Samuel H. Smith (Latter Day Saints)
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Samuel Harrison Smith (1808-05-13 – 1844-07-30) was a founder of the Latter Day Saint movement and one of the younger brothers of Joseph Smith, Jr.. Smith was the first Latter Day Saint missionary following the formal organization of the Church of Christ. Samuel Smith was a religious leader in his own right and is one of the Eight Witnesses to the Book of Mormon's golden plates. Samuel Smith remained devoted to his brother and his church throughout his life.
Born in Turnbridge, Vermont to Joseph Smith, Sr., and Lucy Mack Smith, Samuel had moved with his family to western New York by the 1820s. When Smith's father missed a mortgage payment on the family farm on the outskirts of Manchester Township, near Palmyra, a local Quaker named Lemuel Durfee purchased the land and allowed the Smiths to continue to live there in exchange for Samuel's labor at Durfee's store.
At the end of June 1829, Samuel, along with his brother Hyrum, his father, and several men of the Peter Whitmer, Sr. family, signed a joint statement declaring their testimony of the golden plates that Joseph Smith claimed to have translated into the Book of Mormon. This "Testimony of the Eight Witnesses" was printed as part of the Book of Mormon and is still included in most current editions.
Smith became one of the first six members of the "Church of Christ," when it was organized on April 6, 1830. At the next church conference, he was ordained one of the church's earliest elders. Smith was a successful missionary and served a number of missions. When the first "high council" of the church — at the time the chief judicial and legislative body — was organized on February 17, 1834, Samuel was one of twelve men called to be high councilors. Later that year, Samuel married Mary Bailey, his first wife, with whom he had four children.
Smith moved with his family to Far West, Missouri in 1838 and took part in the subsequent Mormon War that took place in northwestern Missouri that year. At the Battle of Crooked River, Smith fought next to apostle David W. Patten, who subsequently died from wounds received in the skirmish. As a result of the conflict, the Latter Day Saints were expelled from Missouri and Smith moved with the main body to their new headquarters in Nauvoo, Illinois.
Smith's wife Mary died in Nauvoo in 1841 and he married Lavira Clark later that year. Smith and Lavira had three children together.
Smith's brothers, Joseph and Hyrum, were assassinated in 1844 while held in Carthage Jail, in Illinois. Samuel, risking attack by a mob, traveled to the jail and retrieved his brothers' bodies. Some church members assumed that Samuel would succeed his brother Joseph as the president of the Latter Day Saint church (see Lineal Succession (Latter Day Saints)). However, Samuel fell ill shortly after their deaths and died just one month later. In 1857, the sole surviving Smith brother, William, claimed that Brigham Young had arranged for Samuel to be poisoned to prevent his accession to the presidency.[1][2] Others attributed Samuel's death to an internal injury sustained during his retrieval of the bodies or to illness. William Smith's charges were neither proven nor disproven.
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- ^ D. Michael Quinn (1994). The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power (Salt Lake City, Utah: Signature Books) pp. 152–153.
- ^ William Smith, "Mormonism: A Letter from William Smith, Brother of Joseph the Prophet", New York Tribune, 1857-05-19.
