author
Lucy Smith
1775–1856
Remembered for preserving one of the earliest firsthand family accounts of Joseph Smith, she left behind a vivid memoir shaped by hardship, faith, and frontier life. Her writing remains a key window into the beginnings of the Latter Day Saint movement.
1 Audiobook
History of the Prophet Joseph, by His Mother
by Lucy Smith
About the author
Born in New Hampshire in 1775, Lucy Mack Smith lived through the upheavals of early America and spent much of her life raising a family under difficult frontier conditions. She is best known today as the mother of Joseph Smith, founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, but she was also an important witness to the family's struggles, migrations, and religious life.
Late in life, she dictated a memoir that was published as Biographical Sketches of Joseph Smith, the Prophet, and His Progenitors for Many Generations. That work gave readers a detailed family history and helped preserve one of the most influential early narratives about Joseph Smith and the movement that grew around him.
She died in 1856 in Nauvoo, Illinois. More than simply a famous relative, she is remembered as a memoirist whose personal voice helped shape how later generations understood her family and the world they lived in.