, 1809–53. Photograph ca. 1850. Photographer unknown. Courtesy of Mary Dennis.

Besides his three-month mission in the first half of 1833 and his journey with Zion’s Camp in 1834, Jenkins appears to have remained at home with Katharine. However, his inconstant behavior gradually grew more disruptive in the home and, because of Katharine’s prominent position in being a sister to the Church’s Prophet, began to reflect negatively on the church. Jenkins’s use of alcohol eventually led to periods of absence from the family, which made home life more trying for Katharine after the birth of their first surviving daughter, born on October 3, 1834. Appropriately enough, they named this daughter Lucy after Katharine’s mother.[27] A son followed less than a year later, born on September 18, 1835, whom they named Solomon, after Katharine’s grandfather Mack.[28]

All too often, Katharine found herself alone in raising her two young children. The emotional and financial strain on Katharine was challenging, and those closest to her noticed its impact. At a meeting on December 9, 1834, the greater Smith family gathered to receive their patriarchal blessings from their father, Joseph Smith Sr. Less than a year earlier, the Prophet Joseph had acted as voice in ordaining his father to the office of church patriarch, blessing him that he should predict whatsoever would befall his own posterity as well as the general membership of the Church. What should have been a joyous and spiritual occasion for the Salisburys was marred by Jenkins’s recent behavior. In a handwritten note at the top of Jenkins’s blessing it read, “This man, at the time of receiving his blessing, was not a member of the church, having been expelled for intemperance.” Both Jenkins’s and Katharine’s blessings were replete with references to Jenkins’s recent apostasy. “Jenkins, my son-in-law, my heart, as it were, bleeds for thee,” Father Smith had started his blessing. “Thou hast turned thy back upon the cause of God: thou hast conducted thyself wickedly, and brought reproach upon the church, because thou art a member of my family.” By the time of this meeting, just three years after the Salisburys’ marriage, Joseph Sr. and Lucy were aware of Jenkins’s inconstant behavior, and it had become public knowledge. Joseph Sr. was direct in calling Jenkins to repentance no less than eight times in his blessing but also held out hope that “if thou wilt turn and humble thyself, the Lord will yet bless thee, and thou shalt go forth in his name and do great good.”[29]

Joseph Sr.’s sympathy for his daughter’s predicament spilled out in Katharine’s blessing. “My heart mourns for thee in consequence of the transgression of thy husband,” her father began. “My soul is grieved that he should suffer himself to be lead away from his holy calling.” Joseph Sr. commended Katharine for her conscientious concern for her parents’ well-being and prophesied that she would play a future role in instructing female members of the church in “virtue and sobriety.” But nearly half her blessing addressed the impropriety of her husband.[30]

The couple must have had mixed emotions leaving the meeting. Did Katharine find hope in what was proclaimed in their blessings, or did it only increase her fears about her husband’s character? If nothing else, it clearly demonstrated the supportiveness of her immediate family in their expressions of compassion for her circumstances. The ensuing weeks brought at least some relief to Katharine because Jenkins appears to have responded favorably to his father-in-law’s call to repentance. Jenkins’s former missionary companion Truman Waite also played a role in his reformation as he labored with Jenkins during those winter months to help restore his faith. Waite recorded that he “[re]baptized J. Salisbury in the course of the winter,” probably in January or early February of 1835.[31]

Joseph Smith’s role as president and prophet had expanded by the mid-1830s as he was viewed as the mouthpiece of the Lord, receiving more than one hundred revelations before the Kirtland Temple’s dedication. Those divine instructions more firmly established church protocol and procedures and defined the structure of the church’s leadership.

On February 14, Jenkins evidenced his faith by attending a meeting where the Quorum of the Twelve was organized, and he was among those who were commended for marching with Zion’s Camp the previous summer. Several weeks later, on March 1, Jenkins was installed as a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy. He was reordained an elder during his blessing, in which his father-in-law likely acted as voice[32] and Joseph Sr. once again included items related to his family. After instructing him to “go into all the world to preach the gospel to every creature,” the pronouncement included a charge that after his missionary service, “you . . . shall return to the embraces of your family, and they shall have much peace with you.”[33] Including this counsel in his blessing was an indirect way of encouraging Jenkins to continue to take a more active role in home responsibilities, a concern Joseph Sr. had expressed a few months earlier in his patriarchal blessing.

While Jenkins expressed his willingness to fulfill a proselytizing assignment with other members of his quorum at the time of his ordination, there is no record of him serving a mission that year.[34] Perhaps he stayed close to home because Katharine was in the late stages of pregnancy that summer and their son Solomon was born in September.

In the fall of 1835, William Smith had several disagreements with his brother Joseph over church protocol, which ultimately led to a physical altercation where William assaulted his older brother, severely injuring Joseph’s side.[35] During these months of struggle, both Joseph and William went to other members of the extended Smith family to gain support and defend their side of the conflict. Joseph was upset that William had “prejudiced the mind” of their brother Samuel, as well as Sophronia’s husband Calvin Stoddard.[36] Stoddard had experienced his own conflict with Joseph earlier that same year, going so far as to seek legal action against his prophet-brother-in-law. Joseph was acquitted of any wrongdoing in the case, but Stoddard continued to experience his own vacillating loyalty to the church and Joseph.[37] Due to his own recent conflict, Stoddard sympathized with William’s perspective. William also appears to have gone to the Salisburys with his complaints, gaining a sympathetic ear. While the standoff dragged on for several months, Joseph noted in his journal how the conflict had also impacted his sisters. “The Devil has made a violent attack on Br. Wm [Smith] and Br Calvin [Stoddard] and the powers of darkness, seeme [to] lower over their minds, and not only theirs but [has] cast a gloomy shade over the minds of . . . some of my brothers and sisters, which prevents them from seeing things as they realy are.”[38] Eventually the brothers came to a place where they would reconcile their differences. With their father acting as mediator, Joseph and William met on New Year’s Day 1836, both apologizing for the role they had played in the conflict. That sentiment appears to have permeated the rest of the Smith family.[39]

Kirtland Temple, 1870. Photograph by W. A. Faze. Courtesy of Church History Library.

Less than two weeks later, Jenkins was preaching to a Sunday-morning gathering of the Saints in Kirtland, along with his brothers-in-law Samuel and Don Carlos, both of whom preached later in the afternoon. “They all did well concidering their youth,” Joseph Smith summarized of their collective sermons, “and bid fair to make useful men in the vineyard of the Lord.”[40] Jenkins had turned twenty-seven the previous day and was only three years younger than Joseph. It is somewhat surprising that the Prophet noted the inexperience of both Jenkins and Samuel (also twenty-seven at the time), considering their age and tenure in the church. Joseph’s comment would seem to have been more befitting of his brother Don Carlos, who was only nineteen. Yet Joseph’s passing comment was less about age than it was about ability. After the two had served a lengthy mission together in the early 1830s, Orson Hyde described Samuel as being “slow of speech and unlearned,” and Samuel often deferred to Hyde and other missionary companions to lead out in explaining the tenets of the gospel message.[41] If the same was true of Jenkins, it might explain why he was reluctant to accept another mission assignment with his colleagues in the Seventy in the year 1835. While both Jenkins and Samuel were experienced missionaries, their eloquence appears to have lagged behind that of other church officers.

Though not specifically named, Jenkins was assumedly among members of the Seventy who received their anointings later that same month in the Kirtland Temple. The spiritual outpouring many Saints experienced in those months leading up to, and during the temple’s dedication, were some of most spiritual experiences of their lives. Many recorded remarkable spiritual manifestations that helped anchor their faith in the Church of Christ.[42] Blessing meetings were also a common occurrence during the mid-1830s, where according to an earlier revelation, children were to be brought by their parents to be blessed by the elders of the Church.[43] Accordingly, Katharine brought her two children, Lucy and Solomon, where they were blessed by her brother Joseph. She found comfort in Joseph’s declaration upon the head of her infant son Solomon, “that the child would live to preach the gospel.”[44]

Katharine attended church meetings in the months leading up to the temple’s dedication and likely participated in a choir organized in Kirtland that met together for practice twice a week.[45] Katharine inherited her love of music from both her parents and had grown up singing hymns as part of their evening routine.[46] Being a part of the choir was a way that women could gather and connect during a time when their husbands were participating in meetings almost nightly. Caroline Crosby, six years older than Katharine, recalled participating in the choir in the early part of 1836, made up of everyone from the “young adult[s] to the old gray heads.” She also recounted how sisters would come at daylight on Sunday mornings to get a seat at church services held on the bottom floor of the printing office, which stood next to the temple.[47]

Katharine never mentioned her recollections of the Kirtland Temple dedication services later that spring but, like many Saints that memorable week, probably felt amply rewarded for her many sacrifices she had made in its construction. Katharine and her sisters, along with their mother Lucy, had contributed heavily to help prepare the interior of the temple, including working on the curtains and rugs that helped add beauty to the massive structure at the time of its dedication.[48]

Jenkins may have missed the meetings associated with the temple that memorable week. At the same time as the spiritual jubilation was occurring with the temple’s dedication, Jenkins was again wrestling with his own faith. His reformation during those early months of 1836 was evidently short-lived. He abruptly left home the same week as the temple dedication, leaving his family in an impoverished condition without enough wood to heat their home. More than a foot of snow blanketed the community of Kirtland the week he left, and the unusually cold weather persisted for several more weeks.[49] Jenkins left Katharine and their two children—both still under the age of two—with little or no food. Katharine was uncertain as to where he had gone or when he would return, which uncertainty was grueling for her. Jenkins had begun drinking again.

The Smith family became aware of Katharine’s circumstances and stepped in to offer support. They were growing increasingly concerned over Jenkins’s intermittent abandonment of his family, and his neglect of his church assignment as a Seventy. An earlier revelation received by Joseph Smith had reiterated the biblical mandate that men who were physically capable were to provide for their families or they shall not have place in the church.[50] When Jenkins finally returned in early May, Oliver Cowdery led out in bringing an ecclesiastical charge of “unchristianlike conduct” against Jenkins at a high council meeting held in Kirtland on May 14, 1836. During his trial, both Joseph and Hyrum Smith were called upon to testify about what they knew of their brother-in-law. Joseph testified that Jenkins had “neglected his family [and] left them in a starving condition and without Wood . . . when he ought to have been home.” Evidence that the brothers were aware of their sister’s mindset and circumstances during Jenkins’s absence also came from Hyrum’s testimony. “He [Jenkins] left his family without sufficient wood to last more than two days,” confirmed Hyrum, “and no provision of any consequence in the house.” He further stated that when Jenkins left “he gave his family no intimation where he was going or when he should return,” and from what Hyrum had learned from his sister Katharine, had no intention of returning. Other accusations against Salisbury included the use of liquor, being intimate with other women, and talebearing—defined as spreading malicious secrets with the intent to do harm. John Johnson, who kept a tavern on the Kirtland flats, testified that he had personally witnessed Salisbury drink strong liquor on several occasions.[51]

In his defense, Jenkins denied being unfaithful to Katharine but confessed his propensity in “drinking strong liquor” and “talebearing.” He never addressed how he had abandoned his family during the previous month and a half, which was probably Joseph and Hyrum’s foremost concern. Sidney Rigdon, who presided over Jenkins’s church trial, recommended that he be stripped of his office of an elder and of his membership in the Church, “until there be a thorough reformation.” The high council unanimously concurred.[52] It was the second time in less than a year that Jenkins had been expelled from the Church.

It wasn’t just her brother Joseph’s revelations that would have led community members to take exception to Jenkins’s conduct. Societal expectations during this era mandated that a husband was obligated to support his wife and children, and some wives who filed for divorce cited their husband’s failure to provide as the primary cause.[53] Still, divorce was rare in the first half of the nineteenth century and only when a partner had “flagrantly digressed” the laws of marriage. Women were economically and legally dependent on their husbands and had little recourse when they experienced neglect by their husband. Divorce was difficult to obtain, and in cases where it could be obtained it still often left women impoverished and stigmatized. Even in cases of abandonment, women rarely followed through with legal action that would formally end the marriage. That meant that separation was more common than divorce, and partial estrangement was more common than total separation.[54] There is no evidence that Katharine ever considered such a monumental step. Her dependency on Jenkins meant she often suffered in silence with very limited options.

Notes

[1] Katharine Salisbury (Fountain Green, IL) to Dear Sisters of the “Home Column,” May 16, 1886, Saints’ Herald 33, no. 26 (July 3, 1886): 404–5.

[2] Minute Book 1, [ca. 3 December 1832–30 November 1837], March 12, 1833, 11, CHL. Truman Waite was baptized by Hyrum Smith on January 20, 1833, and ordained a priest the following day. Truman Waite, report, 1833, 1, Missionary Reports, 1831–1900, CHL.

[3] Waite, report, 1833, 1.

[4] Katharine Salisbury (Fountain Green, IL) to Dear Sister Walker, February 27, 1888, Saints’ Herald 35, no. 11 (March 17, 1888): 164.

[5] Waite, report, 1833, 3.

[6] Jenkins’s sister Samantha Salisbury Arnold, who lived in Gorham, New York, near where she and Jenkins grew up, reported that visits from her brother were rare. In 1854 she indicated that it had been fourteen years since she had seen her brother last. Samantha Arnold (n.p.) to Katharine Salisbury, January 1, 1853 [1854], copy of original in Katharine Smith Salisbury Correspondence, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT.

[7] Harvey Stanley Journal, in Jedediah M. Grant, journal, 1836 April–1839 August, 9, CHL.

[8] W. W. Clayton, History of Steuben County, New York, with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of Some of Its Prominent Men and Pioneers (Philadelphia: Lewis, Peck, 1879), 359–62.

[9] Waite, report, 1833, 4–5.

[10] Both Narcissa and her father, Stephen, eventually rejoined the Presbyterian faith at Prattsburg. Julie Roy Jeffrey, Converting the West: A Biography of Narcissa Whitman (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), 8, 27–30.

[11] Waite, report, 1833, 4–5; and Jeffrey, Converting the West, 31.

[12] Stanley, journal, 9.

[13] Waite, report, 1833, 2–5. Truman Waite returned to the East on a mission in the fall of 1834, and again in the summer of 1835. In 1834, he again visited Westfield, and other towns in Chautauqua County, New York. In 1835, he traveled as far as Lyons, New York. Waite reported that he baptized seventeen into the church during his 1834 mission. Waite, report, August 18, 1835.

[14] Mary Salisbury Hancock, “The Three Sisters of the Prophet Joseph Smith, Part II,” Saints’ Herald 101, no. 3 (January 18, 1954): 10.

[15] Michele Gillespie, “Artisan Accommodation to the Slave South: The Case of William Talmage, a Blacksmith, 1834–1847,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 81, no. 2 (Summer 1997): 273.

[16] James C. Boyles, “‘Under a Spreading Chestnut-Tree’: The Blacksmith and His Forge in Nineteenth-Century American Art,” Journal of the Society for Industrial Archeology 34, no. 1–2 (2008): 10.

[17] Saints: The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days, vol. 1, The Standard of Truth, 1815–1846 (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2018), 213.

[18] Cleveland Herald report reproduced in “General Conference,” Saints’ Herald 30, no. 16 (April 21, 1883): 242.

[19] Dean C. Jessee, Mark Ashurst-McGee, and Richard L. Jensen, eds., Journals, Volume 1: 1832–1839, vol. 1 of the Journals series of The Joseph Smith Papers, ed. Dean C. Jessee, Ronald K. Esplin, and Richard Lyman Bushman (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press, 2008), 9, 24.

[20] Minute Book 1, 26.

[21] JSP, D3:3–5; JSP, D4:xviii–xxi.

[22] Joseph Smith to Emma Smith, May 18, 1834, reproduced in Matthew C. Godfrey et al., eds., Documents, Volume 4: April 1834–September 1835, vol. 4 of the Documents series of The Joseph Smith Papers, ed. Ronald K. Esplin and Matthew J. Grow (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press, 2016), 50.

[23] George A. Smith, “History of George Albert Smith: Zion’s Camp,” May 16–May 22, 1844, typescript, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT.

[24] Kirtland high council, minutes, May 16, 1836, in Minute Book 1, 206. Salisbury descendants have also mentioned Jenkins’s alcohol use in their family history. Warren Van Dine, a descendant through Katharine’s son Frederick, wrote, “There have been whispers in the Salisbury family through the years to the effect he [Jenkins] didn’t take religion quite as seriously as his Mormon in-laws. That he was known on occasion to drink a bottle of pop. Maybe with a little alcoholic content, but let’s call it pop anyway.” Warren L. Van Dine, “Statement about His Salisbury Family,” 1975, 15, typescript, Hancock County Historical Society, Carthage, IL.

[25] W. J. Rorabaugh, The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition (New York: Oxford Press, 1979), 7, 190, as cited in Patricia Lewis Noel, “Reviving His Work: Social Isolation, Religious Fervor and Reform in the Burned Over District of Western New York, 1790–1860,” (master’s thesis, Virginia Commonwealth University, 2006).

[26] Arnold to Salisbury, January 1, 1853 [1854].

[27] George A. Smith (Salt Lake City) to Cousin Catherine [Salisbury], August 17, 1865, Historian’s Office letterpress copybooks, 1854–1879, vol. 2, 1859–1869, CHL; John Smith Papers, 1833–1854, journal, 1846 February–1854 May, CHL; Lucy Mack Smith, Biographical Sketches of Joseph Smith the Prophet and His Progenitors for Many Generations (Liverpool: S. W. Richards, 1853), 43; Dorothy D. Dean, handwritten family group sheet, copy of original in author’s possession.

[28] Jenkins and Katharine named their first son Solomon J. Salisbury. The middle initial “J” presumably stood for Jenkins, after the middle name of his father, although there is no primary source to confirm that. Solomon J. Salisbury, Reminiscences of an Octogenarian (n.p.: Solomon J. Salisbury, 1922), 3; Smith to Cousin Catherine, August 17, 1865, John Smith Papers, 1833–1854; Lucy Mack Smith, Biographical Sketches, 43.

[29] Patriarchal Blessing of Jenkins Salisbury, December 9, 1834, in H. Michael Marquardt, comp., Early Patriarchal Blessings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Salt Lake City: Smith-Pettit Foundation, 2007), 18.

[30] Patriarchal Blessing of Katharine Salisbury, December 9, 1834, in Marquardt, Early Patriarchal Blessings, 18.

[31] Waite returned to Kirtland from a mission on December 17, 1835. He said he remained at Kirtland “through the winter[,] went to school about two months and a half,” and had baptized Jenkins during that time. Waite, report, August 18, 1835.

[32] Others who pronounced blessings that day included Joseph Smith Jr., Oliver Cowdery, and Sidney Rigdon. JSP, D4:265n262.

[33] JSP, D4:269.

[34] Jenkins expressed his willingness to serve a mission at a meeting held on May 2, 1835. JSP, D4:301–4.

[35] William and Joseph’s conflict lasted for approximately two months, from October 29, 1835, through January 1, 1836. Kyle R. Walker, William B. Smith: In the Shadow of a Prophet (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2015), 107–24.

[36] JSP, J1:80, 140.

[37] “To the Editor,” Painesville Telegraph 1 no. 25 (June 26, 1835): 3; and JSP, D4:347–49. Like Jenkins, Calvin Stoddard had experienced vacillating loyalty to Joseph Smith and the church. Hyrum Smith’s journal entry for February 2, 1832, indicated that he had “labored in a conference meeting with Calvin Stoddard which was called in consequence of his open rebellion against the laws of God.” Though Stoddard attempted reform that year, even serving a mission with Jared Carter, by December 1832 he gave up his preaching license, confessing that he had not magnified his priesthood office and transgressed. Hyrum Smith, diary, 18 November 1831–21 February 1835, 16–17, Joseph Smith Sr. Family Collection, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT; Gracia N. Jones, “Sophronia Smith McCleary,” in United by Faith: The Joseph Sr. and Lucy Mack Smith Family, ed. Kyle R. Walker (American Fork, UT: Covenant Communications; Provo, UT: BYU Studies, 2006), 172–77.

[38] JSP, J1:140.

[39] Walker, In the Shadow of a Prophet, 122–25.

[40] JSP, J1:147.

[41] Orson Hyde, “The History of Orson Hyde,” Millennial Star 26, no. 49 (December 3, 1864): 774. Daniel Tyler listened to Samuel preach on one occasion and indicated that his preaching “was more like a narrative than a sermon.” Daniel Tyler, “Incidents of Experience,” in Scraps of Biography (Salt Lake City: Juvenile Instructor, 1883), 23, as cited in Richard Lloyd Anderson, “Joseph Smith’s Brothers Nauvoo and After,” Ensign 9, no. 9 (September 1979), 31; Dean L. Jarman and Kyle R. Walker, “Samuel Harrison Smith,” in Walker, United by Faith, 217–20.

[42] JSP, J1:174–75.

[43] JSP, J1:125; see Doctrine and Covenants 20:70. For a discussion on these early blessing meetings, see Jonathan A. Stapley, The Power of Godliness: Mormon Liturgy and Cosmology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 57–60.

[44] Frederick V. Salisbury, “The Teachings and Testimonies of My Mother,” 1926–1928, unpublished manuscript, 20, Hancock County Historical Society, Carthage, IL.

[45] Edward Leo Lyman, Susan Ward Payne, and S. George Ellsworth, eds., No Place to Call Home: The 1807–1857 Life Writings of Caroline Barnes Crosby, Chronicler of Outlying Mormon Communities (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2005), 40.

[46] William Smith, “Notes Written on ‘Chambers’ Life of Joseph Smith,” ca. 1875, 28, CHL. Historian Michael Hicks presumes that Lucy may have been a part of the Palmyra Presbyterian choir, since the Mack family both sang and wrote hymns. Hicks further summarizes the Macks’ fondness of music: “Lucy Smith’s father, Solomon Mack, was enamored of Isaac Watts’s enormously popular Hymns and Psalms and tried, rather feebly, to emulate Watts in a set of verses published in his 1811 Narraitve [sic]. Lucy’s sisters Lovina and Lovisa, both of whom died young, composed several of their own hymn texts and sang duets on Watts’s lyrics. Lucy recalled Lovina chanting Watts with her dying breath. And Lovisa, whose voice was ‘high and clear,’ sang Watts’s 116^th Psalm (‘My God hath saved my soul from death’) later in life with ‘angelic harmony.’” Michael Hicks, Mormonism and Music: A History (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989), 4, 15–16n17.

[47] Lyman et al., No Place to Call Home, 42.

[48] Hancock, “Three Sisters, Part II,” 10; Backman, The Heavens Resound, 158–59.

[49] JSP, J1:199.

[50] See Doctrine and Covenants 75:28–29, and 1 Timothy 5:8.

[51] Kirtland high council, minutes, May 16, 1836, as cited in Brent M. Rogers et al., eds., Documents, Volume 5: October 1835–January 1838, vol. 5 of the Documents series of The Joseph Smith Papers, ed. Ronald K. Esplin and Matthew J. Grow, and Matthew C. Godfrey (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press, 2017), 243–46.

[52] Kirtland high council, minutes, May 16, 1836, as cited in Rogers, JSP, D5:243–46.

[53] Megan Owens, “Divorce and Family Life in Nineteenth-Century Vanderburgh County,” Grand Valley Journal of History 7, no. 1 (October 2019): 3–4.

[54] Nancy Grey Osterud, Bonds of Community: The Lives of Farm Women in Nineteenth-Century New York (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), 130–31.