Mary Duty Smith: Mother of Joseph Smith Sr.

In Kirtland, Ohio 1836
Rejoined Family in Kirtland, Ohio in 1836

By Julie Maddox

This August we celebrate a significant milestone–the 175th Anniversary of the First Smith Family Reunion. In May of 1836, Mary Duty Smith, almost 93 years old, traveled 500 miles from Stockholm, New York to Kirtland, Ohio for “she had asked the Lord that she might live to see her children and grandchildren once more.”

The Prophet Joseph noted that his grandmother was overjoyed at meeting her children and grandchildren, “knew all of us she had ever seen [and] . . . was much pleased at being introduced to her great grand-children.” Joseph wrote, “It was a happy day.”

Mary was born on Oct. 11, 1743 in Rowley, Massachusetts, to Moses and Mary Palmer Duty. On Feb. 12, 1767, she married Asael Smith of Topsfield. Mary bore eleven children. Eight children survived to adulthood. In 1772 Mary and Asael moved to New Hampshire and began farming. After Asael’s father died in 1785, Asael and Mary moved back to Topsfield to settle his father’s estate. Mary’s son John remembered her as a “first rate dairy” woman, and Asael wrote of her tenderly and sought her comfort.

Mary and Asael sought earnestly to follow their personal convictions. They were Congregationalists and according to the church minutes of March 8, 1772 “owned the covenant.”

In 1830, Joseph Smith Sr. and his son Don Carlos traveled to Stockholm, New York to share the restored gospel with their relatives. Although Mary’s oldest son Jesse opposed the message, Mary, Asael and 5 of their children embraced the truth that they brought.

Joseph wrote “My grandfather, Asael Smith, long ago predicted that there would be a prophet raised up in his family, and my grandmother was fully satisfied that it was fulfilled in me. My grandfather Asael died in East Stockholm, St Lawrence County, NY, after having received the Book of Mormon, and read it nearly through; and he declared that I was the very prophet that he had long known would come in his family.”

When Mary arrived in Kirtland, she told Lucy “I am going to have your Joseph baptize me but I will have my blessing from My Joseph.”

Mary greatly enjoyed visiting with family in Kirtland, but her health began failing. Before she could be baptized, she became too ill. After a visit of just 10 days in Kirtland, Joseph wrote that on May 27, 1836, she “fell asleep without sick-ness, pain or regret. She breathed her last about sunset, and was buried in the burial ground near the temple, after a funeral address had been delivered by Sidney Rigdon.”

Of his grandmother Mary Duty Smith, the Prophet Joseph said, “she was the most honored woman on earth”.