Project Zion Podcast

400 | Cuppa Joe | The Wives of Joseph Smith III: Emmeline Griswold

August 06, 2021 Project Zion Podcast
Project Zion Podcast
400 | Cuppa Joe | The Wives of Joseph Smith III: Emmeline Griswold
Show Notes Transcript

Cuppa Joe is taking a look at the three wives of Joseph Smith III. In this episode, we are introduced to his first wife, Emmeline Griswold, who tragically lost her life far sooner than expected. 

Host: Karin Peter
Guest: Wendy Eaton

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Intro and Outro music used with permission:

“For Everyone Born,” Community of Christ Sings #285. Music © 2006 Brian Mann, admin. General Board of Global Ministries t/a GBGMusik, 458 Ponce de Leon Avenue, Atlanta, GA 30308. copyright@umcmission.org

“The Trees of the Field,” Community of Christ Sings # 645, Music © 1975 Stuart Dauerman, Lillenas Publishing Company (admin. Music Services).

All music for this episode was performed by Dr. Jan Kraybill, and produced by Chad Godfrey.

NOTE: The series that make up the Project Zion Podcast explore the unique spiritual and theological gifts Community of Christ offers for today's world. Although Project Zion Podcast is a Ministry of Community of Christ. The views and opinions expressed in this episode are those speaking and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Community of Christ.

400 | Cuppa Joe | The Wives of Joseph Smith III: Emmeline Griswold

Project Zion Podcast 

 

Josh Mangelson  00:17

Welcome to the Project Zion Podcast. This podcast explores the unique spiritual and theological gifts Community of Christ offers for today's world.

 

Karin Peter  00:33

Welcome to Project Zion Podcast. This is Cuppa Joe, where we explore Restoration history. And I'm your host, Karin Peter. Today's episode is the first in a special three-part miniseries about the three successive wives of Joseph Smith III, and our guest to share with us about the lives of these three women is Wendy Eaton. Wendy's been here before on Project Zion Podcast. She works at the Joseph Smith Historic Site in Nauvoo, Illinois, where she's the administrative assistant and all-around tour-giver, research-developer person for both Historic Sites Foundation and the Joseph Smith Historic Site. And we had the wonderful conversation with Wendy when she was here and walked us through some of the Restoration projects at different Community of Christ historic sites. So, if you haven't listened to that episode, I would encourage you to go back and find that one on Project Zion Podcast. So, welcome, Wendy. 

 

Wendy Eaton  01:35

Alright. Hi, Karin. 

 

Karin Peter  01:37

It's good to see you from Nauvoo, as I sit here on the west coast. So, most of our listeners are aware that Joseph Smith III, the son of Joseph Smith, Jr, was the first Prophet President of the Reorganization, what became termed as the RLDS church, now Community of Christ. But what people may not know is that Joseph Smith III had three wives, although you are clear to point out when you share that, not at the same time. So, he lost his first wife, married again, after she died, he married a third time. And so, in this three-part series, you're going to inform us a little bit about these three women, Emmeline, Bertha, and Ada. So, let's begin this episode, which is Emmeline. And in the “cliffnotes” you sent me about her, you termed her, a “woman weary of the church”, and that she came with the story of family drama. So, I can't think of a better teaser than that. So, let's begin. Tell us about Emmeline.

 

Wendy Eaton  02:49

So, when you visit Nauvoo in years that were open to give tours, often times your guide at one point will say, “Our tour is a story of three Joseph Smiths.” Well, the story today is about three Emma Smith's. And so, just to be clear, whenever I'm talking about the mother-in-law in our story, I'm meaning Emma Hale Smith Bidamon, as she is now remarried by the time her daughter-in-law, Emmeline, comes into the story. And Emmeline, even though everyone calls her Emma, I'm going to stick with Emmeline just so we're clear who she is. And then the last Emma is Joseph and Emmeline’s daughter, who is named Emma J. So, I, I'll try to point out as we're talking, but just so if you hear those three Emmas floating around, hopefully you'll be able to keep track of who is who. So, Emmeline Griswold is born on March 12, 1838 in Greene County, Illinois. Green County, in the 1830s, is not far from what would be Nauvoo, but Nauvoo is not quite settled yet. Today, Greene County is a little bit further south with rezonings of counties, but at that time, it wasn't too far away. Emmeline was one of the youngest of seven daughters, and Joseph says, “a number of sons.” I don't know how many brothers she had. After her father dies, her mother, whose name is Lucinda, moves the family north to Nauvoo. This is 1847, in the fall, when she first purchases property. The Mormon exodus from Nauvoo is well underway and property is plentiful and affordable. So, it's a pretty nice situation for Lucinda to be in even though the family doesn't like Mormonism and they're very distrustful of these people. To have this benefit of affordable land in a pretty nice location was great for Lucinda and the family that she still had at home. Lucinda’s a member of the Methodist Church here in Nauvoo, and I find it interesting. Again, she moves to Nauvoo in the fall of 1847. In December 1847, Emma Smith marries Lewis Bidamon, and the Methodist minister officiates the service. I don't know if Emma and Lucinda knew each other at this point, but their paths certainly were beginning to cross before their children meet. Emmeline grows up to be known as one of the town beauties, and she has a number of suitors. And there's a great letter that Joseph III writes to his and Emmeline's daughter, Carrie. This is after a visit to Nauvoo during a reunion that Carrie attends. She had written her father about it and the people she had met, and he responds to this letter, saying how pleased he is that she's been able to connect with so many of the people that he knew growing up, in particular, a gentleman named Philip Horton who welcomed Carrie and her family to the community. Joseph says in the letter that, “...Philip Horton once was interested in courting Emmeline, as were Tom Kelly and two or three others, but I seem to have the lead in the contest.” So, she was a woman that many of the young men were quite interested in getting to know. Their first official meeting, according to Joseph, is in a candy shop here in Nauvoo. And of their second meeting, Joseph wrote, “My heart seemed drawn to her.” Joseph and his brother Frederick are out driving the wagon up the hill to where the temple once stood here in Nauvoo. It had been raining, and the roads were a mess. They get near the top of the hill, and they see this beautiful Emmeline carefully picking her way through the mud across the street. Joseph turns to his brother and says, “Frederick, that is Miss Griswold. If you will allow me the use of the buggy, I will pick her up and take her home, and someday I will marry her, if I can.” So, Fred gets out of the wagon, and Joseph drives over and asks permission to escort Emmeline home, and she accepts. Their courtship is filled with buggy rides, various church socials and other activities that the young adults were enjoying in Nauvoo, including, I was interested to find, a singing school that was taking place here. And in that same letter to Carrie that I just mentioned, Joseph writes of one of these meetings of the singing school and what happened afterwards. I get this mental picture of the young adults leaving the singing school with the guys all on one side of the street and the young ladies on the other side of the street. And Joseph turns to one of his friends and almost dares him to go ask to escort one of the young ladies home. And the guy says, “No, I just saw somebody else try to go and ask someone to walk home and she refused him. I'm not going anywhere near that.” So, the guys are kind of scared. They don't want to go ask the girls out, and the girls are over on the other side of the street, probably just ignoring them. And then another friend turns to Joseph and says, “Hey, that guy you were just talking to, he asked your girl home. And she said, ‘No, sir’, to him.” So apparently the attraction was pretty mutual between Joseph and Emmeline.

 

Karin Peter  09:17

I love that picture that you just painted. That's, that's marvelous.

 

Wendy Eaton  09:23

It connects so much to what I think of the young adults today, especially in camp situations that I'm, escorting to and from campfires in the evenings. So, in the spring of 1856, their courtship has progressed to the point that Joseph asked her to marry him. And it's really interesting how he records this in his memoirs. So, for those who aren't aware, the memoirs of Joseph Smith, which is where I'm getting most of my information on Emmeline, it's a collection of memories that in the last few years of Joseph’s life that he recorded with his children, to preserve these family stories for generations to come. And after his death, and I believe it's the 1840s and ‘50s maybe, the memoirs are printed serially in the Saints Herald. So, all the church gets to see these memories of Joseph Smith as he's growing up. And they've been bound in a book since that time, so they're a little easier to access. But as he's recording these memoirs, he's very careful about certain aspects of his memory. He's very detailed with this proposal. So, I'm going to read quite a bit of it, because I think it's, it's very telling of the relationship that Joseph and Emmeline had during their courtship. So, Joseph writes, “I talked freely of my circumstances and told her that, at the time, I had no special intention of engaging in church work and of becoming a minister, but it's a possibility that I might do so. I told her plainly that, as a child, I had been baptized by my father. I was a member of the church over which he presided at his death, and a statement I wished her to distinctly understand and most carefully consider, that if, at any time, I should feel it my duty to take up an active way, the religion of my father, I must be at liberty to do so.” He does, however, reassure her very plainly, that he would have nothing to do with polygamy or plural marriage because he found those to be very distasteful practices. She asked to take a week to consider his proposal, and I'm sure she's talking with her family at home about this proposal. And again, her family do not like Mormons. They do not like that their lovely daughter is dating someone named Joseph Smith. And this was a tough choice for her to have to take into consideration.

 

Karin Peter  12:23

And it's not like she didn't have other options.

 

Wendy Eaton  12:25

Yeah, she had plenty of other options. So, after this week passes, they take a long buggy ride together, and they talk quite a bit. There's not recorded exactly what they talk about on this ride. But when he drops her off at her mother's house, she turns and says, “I understand your stipulations and I agree to marry you.” And there at her mother's gate, they share their first kiss. They set their wedding for October 22, and not long after the engagement, a brother-in-law of Emmeline’s visits Nauvoo and invites her to go north with him to spend some time with his family. His wife, one of her older siblings, had recently died and so she was going up to, kind of, to see her nieces and nephews there. He lived somewhere just south of St. Paul, Minnesota. They don't give an exact location. But she goes north with him and Joseph and Emmeline have an exchange of letters back and forth through the summer. At one point, Joseph realizes that the letters are becoming more and more agitated. And at one point he receives a letter that is basically Emmeline pleading with him to come get her earlier than they had planned. Joseph discovers that a merchant in the area had been paying court to Emmeline, and while out on a buggy ride with this young man, the both of them are thrown from the wagon. They're not hurt but Emmeline experiences what Joseph describes, the young man indulging in a stream of profanity, directed at the horses that very much shocked Emmeline. Joseph also learns that this brother-in-law was also giving Emmeline unwelcome attention and she wanted out. She wanted to go home. So, Joseph catches a riverboat, heads north on the Mississippi to go rescue her. The two made the return trip also by riverboat coming down. And of the trip, Joseph writes, “The trip was without incident except for the delight and pleasure we found in being in each other's society.” So, they had a very nice boat ride back to Nauvoo after her rather difficult summer.

 

Karin Peter  15:02

I love that he went and rescued her.

 

Wendy Eaton  15:06

Instead of a white horse it was probably a white riverboat, but yes, very much gallant going and saving her. 

 

Karin Peter  15:12

Absolutely.

 

Wendy Eaton  15:16

So, in the last days before their wedding, Emmeline’s family are trying to talk her out of it. It's, they're so opposed that a brother comes up to Nauvoo the day before the wedding and escorts Mrs. Griswold and one or two of Emmeline’s sisters out of town, and they beg Emmeline to leave with them. They don't even want her in town when Joseph shows up to marry her. She refuses to leave and stays in her mother's home inviting one of the neighbor girls to come stay with her overnight, so she's not by herself. The morning of the wedding, this brother comes back and once again pleads with his sister not to marry Joseph Smith and to leave town with him. Again, she refuses. So, when Joseph and the minister arrive for the wedding, they only find Emmeline and this neighbor girl in the home. They're married in Mrs. Griswold's home, and it's the Presbyterian minister that officiates their wedding. His name is Reverend Walden Meyer. And he has a great story that people have probably heard before because it is such a nice little charming one. As the Reverend pronounces them husband and wife, he leans in to give a congratulatory kiss to Emmeline, but Joseph pipes up, “After me if you please”, and he kisses his wife first. That's the second kiss he notes that the two of them share. The newlyweds remain in Mrs. Greenwald's home for a few days before moving out to the Smith family farm, which about two miles east of Nauvoo. As they settle into farm life, we get some interesting visitors in the first few months of their marriage. First, we have two missionaries from Utah who drop in. They’re delivering a book for Joseph that they have been asked to drop off for him on their way out east. They stop and visit. They drop off this book and, of course, they invite Joseph to return with them to Utah to unite under the church of Brigham Young's leadership. It's a very polite, cordial visit. Joseph refuses and the two men go on their way. In December, a couple men from what would become the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints arrive to visit Joseph. He's not home but Emeline invites them in. This is Samuel Gurley and Edmund Briggs. When Joseph arrived, the two men present him with a letter that had been put together and voted on at their recent October conference. The letter pretty insistently tells Joseph that it is time for him to pick up the leadership that he had been set apart for as heir to his father. Joseph hands the letter back saying he’d talk with them on politics or any other subject, but not religion. To make a great story short, because I want to focus on Emmeline, Briggs and Joseph eventually are in almost a shouting match with one another. Gurley burst into tears and is weeping, and Emmeline steps in with a look and a few words, calms her husband down, so that he can rationally explain why he won't join them. She gets dinner together and on the table and they share a meal in relative peace. Not to spoil the story, but it would be three more years before Joseph is ready to commit to the Reorganization. In late July of 1857, so we're not quite married a year yet, the young couple is out for a drive to town. She's planning to visit her mother and he's going to visit his. They were expecting their first child. A storm is brewing, a literal storm in the sky before he picks up Emeline. He thinks there's enough time to get home before the storm breaks but he thought wrong. As they're making the two mile journey east, the skies open up and the rain pours down. They have to pass a couple of creeks in order to get to the farm and one of the bridges, just after they pass over it, the rain came down so hard and so fast that the creek swelled and washed the bridge out just after they had crossed it. This frightens Emmeline terribly, and her fright causes the horses, who are already agitated, to become more so. By the time they reach home, they note that one of the horses is nearly unmanageable. Emmeline does not wait for the break to be put on the wagon. She jumps out as soon as they are home. Between the stress of this journey and jumping out, that was not such a great choice for her at her stage of pregnancy. The next morning Joseph has to load her back into the wagon and take her back to her mother's because she has gone into labor. The following morning, July 28 of 1857, their daughter, Emma Josepha is born. Mother and daughter remain at her mother's house for several weeks, Joseph traveling back and forth every morning and every evening so that he could spend the nights with them, but he has to take care of the farm during the day. We've now moved into August. August in Nauvoo can be brutal between the heat and the humidity, and Joseph arrives at home one day to find Emmeline very ill. The windows were closed in the room that she was in and it must have not been very comfortable for her in her condition. The next morning, she's so ill that rather than going to the farm, he goes to his mother's house, Emma Smith Bidamon is living in the Mansion House at this time, and asked his mother to prepare a room for Emmeline. He goes back to his mother-in-law's, after borrowing his stepfather Lewis's wagon, loaded with a feather mattress, blankets and pillows to make the journey as easy as possible. He arrives there, finds his mother-in-law, very agitated that he would have the audacity to move Emmeline at this time. She says that the move would kill her daughter and granddaughter. Joseph retorts that to leave them would kill his wife and daughter. So, you have two people who love Emmeline and the baby so much at odds with one another. Joseph writes that, “Amid tears and strong protestations from her mother, I gathered my little wife into my arms, lifted her into the buggy, laid the little child in her lap, and by the easiest, smoothest route between the two places, took her to my mother's. So, Emmeline is settled into the Mansion House to recover and Joseph describes it as a “peaceful, cheerful, airy room, with restrictions put on it that no one is to enter the room that would cause Emeline distress.” Emmeline recovers and the couple stay in the Mansion House for that winter. In the spring of 1858, the homestead had been readied for the two of them to move across the street, and that becomes their home for the remainder of the time in Nauvoo. The following January, their second child is born, another daughter with a name Evelyn Rebecca, and they call Eva. She's described as a beautiful, bright, spirited child. Sadly, she takes ill in the summer, and the doctor is called in several times to try to treat the little girl. Near the end of the summer, she dies, and this is a terrible moment for these young parents. Emmeline is heartbroken at the loss of her daughter. Joseph describes himself as stoic in emotion so he doesn't plainly express himself. Emmeline, in her heartbreak, sees her husband not showing the same stress that she does. They lay their little girl to her final rest in the family graveyard next to the homestead and Emmeline’s grief seems to have no solution. The following year, 1860, so this is approximately eight months after they've buried their daughter, Eva, Joseph goes to Amboy, Illinois and officially unites with the Reorganization and becomes the president of that church. Emmeline does not accompany him. The memoirs do not state why she doesn't but I would guess that having a two year old at home played a big part of that decision. Another part may have been that the Mississippi was pretty tumultuous during the trip across that Joseph had to take, to get to the train, to head to Amboy. In 1861, Emmeline is expecting again and in September another daughter, Carrie Lucinda, joins the family. Emmeline’s mother, Lucinda, is present for the birth and as Joseph puts it, “...Is affectionate in her care and attention of Emmeline.” Sometime in 1862, Emmeline takes the two little girls, Emma J. and Carrie, to go with her to visit her mother. When Joseph arrives to pick them up, he sees the gloom and tears on his wife's face very clearly and could tell that it had not been a pleasant visit. Some of Lucinda’s, Emmeline's mother's, neighbors had dropped in during the afternoon, and the conversation became very harsh about Joseph turning Mormon, and how he wasn't able to provide for his wife and daughters. Joseph, in anger, turns to his mother-in-law, reminding her that both women knew that he was a farmer, and they both knew that all the farmers in the area had been struggling. He reminds them both that they knew that one day he might be a minister. And I'm going to quote a little bit more from Joseph's memoirs directly so you get his words in this encounter. Joseph records, “If I could not bring my wife to her mother's house without having Emmeline’s mind poisoned against me, I should never again bring her under the shade of its roof. The scene was not a pleasant one. It was never in my nature to wish to quarrel with anyone. But I felt constrained to speak my mind plainly to both women. When I had finished, I turned to my wife and said, ‘Come Emma, let's go’. She was in tears, very evident distress. Very obviously, she hesitated, looking at her two little children and saying, ‘Oh, I don't know, if it were not for the little ones.’ I told her to act according to her own pleasure, at whatever cost to me. Taking up my watch, I gave her five minutes in which to make up her mind what to do, whether she would go with me or stay with her mother. This may seem cruel, but it's part and parcel of the story and romance of my life. I was fully determined not to be at warfare with her or her family.” So, Emmeline is left with this very difficult choice to make. Joseph notes that in less than five minutes, she leaves the home and joins him in the wagon and the little family head back to the homestead. The more I read it, and the more I try to rationalize it, the more gut wrenching that decision seems to me. How hard it was for Emmeline, made all the harder to understand because we don't have her voice telling us what was going through her mind and heart, only the memories of her husband to work with. A fourth daughter is born named Zaide Viola and is born on April 25, 1863. Joseph doesn't say if his mother-in-law was in the homestead to help. In a letter to Emmeline that Joseph sends while he's on a trip out west for the church, he writes how much he loves and misses Emmeline and the girls. In the letter we get a glimpse of what Emmeline’s life is like as she is adjusting to being not only a mother to three little girls now, but being spouse to a full-time minister. Little Emma J. is in school and she needs warm stockings and boots, but Emmeline has to figure out how the family can afford things like that. Emmeline’s apple and peach trees are producing pretty well, but she has the little girls to feed. She has the livestock to feed so that they would have meat for the coming winter. There's even a mention in this letter about a bucket that is wearing out and Joseph cautions his wife not to buy a new bucket just yet. When he gets home, he'll try to repair it. Emmeline is still not drawn to religion and she is really taking on, with grace, this difficulty of being married to a minister, keeping her children clothed and fed and caring for her garden and farm animals. We jump ahead to 1865. In October, Emmeline gives birth to their first son, a little boy they named Joseph Arthur. Emmeline has always been a frail woman, particularly after giving birth, but after the birth of this child, Joseph begins to fear that Emmeline’s health is beginning to decline. Just a few months later, January of 1866, the family moves from Nauvoo to Plano, Illinois, the headquarters of the church. This is great for Joseph. It places him near the center of church publication, it puts him closer to a railroad station to aid in his travels, but for Emmeline, this takes her far from home, and she becomes very homesick. Her homesickness is so severe that in March of that year, Joseph makes arrangements for Emmeline to go back to Nauvoo to visit her mother. Because the baby is so young, little Joseph Arthur joins his mother on this trip, and in his memoirs, Joseph records that at this party, he suddenly becomes fearful that something terrible is about to happen. The baby's healthy, but his wife is frail, and he becomes convinced that he is going to lose one or the other of them on this trip. Joseph has to stay in Plano. He has work to do and the three girls stay with him. He has business with the church that would take him closer to Nauvoo so, his plan is to travel up to Nauvoo after the business is finished in Canton, Illinois. While they're in Canton, he receives word that his son has taken very ill and Joseph needs to get back to Nauvoo immediately. The first leg of the journey, about 80 miles, is probably covered by train or wagon, but Joseph specifies that the last 17 miles he had to do by foot. It's late at night when he reaches his mother's home at the Mansion House, and it's there that he receives the news that his son had died the day before. The funeral’s held in the mansion and the baby is buried next to his sister, Evelyn, by the family’s old home, the homestead. Joseph learns that at some point after his son had taken sick but before he died, Emmeline asked her brother-in-law, David, to baptize her. Emmeline never tells Joseph what leads to this decision so, we will probably never know what led her to decide to be baptized. Her baptism is a comfort to Joseph though, and from what I surmise all three daughters are baptized in time. Joseph writes to his mother a few months later, and she responds that she's glad to hear her daughter-in-law is better, and hopes that God will be merciful to her. She continues this letter expressing that she would like to travel to Nauvoo or, from Nauvoo to Plano to help care for the family, but she has other family obligations that keep her in Nauvoo at that time. In 1867, there is a church conference in Keokuk, Iowa, which is not far from Nauvoo so, Joseph drops his wife and daughters off at her mother's so that they can visit while he's attending to church business. When all that wraps up, he returns to Nauvoo to his mother-in-law's home to find that their oldest daughter Emma J. has contracted pneumonia. His mother-in-law wants to call a doctor right away, but Joseph doesn't trust doctors. He's probably thinking the encounter he and Emmeline had over their daughter Evelyn but he agrees that if Emma J. is not better in a few days that he would call a doctor. He does call for his brother David and another church member to come and administer to the little girl. Emma J. does recover and Mrs. Griswold starts to make a change towards her attitude with the church. She no longer is against her son-in-law's church, but she's not gonna join. She's pretty happy in her Methodist Church, but she often will tell her friends and neighbors that her son-in-law's church has the gift of healing among them. Joseph later writes that, “I had the pleasure of living in friendly association with my mother-in-law from that time forward, winning from her in the end, a statement that I was the best son-in-law she had.” So, I'm sure it was quite a blessing to Emmeline in her last few years to have her husband and her mother begin to reconcile their relationship with one another. In 1868, Emmeline has a miscarriage, and Joseph writes that the loss of this second son further impacts her health. As her health is declining, she has a dream that she shares with Joseph. She says that in this dream, they were out riding across the prairie, and they somehow became separated. She, in the dream, reaches a stream that she cannot pass, but she sees him on the other side. This dream gives Emmeline a sense of peace, believing that she has done all she could to prepare for death. And in 1869, after about 10 weeks, her life is rapidly coming to an end. Joseph hardly leaves her side. The church community there in Plano rally to support the Smith family, particularly two women named Maria Vook and Bertha Madison, who manage the household and care for the girls. At one point in the last week, Emmeline asked for the elders to come and pray for her. They anoint her head with oil and lay their hands on her head and pray for relief. She lives somewhat more comfortably for about one more week before her death on March 25, 1869. Just a couple weeks after her 31st birthday, Joseph and their daughters accompany Emmeline's body back to Nauvoo, where she's buried next to her Evelyn and her Arthur. The girls, Emma is, at the eldest, is 12, Carrie is seven and Zaidi is five.

 

Karin Peter  38:05

Okay, so that, this story is brimming with these charming interludes of young Joseph III and Emmeline. It has all the elements of a romance novel, if you will, from the time period, and then we're left with this very devastating circumstance of her death after what, a decade and a half of marriage? Not quite.

 

Wendy Eaton  38:44

Yeah, right about 16 years, I believe.

 

Karin Peter  38:47

Okay. All right. So, we leave Emmeline then here. Joseph is still in Plano, living in Plano?

 

Wendy Eaton  38:59

Yeah. 

 

Karin Peter  39:00

With three small or three young daughters, 12 to five. I hate to leave it there. Is there anything else that you can share with us that we can, that helps us maybe have a glimpse into the situation at hand for him before we talk about our next episode, where we talk about the second wife of Joseph Smith III.

 

Wendy Eaton  39:29

Yeah, I'd love to share just a little bit about the three daughters to help bring a bit of a happier ending to the story. So, the oldest daughter, Emma Josepha. She's again, she's 12 at the time of her mother's death and was probably the most aware of the three girls of what was going on. In all the different documents that I've come across, I do know that when the family made the move from Nauvoo to Plano, Emma, the little girl, she starts up quite a letter writing relationship with her grandmother Emma, back in Nauvoo. They seem to exchange letters pretty regularly. And in 1870 Emma J. is sick, and in a letter that her dad is writing to his mother, she asked for her grandmother to come and take care of her. Emma Smith Bidamon does make the trip over to Plano and she finds Emma J. recovering but still pretty weak. And it's not long after this, even though I don't have a firm date, that Emma returns to Nauvoo to live with her grandmother at least for parts of the year. By this time, her grandmother and Grandpa Lewis are living in the Riverside mansion. And so, Emma J. is not living in Plano in her teen years, as much as she is, seems to be living in Nauvoo. Emma J. marries a church member named Alexander McCallum in 1875 and I believe they have five children. And Emmeline, or Emma Josepha ends up living in Independence at the time that her father is near the end of his life. And she seems to be living with one of her nieces at this time. She dies in 1840 at the age of 83, and is buried in Mound...

 

Karin Peter  41:42 

1840? 1940? 

 

Wendy Eaton  41:44

1940. Goes back in time, she dies in 1840, about the age of 83. She's buried in Mound Grove Cemetery. So, for listeners who are not familiar with the earliest time period of the Reorganization in Independence, Mound Grove Cemetery is where many church leaders and families are buried, including her father, Joseph III. She's buried not too far from him. So, the next daughter, Carrie, she pretty much grows up in Plano. As a young woman, she works at Herald House. I believe she's one of the typesetters there. She's not as quick to marry as her sisters are, and moves with the family to Lamoni. And she continues working at Herald House until she meets and marries a man named Frank Weld, who she marries 1887. They have one daughter, Rebecca, and Rebecca and Carrie have a strong letter writing relationship when Rebecca is a young woman. And Rebecca is great. I loved getting the glimpses of her life. This is 19 teens time period, and like her mother, she wasn't quick to marry. She was quite happy having a job. And when she did marry, they kept it as quiet as they could so that she could keep working. She and her husband have one child, but even after the birth of that child, Rebecca continues to work. And so, Carrie is living in Lamoni, Iowa for almost her entire adult life. And when she dies, at the age of 80, she's buried at Rose Lawn, there in Lamoni, which is, kind of, the other big RLDS cemetery that people might be familiar with. The last daughter, Zaidi is not as long living as her sisters. She was described as frail, as a child, and that continued as a young woman. As a teenager, she spent part of the summer, when she was 16, at a music school. So, one of the many Smith children who has that musical gift. Zaidi was one of them. She marries at age 20 and she and her husband, Richard, have four children. But Zaidi doesn't recover well after the birth of the fourth child and dies about six months after that little boy is born. Her daughter, Zaidi, is the niece that lives with Emma J. for a time period. So, all three daughters marry active church leaders, but I don't know exactly how active the daughters were, as far as specific organizations that they were in. But it's interesting to watch these, the dynamics of the family dynasty, continuing on with different church activities, and that they did marry within the church, these three girls at least.

 

Karin Peter  45:13

Well, and Carrie stayed working at Herald House, which was the church publishing arm.

 

Wendy Eaton  45:19

Yeah. 

 

Karin Peter  45:19

And is, it used to be the publishing arm of the church, yeah, okay. So, thank you for sharing a little bit about their lives and what happened with them following the death of Emmeline. And I want to thank you for all of the work that you have done to bring each, the stories of each of these women to us. And so, we can look forward to our next episode in this mini-series, which would be the story of Bertha, who you describe as having a green thumb and a sense of adventure. So, we'll see where that takes us the next time we are together. And so, again, I thank you, Wendy Eaton. If you listeners have a question for Wendy, you can reach her at weaton, E A T O N, @cofchrist.org, or through the Historic Sites website. I think your contact information is on Historic Sites Foundation website. Your information’s there as well. So, this has been Cuppa Joe, our mini-series on the three successive wives of Joseph Smith III. I'm Karin Peter. Thanks so much for listening.

 

Josh Mangelson  46:44

Thanks for listening to Project Zion Podcast, subscribe to our podcast on Apple podcast, Stitcher, or whatever podcast streaming service you use. And while you're there, give us a five star rating. Project Zion Podcast is sponsored by Latter-day Seeker Ministries of Community of Christ. The views and opinions expressed in this episode, are those speaking and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Latter-day Seeker Ministries, or Community of Christ. The music has been graciously provided by Dave Heinze.