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I saw two stout, bare-footed girls, each with a tin bucket of red raspberries. . . . There was no lack of these, and if any left the table without a really good supper, it was not the fault of the hostess.
—Thomas Gregg

TIMES WERE CHALLENGING for the Joseph Sr. and Lucy Mack Smith family as they entered the second decade of their marriage. Several failed business ventures left the growing family destitute, and poverty kept them on the move through the New England countryside as they attempted to find a location where they could eke out a living for their growing family. Katharine was born July 28, 1813, at Lebanon, Grafton County, New Hampshire, the seventh surviving child and second daughter of Joseph Smith Sr. and Lucy Mack Smith.[1] In the year preceding her birth, typhoid fever raged through the upper Connecticut Valley, which escalated to epidemic proportions, killing more than six thousand people in five months.[2] The disease eventually infiltrated the Smith home. While pregnant with Katharine, Lucy spent the better part of three months caring for her eldest daughter, Sophronia.

In time, all the Smith children eventually contracted typhoid fever. While ten-year-old Sophronia nearly died, and seven-year-old Joseph Jr.’s bout led to osteomyelitis that came close to causing the amputation of his leg, all the family eventually recovered. These experiences exhausted Lucy’s strength to its limits and reduced the family’s limited financial resources. After nearly a year of “sickness and distress,” Lucy recounted, “health again returned to our family, and we most assuredly realized the blessing.”[3] Katharine’s birth corresponded with the family’s improving health and was a welcome distraction from the challenges of the previous year.[4]

The Smiths’ limited financial resources kept the family on the move, this time back across the New Hampshire border into Norwich, Vermont, before Katharine had even reached her first birthday. Here they attempted to farm, but three consecutive years of crop failures eventually led to the decision to leave the region for good. Katharine was only three when her parents decided to relocate in the winter of 1816–17, a move compelled by poverty and reports of plentiful crops of wheat raised in Western New York. Joseph Sr. went ahead of the others and decided to settle at Palmyra, New York, and soon afterward arranged for his family to follow.[5]

Lucy’s resourcefulness was evident as she prepared for the journey, settling the family’s debts in her husband’s absence and finalizing arrangements with a teamster named Caleb Howard to transport their belongings. Lucy said she had barely eight cents in her pocket when they arrived in Palmyra, and even their eldest daughter Sophronia’s precious earrings were sold to help defray expenses to pay for the trip.[6] If it wasn’t for her resolve and quick thinking en route, the family might have arrived in New York more destitute than they already were. Howard attempted to take both the horses and wagon when the company had stopped in the town of Utica, New York, until Lucy fortuitously created a public scene, causing Howard to retreat from his plan. Now without Howard’s services, Lucy led out in ensuring the family completed their journey to Palmyra, where they arrived sometime in January 1817.[7] Katharine was too young to recognize her mother’s resourcefulness and determination when the family relocated to New York, but in the ensuing years such qualities would have a marked influence on her developing personality.

Eastern view in Main-street, Palmyra, engraving from John W. Barber and Henry Howe, Historical Collections of the State of New York (New York: Tuttle, 1841).

This area of Western New York would be the only childhood home Katharine would recollect, as she grew to maturity in the area and was only a toddler when the family uprooted from Vermont. Now with eight children, the Smiths were starting all over again in New York. Despite the family’s destitute circumstances, the prospects of the bustling community looked bright. Construction of the Erie Canal through the Palmyra village began just six months after the Smiths’ arrival, and as a result businesses were springing up all over town. By the year 1823 there were thirteen dry good stores, several large warehouses, three drug stores, two inns, two tanneries, a post office, and a printing shop. The Erie Canal was completed on October 26, 1825.[8] Just before the Smiths’ arrival, the population of Palmyra and nearby Macedon was approximately 2,200, but by 1830 it had grown by more than 1,200 inhabitants, a testament to the impact that the Erie Canal had on the region’s growth.[9]

Within two years of their arrival in Palmyra, the Smiths articled for a one-hundred-acre farm just two miles outside of town, and the family relocated sometime in the spring of 1819.[10] By that point, the Smiths had already built a small log home on their property, which had two rooms on the main floor and two more upstairs in a low garret, with another sleeping room added later.[11] With the arrival of baby Lucy in 1821, the log home made for cramped living quarters for a family of eleven. Up until the time of his death, the eldest son, Alvin, led out in constructing a much larger frame home for his family, where the Smiths would reside from 1825 to 1829.[12] During their twelve-year-stay on the property, the Smiths eventually cleared sixty acres for farming, built a cooper’s shop, a barn, and other outbuildings, tapped approximately twelve to fifteen hundred trees to make sugar and maple syrup during the winter season, and had a thriving apple orchard of approximately two hundred trees.[13]

Joseph and Lucy Mack Smith One-Hundred Acre Farm, Manchester, New York, August 1907, photograph by George Edward Anderson. Courtesy of L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University.

Domestic Labor

Once the Smiths settled on their new farm, work efforts began in earnest. Lucy recalled that the whole family “sat down, and counselled together relative to the course which was best for us to adopt in our destitute circumstances, and we came to the conclusion to unite our strength.” Lucy focused her initial efforts in painting oil cloth coverings, which she sold and paid for replacing the household furniture.[14] While male members of the family focused their efforts on clearing and preparing the land to plant crops and hiring out to local neighbors for day labor, the Smith women’s work efforts were focused closer to home. Female labors on the farm in the first half of the nineteenth century typically consisted of “tending the vegetable garden, processing and preserving the year’s supply of vegetables and fruits, and preparing meals.” Additionally, women oversaw “cleaning the house, tending the fires, and sewing, laundering, and mending the family’s clothing and household textiles.” Barnyard chores, however, were typically shared responsibilities by both men and women, with women usually leading out in milking the family cow and churning butter.[15]

Like most families in the rural countryside, farm life for the Smiths centered on basic survival tasks. Thus, Katharine began mastering these necessary skills from her youth. During early childhood, Katharine began by assisting her older sister, Sophronia, with some of her home responsibilities. Ten years her senior, Sophronia adopted a special role in mentoring Katharine, and their bond was strengthened as they labored together performing these common chores. While both sisters were above average height, that is where their resemblance ended. Sophronia was described as “delicate-looking” in her youth, with “soft brown hair and big dark-brown eyes.” She was serious, introverted, and even shy in her interactions with others. As she matured, Katharine grew exceptionally tall and by contrast, had blonde hair with a light complexion and was described as a “sturdy child, with bright, expressive blue eyes.” She was more outgoing than her older sister and unafraid of expressing her views and opinion.[16] Also unlike Sophronia, whose constitution was fragile and marred by health difficulties throughout her life, Katharine’s health was robust and she was physically strong and capable of assisting her mother with many of the chores assumed by adult women of her day from her youth.

The White Cow, engraving by Ch. De Billy, based on painting by Julien Dupre, ca. 1889.

By the time Katharine was a preadolescent, Lucy appears to have divided at least some of her daughters’ daily chores based on hardiness, with Sophronia primarily assisting her mother in keeping house, while Katharine led out in the barnyard. As she matured, Katharine chopped and hauled wood for the fireplace and oversaw the family’s small flock of sheep, bringing them into a protective enclosure each night and releasing them to graze each morning. She also took charge of milking the family cow from a young age, a task she grew to appreciate and would continue throughout her entire life.[17]

Despite the partial division of labor in the home, Katharine still drew to her many household tasks typically adopted by young girls of her day. She learned how to operate a spinning wheel while in her teens and manufactured cloth that was turned into clothing or bedding.[18] Katharine’s granddaughter Mary Salisbury Hancock recalled how Lucy ensured that her daughters spent considerable time “spinning, weaving, sewing and knitting.” She further recounted how the Smith daughters, under their mother’s tutelage, produced “warm, substantial linsey-woolsey dresses [that] were processed and completed by their own hands.”[19]

Katharine also assisted in washing clothes and in meal preparation. In the nineteenth-century rural home, cooking required the ability to manage and regulate the fireplace, which Katharine grew to handle with “masterly skill.” Additionally, she was instructed by her mother in baking bread and churning butter. [20] In time she probably assisted in preparing food goods for noteworthy town events such as July Fourth celebrations or during weeklong camp meetings that took place in the vicinity. One Palmyra historian recalled Joseph Sr. peddling “gingerbread, pies, boiled eggs, root-beer” and other transportable food goods during such events in a crude handmade cart. The “brisk sales” reported at these events support the Smith women’s capability in producing large quantities of such delicacies.[21]

By the early 1820s, Katharine also took on the role of caring for her younger sister, Lucy, born in the summer of 1821 and the last of the Smith children. Katharine looked after her younger sister and tutored her in performing farm chores, much like Sophronia had earlier done for her. Visitors to the Smith household attested to the proficiency with which the girls and their mother prepared family meals. Stephen Harding, a well-to-do lawyer and later the governor of Utah Territory, made an unexpected visit to the Smith home in the summer of 1829, providing a glimpse of a typical evening at the Smith home. He observed:

I saw two stout, bare-footed girls [Katharine and Lucy], each with a tin bucket of red raspberries. Soon after, the old man [Joseph Sr.] announced that supper was ready. We went into the other part of the house, where supper was waiting, consisting of brown bread, milk, and an abundance of fine raspberries. . . . There was no lack of these, and if any left the table without a really good supper, it was not the fault of the hostess. I remarked . . . that the supper was good enough for a king, and the berries on the table were better than could be bought in any city in America.[22]

Though there was a significant age gap between the three Smith sisters, the connection Katharine forged with her two sisters in childhood created bonds that lasted the remainder of their lives.

Religious Upbringing

Besides her contributions to helping the family settle the farm, Katharine’s upbringing included extensive religious instruction. She grew up in a home where the Bible was read consistently, religious themes were a regular topic of discussion, and spiritually themed dreams were important enough to be recorded.[23] Joseph Sr. and Lucy were both actively involved in reading and instructing their children about religious principles and rehearsing stories from the Bible. In the final decade of her life, Lucy spoke to a gathering of Saints in Nauvoo, where she emphasized the central role that religious instruction had played in her approach to child-rearing. “I raised them [my children] in the fear of God,” she began. From the age of “two or three years old I told them I wanted them to love God with all their hearts. I told them to do good.” She then recounted to the congregation gathered that day how she had successfully instilled moral values into the hearts of her own children by teaching them the stories of the Bible at a young age, “about Joseph in Egypt and such things.” She underscored that if mothers listening to her that day would do the same, “when they [your children] are four years old they will love to read their Bible.”[24]

While only three years old when the family arrived in New York, Katharine was old enough to begin listening to stories from the Bible. Corroborating that Lucy practiced what she preached during her Nauvoo sermon, one Palmyra neighbor remembered that Lucy used the Bible as the family’s first primer.[25] In later life, Katharine recollected with fondness these evening gatherings around the fireplace, where her father also “read from the Bible, explaining and extolling its passages.” This happened frequently enough, Katharine recalled, that all the Smith children “became quite proficient in their knowledge of its teachings.”[26] Her experience was perhaps akin to another early Latter-day Saint convert, Eliza Dana Gibbs, born the same year as Katharine. Gibbs said she “had always been a great bible reader from a child” and related that by her twenties she had “read the New Testament through seven times by course and the Old Testament once.”[27] Similarly, by the time she was an adult, her surviving letters were brimming with biblical themes and scriptural references, attesting to the influence of these youthful readings.[28]

Reading the Bible to Grandpa, engraving based on painting by E. W. Perry, Harper’s Weekly 21, no. 1068 (June 16, 1877), 460. Both Joseph Sr. and Lucy read from the Bible with Katharine from a young age and utilized the Bible as their children’s first primer.

Katharine witnessed the occasional tension between her parents regarding their attitudes surrounding formal religious affiliation. Lucy felt that finding and attending a church that coincided with her religious views was essential to her salvation. Joseph Sr., on the other hand, was critical of organized religion (a belief he inherited from his own father), and he kept himself distanced from joining or attending any denomination. These differences led to occasional conflicts in the marriage and by the 1820s also created a divide among the children.[29] Alvin, Joseph Jr., and William appear to have all adopted their father’s skepticism of organized religion, while Hyrum, Sophronia, and Samuel all linked themselves with their mother in joining the Western Presbyterian Church at Palmyra.[30] While Katharine was probably too young to decide about formally uniting with a church, her subsequent attitudes regarding religion signal that she would have sided with her mother. She was drawn to the traditional values extolled by Palmyra preachers and, like her mother, was strict in her religious practice.

While there was intermittent tension around formal religious practice, the Smith parents were united in their private religious habits in their home. Family prayer was attended to twice daily and was a joint effort by the Smith parents to ensure their children adopted a religious course from their youth, with Joseph Sr. and Lucy taking turns acting as voice with prayer.[31] Her next closest sibling, William, two years older than Katharine, recalled: “We always had family prayer since I can remember. I well remember father used to carry his spectacles in his vest pocke[t], . . . and when us boys saw him feel for his specks, we knew that was A signal for prayer, and if we did not notice it mother would say, ‘William,’ or whoever was the negligent one, ‘get ready for prayer.’”[32] The Smith children recalled how during family prayer, their parents “pourd out their Souls to God the doner of all blessings, to keep and gard their children . . . from sin and from all evil works.”[33]

After evening prayer, the children recounted how they typically sang a hymn. William recalled how the family only sang one or two variations of hymns, a practice he found “irksome.” Perhaps he was not the only sibling who found the repetitive routine monotonous, but if so, none of the other children ever mentioned it. The practice of hymn singing in the home was a pattern typical of many Protestant families and imbued the Smith children with a fondness for music.[34]

Katharine’s childhood was filled with responsibility in improving the farm, mastering skills related to her domestic responsibilities, and being instructed in religious values. She was also imbued with an openness to accepting the supernatural as she listened to her father’s spiritual dreams and heard stories recounted by her mother about how the Lord had spared her own life and the lives of family members through the efficacy of prayer.[35] Little could Katharine imagine how those religious themes would coalesce in the decade of the 1820s.

Notes

[1] Although there have been variations in the spelling of her name, she consistently spelled it “Katharine” in her holograph letters (1865–99), copies of which are in the author’s possession. In the earliest surviving records, Katharine’s birth date is given as July 28, 1813. Joseph Smith, Manuscript History of the Church, Book A–1, 10, Joseph Smith Papers, Church History Library, Salt Lake City (hereafter cited as CHL); Katharine Salisbury Patriarchal Blessing, December 9, 1834, Patriarchal Blessing Book 1, 7, CHL. Katharine also maintained she was born July 28, 1813, indicating that the date of July 8, 1812, as recorded by her mother Lucy in her history, was incorrect. It is also the date that appears on her gravestone. Warren L. Van Dine, “Catharine Smith Salisbury,” unpublished manuscript, 1972, 31, typescript copy located in the Community of Christ Library-Archives, Independence, Missouri. Katharine Smith Salisbury, Affidavit, April 15, 1881, holograph, Community of Christ Library-Archives; Lucy Mack Smith, Biographical Sketches of Joseph Smith the Prophet and his Progenitors for Many Generations (Liverpool: S.W. Richards, 1853), 41. The author made a thorough search through New Hampshire town records and was unable to locate a birth record.

[2] Joseph A. Gallup, Sketches of Epidemic Diseases in the State of Vermont, from Its Settlement to 1815 (Boston: T. B. Wait and Sons, 1815), 69–70, 75, as quoted in Richard L. Bushman, Joseph Smith, Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 20.

[3] Lucy Mack Smith, Biographical Sketches of Joseph Smith the Prophet and His Progenitors for Many Generations (Liverpool, S. W. Richards, 1853), 65–66.

[4] Lucy Mack Smith, Biographical Sketches, 58–66.

[5] Lucy Mack Smith, Biographical Sketches, 66–67.

[6] Lavina Fielding Anderson, ed., Lucy’s Book: A Critical Edition of Lucy Mack Smith’s Family Memoir (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2001), 317, see also n69; Joseph Smith History, 1838–1856, volume A-1 [23 December 1805–30 August 1834], 132, in The Joseph Smith Papers.

[7] Joseph Smith History, 1838–1856, volume A-1, 132; Lucy Mack Smith, Biographical Sketches, 69–70; Donald L. Enders and Mark L. Staker, A Visionary House: The First Visions of Joseph Smith’s Family in Context (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University).

[8] Lionel D. Wyld, ed., 4’ x 28’ x 4’: The Erie Canal—150 Years (Rome, NY: Oneida County Erie Canal Commemoration Commission, 1967), 5, 8–14; Horatio Gates Spafford, A Gazetteer of the State of New York (Albany: B. D. Packard, 1824), 400–1, as cited in Larry C. Porter, A Study of the Origins of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the States of New York and Pennsylvania (Provo, UT: BYU Studies, 2000), 15.

[9] George W. Cowles, ed., Landmarks of Wayne County New York (Syracuse, NY: D. Mason, 1895), 179; William Darby and Theodore Dwight Jr., A New Gazetteer of the United States of America (Hartford: Edward Hopkins, 1833), 392.

[10] Enders and Staker, Visionary House.

[11] Pomeroy Tucker, Origin, Rise, and Progress of Mormonism (New York: D. Appleton, 1867), 12–13. See also, Thomas L. Cook, Palmyra and Vicinity (Palmyra, NY: Palmyra Courier Journal, 1930), 219, who gives almost an identical description of the Smith’s log home.

[12] Porter, Study of the Origins, 27, 37.

[13] William Smith, William Smith on Mormonism (Lamoni, IA: Herald Steam Book and Job Office, 1883), 12–13; Donald L. Enders, “The Joseph Smith, Sr., Family: Farmers of the Genesee,” in Joseph Smith: The Prophet, the Man, ed. Susan Easton Black and Charles D. Tate Jr. (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1993), 213, 219.

[14] Lucy Mack Smith, Biographical Sketches, 70.

[15] Nancy Grey Osterud, Bonds of Community: The Lives of Farm Women in Nineteenth-Century New York (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), 147–50.

[16] Mary Salisbury Hancock, “The Three Sisters of the Prophet Joseph Smith, Part 1” Saints’ Herald 101, no. 2 (January 11, 1954): 11; “Sister of a Prophet,” Saints’ Herald 40, no. 36 (September 9, 1893): 565.

[17] Hancock, “Three Sisters of the Prophet Joseph Smith, Part 1,” 11; Van Dine, “Catherine Smith Salisbury,” 34.

[18] Van Dine, “Catherine Smith Salisbury,” 34.

[19] Hancock, “Three Sisters of the Prophet Joseph Smith, Part 1,” 10–11.

[20] Van Dine, “Catherine Smith Salisbury,” 34.

[21] Tucker, Origin, Rise, and Progress of Mormonism, 12–14.

[22] Thomas Gregg, The Prophet of Palmyra (New York: John B. Alden, 1890), 41–42.

[23] Lucy Mack Smith, Biographical Sketches, 56–59, 73–74.

[24] William Clayton and Thomas Bullock, “Conference Minutes,” Times and Seasons 6, no. 16 (November 1, 1845): 1013–14; Jennifer Reeder and Kate Holbrook, eds., At the Pulpit: 185 Years of Discourses by Latter-day Saint Women (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press, 2017), 21–26.

[25] John Stafford, interview, as quoted in William H. Kelley, “The Hill Cumorah, and the Book of Mormon,” Saints’ Herald 28, no. 11 (June 1, 1881): 167.

[26] Hancock, “Three Sisters of the Prophet Joseph Smith, Part 1,” 11.

[27] Andrea Ventilla, “‘Death Had Lost All Terrors’: Eliza Dana Gibbs (1813–1900),” in Women of Faith in the Latter Days, vol. 1, 1775–1820, ed. Richard E. Turley Jr. and Brittany A. Chapman (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2011), 32–33.

[28] See, for example, Katharine Salisbury (Fountain Green, IL) to Dear Sisters, March 10, 1886, Saints’ Herald 33, no. 17 (May 1, 1886): 260; and Katherine Salisbury (n.p.) to Sister Frances, December 24, 1886, Saints’ Herald 34, no. 6 (February 5, 1887): 84.

[29] Richard L. Bushman, Joseph Smith Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 25–26, 46; Kyle R. Walker, The Joseph Sr. and Lucy Mack Smith Family: A Family Process Analysis of a Nineteenth-Century Household (Provo, UT: BYU Studies, 2008), 65–68.

[30] Karen Lynn Davidson et al., Histories, Volume 1: Joseph Smith Histories, 1832–1844, vol. 1 of the Histories series of The Joseph Smith Papers, ed. Dean C. Jessee, Ronald K. Esplin, and Richard Lyman Bushman (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press, 2012), 208–9; Milton V. Backman Jr. and James B. Allen, “Membership of Certain of Joseph Smith’s Family in the Western Presbyterian Church of Palmyra,” BYU Studies 1, no. 4 (Summer 1970): 482–84.

[31] William Smith, “Notes Written on ‘Chambers’ Life of Joseph Smith,” ca. 1875, 29, CHL.

[32] John W. Peterson, “Wm. B. Smith’s Last Statement,” Zion’s Ensign 5 (January 1894): 6.

[33] William Smith, “Notes on ‘Chambers,’” 29.

[34] William Smith, “Notes on ‘Chambers,’” 29; Michael Hicks, Mormonism and Music: A History (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989), 4. Emma Smith later included at least three of the Smith family’s oft-sung hymns in the Church’s first hymnal. Emma Smith, comp. A Collection of Sacred Hymns for the Church of the Latter Day Saints (Kirtland, OH: F. G. Williams, 1835), 55–63, see Hymns of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1985), nos. 42–43, 48.

[35] Lucy later recounted several of these stories when she was preparing her history in the mid-1840s, including how the Lord healed her from a life-threatening illness, and how the Lord spared Sophronia’s life after she and her husband pled with the Lord in prayer when she contracted typhoid fever. Lucy Mack Smith, Biographical Sketches, 47, 60–61.