For years, the Joseph Sr. and Lucy Mack Smith Family Organization has provided a hard-copy newsletter with information related to the descendants and friends of Joseph Sr. and Lucy Mack Smith. Now a digital copy is available. This helps us to stay connected, save trees and reduce printing costs.
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TIMES AND SEASONS BUILDING
We had great success with last year’s dig (2022) in exploring more of the Times and Seasons printing office location. We were able to identify the steps that lead to the basement entry. This discovery is crucial once we begin reconstruction to restore the building. Additionally, type from the printing press and glass from the windows of the building were uncovered.
What we hope to discover and excavate this year is more of the foundation of the building. It would also be helpful to find the privy because it is a treasure trove of artifacts.
The Times and Seasons printing office housed the printing press that was used to print the Times and Seasons periodical— an important source of information to the early settlers of Nauvoo and the surrounding area. Issues were published at least monthly from November 1839 to February 1846. The motto of the paper was “Truth will prevail.”
Editors included Ebenezer Robinson, Don Carlos Smith, Robert B. Thompson, Willard Richards, Joseph Smith, Jr., John Taylor and Wilford Woodruff.
We are looking forward to the participation of students from Western Illinois University Archaeological Department to this year’s dig. Their addition to the efforts of students from Brigham Young University and other volunteers will help make this dig even more productive. The idigNauvoo archaeological discoveries have only been made possible by the contributions of many volunteers throughout the past ten years.
PHASE II
This Spring (2023), Phase II of the creation of the Joseph Sr. and Lucy Mack Smith Family Garden has begun. Seedlings of heirloom flowers and vegetables have been chosen and germinated. Volunteers will begin planting as the temperature warms. Plants will be arranged using the three-sister gardening method developed in the 1800s. Some of the garden beds will use a rain garden elevation landscape. Vegetables were chosen based upon what was historically used by the early settlers of Nauvoo, Illinois.
Upon completion, the garden will be something that would make “Mother Smith” and all of the founding women of Nauvoo proud.
PHASE I
In August of 2022, with the combined efforts of many volunteers — most of which were attendees of the Joseph Sr. and Lucy Mack Smith Family Reunion — Phase I was completed.
The construction process included building a spilt-log fence, and staining a picket fence that was then installed around the hotel wing of the Joseph and Emma Smith Mansion House.
PURPOSE
The garden is a tribute to the founding family of the restoration — Joseph Sr. and Lucy Mack Smith and their children. They, with many stalwart families transformed a swamp land into a city that was more like a “garden of gardens.”
The founding settlers loved this bustling haven and worked together to make it beautiful. They planted gardens and shared in its bounty.
Joseph Smith Senior emphasized the importance of sustaining “family and friends.” It was a favorite motto of his. The purpose for building this garden is to promote that legacy of strengthening family, friends, and community.
DONATIONS
Through the ANS Legacy Foundation, donations can be made toward the Smith Family Gardens. The ANS Legacy foundation is a 501(3)(c) operational non-profit organization, and 100% of all donations go toward the project.
You can choose specific items to donate. There are also opportunities to volunteer at various times of the year. To learn how you can help with this project, click on our donations or volunteer link.
200 years ago, 17-year-old Joseph Smith was under constant and severe persecution for claiming he had seen God and Jesus Christ—persecution intended to make him deny that vision or any heavenly manifestation— persecution which under any other circumstance would have closed the heavens! Yet in this very environment, young Joseph announced a second remarkable vision, one in which the promised messenger of the Lord had come to prepare the way for the long-prophesied restoration.
As is the pattern of restoration, this messenger quoted several Biblical prophecies and stated that they were beginning to be fulfilled, of angels appearing to men, old men having remarkable dreams, young men having glorious visions and power and truth coming to the earth once more!
This messenger called himself Moroni and spoke of a new book of scripture, its translation, and of Joseph’s role in this restoration. This visit was so critical that Moroni repeated it three times over the course of the night and again the next day.
Despite Hell’s intensifying fury, the heavens were forever opened, God stood revealed, and man could finally know his purpose and destiny! Moroni and other angelic visitors would now mentor Joseph as the restoration unfolded and which, as Moroni prophesied, is now filling the world.
Isn’t it every child’s dream to discover a lost treasure that peeks into the past? Daniel Larsen may have done just that. In 1992 Larsen’s mother, Lois Smith Larsen, daughter of Frederick Madison Smith, RLDS Church President, and son of Joseph Smith III, bequeathed him some family heirlooms. One was a pocket watch with a Joseph Smith III monogram. The second was a similar but smaller locket. The locket was gold plated, about 1 ½”, and had a jammed mechanism. He secured these in a safe for later perusal.
In 2020, he came across the keepsake items and grew curious. This time he forced open the locket and discovered a picture, a daguerreotype. Larsen said, “I looked at it and I looked at it and saw those eyes. I told my wife to come in and look at this. We looked at it and…almost at the same time said, ‘This is a photo of Joseph Smith.’” quoted from Trent Toone’s article “Does an image of Joseph Smith exist? What one descendant found in a forgotten family heirloom” in the Deseret News.
Dan Larsen then emailed a photo of the image to his nephew, Lachlan Mackay, avid historian and Community of Christ Apostle. Mackay shared the image with the Community of Christ historian and archivist Ron Romig, and they began to investigate the provenance and possibility that the daguerreotype could be the earliest image of Joseph Smith. They spent the next two years working to authenticate the daguerreotype before their public announcement.
To view details of the authentication process (expert analysis, historical research, facial recognition software, forensic artist & overlays and cutaways): and to see pictures, see:
“Never lose sight of those who laid the groundwork and built the paths that have led to light and truth that has now been available to those who would be willing to seek it and find it, embrace it and join it,” President Ballard said when he dedicated the monument in May 2022.
In 2020, the Ensign Peak Foundation* placed a 14,000 pound obelisk granite monument in the Pine Grove Cemetery in Topsfield, home to five generations of Smiths: Robert, a 14–year–old indentured servant who immigrated to America; Samuel, Samuel II, Asael, and Joseph Smith Sr.
In 1873 George A. Smith placed a monument honoring the two Samuels. The new monument updates and expands historical information.
Family members joined civic and religious leaders and friends at the dedication and attended the Topsfield Congregational Church.
*A private company dedicated to preserving and hallowing sacred sites.
newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/president-ballard-smith-monument-ministry-massachusetts
Facing death, Father Smith penned these words to his Dear Children: “Live together in an undivided bond of Love.” He urged them to continue to meet “if posably once Evry year [sic].”
By 1972, the Smith descendants were scattered not only across the United States but across the globe to Australia. Non–family member Buddy Youngreen became interested in the Joseph Sr. and Lucy Mack Smith family, began identifying cousins, and encouraged the first Smith Family Reunion in Nauvoo in 1972. Descendants gathered at the Old Homestead overlooking the Mississippi, reminisced over scraggly lilac bushes, and began getting acquainted.
Since then, cousins have continued gathering at various locations. Granite tombstones have been placed for Father and Mother Smith at the cemetery next to the Old Homestead. The family has also beautified the cemetery and added a newer marker for Joseph Jr., Emma, and Hyrum.
In August 2022, 340 family members gathered for the 50th golden reunion in Nauvoo and made and renewed treasured connections. Frances and Steve Orton, reunion presidents, honored those who attended the first reunion 1972. Beautiful lilac bushes grace the edge of the granite markers for Joseph, Emma, and Hyrum. Lilacs are a favored family flower planted at various Smith locations. Debbie and Courtney Nelson pressed lilac petals from family gardens and then presented lilac necklaces and keychains to those who attended the first reunion.
Lilac mementos were also made available to family members. Suzanne Jones said her necklace “helped me feel a connection to our wonderful grandmothers that I’ve not sensed before, and for that, I’m immensely grateful.”
Joseph Fredrick Smith, a great– grandson of Joseph Jr., and John Smith, a great-grandson of Hyrum were acknowledged as the oldest living descendants at the reunion.
Joseph asked John Smith, “How old are you?” Then, after they spoke their ages out loud for everyone to hear, Joseph boldly said with good volume, “You are older than me. Bless you!” Joseph then grabbed John in a firm hug and said again, “Bless you.”
In 1991 Lois Smith Larsen (Joseph Jr.’s descendant) and Donna Lee Frogley (Hyrum’s descendant), Joseph and Hyrum descendants, joined together to place a wreath at
the granite markers of Father and Mother Smith. This August, Zoe and Chloe, descendants of Lois Smith Larsen and of Joseph Jr. and Emma, again placed a wreath.
And on the grounds of Joseph and Emma’s Mansion home, youth and families also helped build a split rail fence between the Mansion Home and Sidney Rigdon’s property. “The kids participated with joy. To realize they actually put up a fence on Joseph Smith’s property is something they’ll remember all their lives,” said Bob Smith, Samuel H. Smith descendant. The family service project also included painting fence panels to surround a garden behind the Mansion House wing—part of the Smith Family Gardens Phase I Project.
Family members visited local sites, enjoyed meals and visiting together, and were able to join the idigNauvoo archaeological project at the Hyrum Smith office site.
Were Father and Mother Smith looking on, would not they have seen their posterity together in an “undivided bond of love?”
See the painting and building of the split rail fence:
