By Lucy Mack Smith
Having attained my 67th year, and being afflicted with a complication of diseases and infirmities, many of which have been brought upon me by the cruelty of an ungodly and hard-hearted world and do many times threaten to put a period to my early existence, I feel it a privilege as well as my duty to give (as my last testimony to a world from whence I must soon take my departure) and account, not exclusively of my own manner of life from my youth up, but after saying somewhat concerning my ancestors, as well as myself, to trace carefully up, even from the cradle to the grave, the footsteps of some whose life and death have been such as are calculated to excite an intense curiosity in the minds of all who ever knew them personally or shall hear of them hereafter. And inasmuch as none on earth is so thoroughly acquainted as myself with the entire history of those of whom I speak, I have been induced by these and other considerations to assume the task of not only tracing them during their windings and vicissitudes of a life checkered with many ills, but likewise to give a sketch of their forefathers and the dealing of God with them also.