By Gracia N. Jones
Katharine Smith Salisbury, born 28 July 1813, in Lebanon, New Hampshire, was 17 when she married Wilkins Jenkins Salisbury, in Kirtland, Ohio 8 January 1831. She died, 2 February 1900, at Fountain Green, Hancock, Illinois. A gravestone for Katharine and her husband stands in the Webster Cemetery in Hancock County.
After the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum, and the exodus of the Latter-day Saints to the west, the Salisburys remained in Hancock County. Jenkins died in 1850. Katharine and her family settled at Fountain Green where she had a small farm. In the simmering, politically charged, post-martyrdom atmosphere of Hancock County, they endured much persecution, but Katharine held onto her house and land, and even added to it, using money given her by Brigham Young, with whom she kept up a cordial correspondence up to the time Brigham died. Despite poverty, persecution, and tragedy, Katharine outlived all of her siblings.
Of their eight children, three died young. One daughter, Lucy, married Samuel Duke. Four of her sons grew to adulthood: Solomon, Alvin, Don Carlos, and Frederick. Katharine and Jenkins Salisbury had 23 grandchildren and 46 great grandchildren.
She has numerous posterity, represented by farmers, educators, businessmen, scientists, musicians and artists. In her later years her family always gathered to celebrate her birthday. Nearly every branch of her family has been well represented at the Joseph Smith Sr., Family Reunions since 1972.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a photo display of Katharine and her family? If you can contribute pictures or artifacts for this display, let us know. Visit www.josephsmithsr.org. We hope to have a great crowd to honor this year.
This was, after all, 1813, in the most rural area of New Hampshire. The infection in Joseph’s bone (osteomyelitis) followed in the wake of an epidemic of typhoid fever that affected all the Smith children. In those days and up until the discovery of antibiotics in this century, osteomyelitis was a devastating problem. Since the days of Hippocrates of ancient Greece, the standard method of treatment had been the simple application of poultices and plasters to the inflamed flesh. This had little effect: when infection occurs in the bone, long segments of the bony shaft die, and the body, growing new bone, encases the dead material within a living layer. Inevitably, the dead bone separates and lies in the center of an abscess cavity, draining continuously or spreading infection to other parts of the body, resulting in death. Usually in the late stages the leg had to be amputated.