Joseph Smith Family at Far West
The Smith party, arriving in Far West from Ohio in early 1838, numbered about twenty-four, including Joseph Smith Sr., Lucy Mack, Sophronia and husband William McLeary, Samuel Harrison and Mary, William and Caroline, Catharine and Wilkins J. Salisbury, Don Carlos and Agnes, sixteen-year old Lucy, and eleven other children eight and under: Eunice and Maria Stoddard, Elizabeth, Lucy and Solomon Salisbury, Mary Jane, Agnes, Caroline, and Mary Smith. Agnes, Don Carlos' wife, gave birth to Sophronia at New Portage, Ohio, near the beginning of the trip, and Alvin was born to Wilkins and Catharine Salisbury at the Mississippi River toward the end of the trip. [Scot Facer Proctor, Maurine Jensen Proctor, eds., The Revised and Enhanced History of Joseph Smith By His Mother (Salt Lake City, UT: Bookcraft, Inc., 1996), 366, fn. 2. See also Irene Bates and George Smith, Lost Legacy, 46-47]. Having arrived in northern Missouri destitute, Joseph Smith and his immediate family temporarily resided with the George W. Harris Family near the public square of Far West. [Jenson, The Historical Record, Vols. 7 & 8: 436]. Joseph wrote, "We were immediately received under the hospitable roof of Brother George W. Harris, who treated us with all possible kindness, and we refreshed ourselves with much satisfaction," [LDS Collectors Library, CD]. In a subsequent redress petition, Harris claimed the loss of 2 city lots, a house, barn, and fruit trees at Far West. [Johnson, Mormon Redress Petitions, 226.]
Soon after their arrival, Joseph and Sidney Rigdon asked the High Council for a contract in exchange for “work rendered in the printing establishment, in translating the ancient records &c., &c.” [Robinson, The Return, 1 (October 1889):145-51; Faulring, 182-83; History of the Church LDS, 3:32]. Joseph acquired a former public house. A member recalled, "I will relate one circumstance that took place at Far West, in a house that Joseph had purchased, which had been formerly occupied as a public house by some wicked people. . . ." British Mission. 2nd ed., rev. by Spencer W. Kimball. (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1945), 258-59]. Father Smith and his family suffered sickness and hardships because they were forced to move during inclement weather during the summer of 1838. Upon arriving in Far West, Missouri, the Joseph Sr. family intially settled in a small, one-room log house. Shortly after, Joseph arranged for his parents to move into a tavern [public] house [possibly Musick's or the former Wamsley Hotel], which proved more comfortable.[Lucy indicates Joseph bought the tavern from Brother Gilbert. This must be inaccurate - as A. S. Gilbert died in Clay County in 1834. [The Revised and Enhanced History of Joseph Smith By His Mother, 359; see also Lavina Fielding Anderson, Lucy's Book]. Lucy recalled, "Our business in Far West had been trading in corn and wheat, as well as keeping a public boardinghouse." [ Proctor, 408].
Before long, George M. Hinkle moved to DeWitt on the Missouri River. As a result, on 6 July 1838, the High Council voted that the Bishop purchase Hinkle's house and a cook stove for Joseph Smith, Jr., FWR, 197]. Several sources and local oral traditional locate this structue [Joseph Smith's home] approximately 200 yards southwest of the temple site. [In the late 1880s, Andrew Jenson wrote, “The house in which Joseph Smith once lived, which stood 200 yards southwest of the Temple foundation, was recently torn down and the logs used in building a stable.”Andrew Jenson, Historical Record, Vols. 7 & 8: 722].
Tradition also suggests Joseph's and Emma's son, Alexander H. Smith, later patriarch of the Reorganized Church, was born there.
Alexander H. Smith as a Youth
Joseph Smith, Jr.'s, petition for govermental redress recalled the circumstances of his separation from his family:
"We were delivered up as prisoners of war and taken into their camp. . . The next day they held a Court Martial upon us and sentenced me with the rest of the prisoners to be shot which sentence was to be carried into Effect on Friday morning in the Public Square. . . The Militia then went and selected to my house and drove my Family out of Doors under Sanction of general Clark and Carried away all my property. . . We were led into the Public Square and after Considerable Entreaty we were permitted to see our Family's being attended with a strong guard. I found my Family in Tears. . . they clung to my garments with weeping. Requesting to have an proper interview with my wife & [children] in an adjoining room, but was refused. When taking my departure from my Family it was almost too painful for me. My Child[ren] Clung to me and were thrust away at the point of the swords of the soldiery." [punctuation added] [Clark V. Johnson, Mormon Redress Petitions: Documents of the 1833-1838 Missouri Conflict (Provo, UT: BYU Religious Studies Center, 1992), 349].
In the 1890s, RLDS missionary, J. M. Terry wrote, “I am stopping mostly with Mr. John Sloan who owns the land opposite the temple lot on the west where much of the town was located; near the house is the site of the house where Joseph the Prophet lived.” J.M. Terry, Zion's Ensign, 8 (14 October 1897): 3; In the late 1870s, from the vantage point of the Whitmer family hotel at Far West, Jacob D. Whitmer described Joseph's home as, “beyond that locust grove, just this side of where you see the tops of those tall cottonwoods, near them stacks.” Millennial Star, 40 (16 December 1878), 785-86]. "It was a one story, frame building, with two rooms . . . [a] small room was afterwards added and subsequently moved away.” [Oral tradition indicates that during Mr. Kerr's ownership, the house was moved a short way to the south and closer to the present road. William J. Curtis, Independence, Missouri]. The building had [an] unusually large and clumsy stone chimney at the north end of the building. [“Far West: The Old Mormon Settlement in Missouri,” Daily Morning Herald, St. Joseph, Missouri (Friday, 1 January 1875)]. Joseph and Emma's first born son to live to adulthood, Joseph III, remembered, “The house had two rooms, one the [larger] living or “keeping” room and the other a bedroom. Into this latter the door leading from the keeping room opened inwardly, opposite a window in the end of the building.” [Richard P. Howard, ed., The Memoirs of President Joseph Smith III (1832-1914) (Independence, MO: Herald Publishing House, 1979), 3]. Another account described the building as, “Situated on a slight eminence, fronts the South, is a one-and-a-half story log and frame building of four rooms, and has a capacious fireplace and chimney of red homemade bricks, at either end. [William A. Wood, Kingston, Missouri, 11 June 1886, Magazine of American History, ed. Mrs. Martha J. Lamb (July 1886), Lafayette Place, N.Y.; Horace Burr Owens, a mason by trade, lived in the Southwest quarter of Far West near the Smith home, Owens, MS 2735, LDS Family and Church Historical Department, Archives]. For a time [Brother and] Sister Marsh lived in the same house with the Smiths. [Edward Partridge, Jr., 59]. F.G. Williams moved his family to Far West in the fall of 1837. Though no longer a member of the presidency, F.G. Williams remained active in the community. William's son, Ezra, noted that the Prophet's home was built across the street from their own at Far West and that Joseph depended a great deal on Frederick in the care of his family. [Nancy C. Williams, After One Hundred Years (Independence, MO: Zion's Printing and Publishing Company, 1951), 118].
Smith Home as depicted in "Far West: The Old Mormon Settlement in Missouri," Daily Morning Herald, St. Joseph, Missouri, Friday, 1 January 1875
It is quite possible that the Smith Family resided at more than one location throughout the period. [A map of the "Center of Far West," ca. 1980, by Charles W. Allen and LaMar Berrett, based on the Far West Record, describes Block 7, Lots 1 and 4 as Joseph's business property]. Perhaps the family moved closer to the square shortly before the seige of the town.
Chapman Duncan's autobiography reinforces the possibility of this as an alternative Smith home site in late 1838. Chapman spent the night of the surrender of Far West at Burk's tavern. In the morning, "Joseph the Prophet was brought up in a wagon with the balance near to us at the tavern. I went up to the wagon and took him by the hand. We went across the square. I left him as he went into his house and shut the door. I returned half way back on the square. There were some brethren standing." [Chapman Duncan, biography, 38, MS 6936, LDS Archives]. Joseph III's recollections, as only a six-year-old at the time, were vague. His memory of a "two story frame building standing broadside to an open space like a square and some excitement going on outside," seems to support Chapman's account. Joseph's memory continues, "I remember father starting away from the house and our white dog, Major, jumping from an upper window to a platform below to follow him off."
Joseph III's memory of the family reunion on that occasion counters Duncan's recollection. Joseph III recalled that, "The guard did not permit him [father] to pass into the house." [The Memoirs of President Joseph Smith, 2]. However, Joseph Smith suggests on this occasion he was actually allowed to enter the house where he talked with Emma, but was not allowed to go into the next room to see the children. [Clark V. Johnson, Mormon Redress Petitions: Documents of the 1833-1838 Missouri Conflict (Provo, UT: BYU Religious Studies Center, 1992), 349].
Joseph Smith III, as a Youth, by Sutcliffe Maudsley
