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Emma Smith

American Mormon leader (1804-1879)

Emma Hale Smith Bidamon (10 July 1804 – 30 April 1879) was an American homesteader and leader in the Latter Day Saint movement, and she was the wife of Joseph Smith. She was among the earliest baptized members of the Church of Christ founded by Joseph Smith, compiled one of the Latter Day Saint movement's first hymnals, was president of the Ladies' Relief Society of Nauvoo, and was a prominent member of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. After Joseph Smith's death, she remarried, to Lewis C. Bidamon.

We are going to do something extraordinary. When a boat is stuck on the rapids with a multitude of Mormons on board we shall consider that a loud call for relief. We expect extraordinary occasions and pressing calls.

Quotes

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  • I shall not attempt to write my feelings altogether, for the situation in which you are, the walls, bars, and bolts, rolling rivers, running streams, rising hills, sinking vallies and spreading prairies that separate us, and the cruel injustice that first cast you into prison and still holds you there, with many other considerations, places my feelings far beyond description. Was it not for conscious innocence, and the direct interposition of divine mercy, I am very sure I never should have been able to have endured the scenes of suffering that I have passed through, since what is called the Militia, came in to Far West, under the ever to be remembered Governor’s notable order; an order fraught with as much wickedness as ignorance and as much ignorance as was ever contained in an article of that length; but I still live and am yet willing to suffer more if it is the will of kind Heaven, that I should for your sake.
  • No one but God, knows the reflections of my mind and the feelings of my heart when I left our house and home, and allmost all of every thing that we possessed excepting our little Children, and took my journey out of the State of Missouri, leaving you shut up in that lonesome prison. But the recollection is more than human nature ought to bear, and if God does not record our sufferings and avenge our wrongs on them that are guilty, I shall be sadly mistaken.
  • I have many more things I could like to write but have not time and you may be astonished at my bad writing and incoherent manner, but you will pardon all when you reflect how hard it would be for you to write, when your hands were stiffened with hard work, and your heart convulsed with intense anxiety.
  • We are going to do something extraordinary. When a boat is stuck on the rapids with a multitude of Mormons on board we shall consider that a loud call for relief. We expect extraordinary occasions and pressing calls.
    • Nauvoo Relief Society Minute Book, March 17, 1842, compiled in 1.2.1 of Jill Mulvay Derr, Carol Cornwall Madsen, Kate Holbrook, and Matthew J. Grow, eds., The First Fifty Years of Relief Society: Key Documents in Latter-day Saint Women’s History (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press, 2016). Minute book scribed by Eliza R. Snow and Hannah M. Ells.
  • No one need feel delicate in reference to inquiries about this society. There is nothing private. Its objects are purely benevolent … , its objects are charitable: none can object to telling the good, the evil withhold.
    • Nauvoo Relief Society Minute Book, March 24, 1842, compiled in 1.2.2 of Jill Mulvay Derr, Carol Cornwall Madsen, Kate Holbrook, and Matthew J. Grow, eds., The First Fifty Years of Relief Society: Key Documents in Latter-day Saint Women’s History (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press, 2016). Minute book scribed by Eliza R. Snow and Hannah M. Ells.
  • We shall have sufficient difficulty from abroad without stirring up strife among ourselves and hardness and evil feelings one towards another, etc. … We could govern this generation in one way if not another. If not by the mighty arm of power, we can do it by faith and prayer. If we will try to live uprightly… we should not be driven.
    • Nauvoo Relief Society Minute Book, August 4, 1842, compiled in 1.2.16 of Jill Mulvay Derr, Carol Cornwall Madsen, Kate Holbrook, and Matthew J. Grow, eds., The First Fifty Years of Relief Society: Key Documents in Latter-day Saint Women’s History (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press, 2016). Minute book scribed by Eliza R. Snow and Hannah M. Ells.
  • I would crave as the richest of heaven's blessings would be wisdom from my Heavenly Father bestowed daily, so that whatever I might do or say, I could not look back at the close of the day with regret, nor neglect the performance of any act that would bring a blessing. I desire the Spirit of God to know and understand myself, that I desire a fruitful, active mind, that I may be able to comprehend the designs of God, when revealed through his servants without doubting. I desire a spirit of discernment, which is one of the promised blessings of the Holy Ghost.
    • Letter to Joseph Smith, June 24, 1844, quoted in Linda King Newell and Valeen Tippetts Avery, Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith, 2nd ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 190.
    • When Joseph Smith was taken to Carthage Jail shortly before his murder, Emma Smith asked him to give her a blessing (a religious practice in the Latter Day Saint movement). There being insufficient time, Joseph Smith told Emma Smith to write out a blessing, which he would sign. This is an excerpt from that blessing which Emma Smith wrote for herself.
 
I have been called apostate; but I have never apostatized, nor forsaken the faith I at first accepted
  • If there is anything in the world I am, or ever was proud of it is the honor and integrity of my children, but I dare not allow myself to be proud as I believe pride is one of the sins so often reproved in the good book, so I am enjoying the better spirit, and that is to be truly and sincerely thankful and in humility give God the glory, and not try to take any of it myself for it is true that He has led my children in the better way.
  • I know Mormonism to be the truth; and believe the Church to have been established by divine direction. I have complete faith in it. In writing for your father I frequently wrote day after day, often sitting at the table close by him, he sitting with his face buried in his hat, with the stone in it, and dictating hour after hour with nothing between us.
    • "Last Testimony of Sister Emma", interviewed by Joseph Smith III, in Saints' Herald, 1 October 1879, p. 289.
    • When Joseph Smith dictated the Book of Mormon, Emma Smith was one of his earliest scribes. She may have scribed the majority of an early portion of the transcript that was lost.
  • I have been called apostate; but I have never apostatized, nor forsaken the faith I at first accepted; but was called so because I would not accept their new fangled notion.
    • "Last Testimony of Sister Emma", interviewed by Joseph Smith III, in Saints' Herald, 1 October 1879, p. 290.

Quotes about Emma Smith

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  • Hearken unto the voice of the Lord your God, while I speak unto you, Emma Smith, my daughter, for verily I say unto you, all those who receive my gospel are sons and daughters in my kingdom. A revelation I give unto you concerning my will, and if thou art faithful and walk in the paths of virtue before me, I will preserve thy life, and thou shalt receive an inheritance in Zion. Behold thy sins are forgiven thee, and thou art an elect lady, whom I have called.
    • Section 47 in The Doctrine and Covenants of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints; Carefully Selected from the Revelations of God (Kirtland: F. G. Williams & Co., 1835), 178–179, via the Joseph Smith Papers.
    • This was originally dictated by Joseph Smith as part of a revelation in July 1830. Adherents of the Latter Day Saint movement, including Emma Smith, believed the revelations Joseph Smith dictated and had recorded to be pronouncements from the perspective of God. This same section is section 25 in the current edition published by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and is section 24 in the edition published by Community of Christ, the church formerly named the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
  • Again she is​ here, even in the seventh trouble, undaunted, firm and unwavering, unchangeable, affectionate Emma.
  • I have never seen a woman in my life, who would endure every species of fatigue and hardship, from month to month, and from year to year, with that unflinching courage, zeal, and patience, which she has ever done; for I know that which she has had to endure—she has been tossed upon the ocean of uncertainty—she has breasted the storms of persecution, and buffeted the rage of men and devils, which would have borne down almost any other woman.
  • Her eyes were brown and sad. She would smile with her lips but to me, as small as I was, I never saw the brown eyes smile. I asked my mother one day, why don't Grandma laugh with her eyes like you do and my mother said because she has a deep sorrow in her heart.
  • Emma was called "an elect lady." That is, to use another line of scripture, she was a "chosen vessel of the Lord." Each of you is an elect lady. You have come out of the world as partakers of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. You have made your election, and if you are living worthy of it, the Lord will honor you in it and magnify you.
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  • "Emma Hale Smith Bidamon" brief biography in The First Fifty Years of Relief Society: Key Documents in Latter-day Saint Women's History
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