Katharine Smith Salisbury was the seventh surviving child and second daughter in Joseph Smith’s family. She married Jenkins Salisbury in the year 1831, and they were the parents of eight children. They migrated with the Saints to Ohio, Missouri, and finally to Illinois. After the main body of the Saints migrated to the Salt Lake valley, she remained behind in Illinois, where she raised her family. She always maintained her faith in the Restoration and the prophetic calling of her brother Joseph, and ensured those beliefs were perpetuated to her posterity.
Learn more about Joseph Smith’s sister in the new biography by Kyle R. Walker.
Katharine Smith Salisbury was the longest-surviving member of the Joseph Sr. and Lucy Mack Smith family, passing away at the age of eighty-six, on February 2, 1900. Her longevity meant that she, unlike her two sisters, had ample opportunity to record her history—including a cache of letters, interviews, and recorded speeches that help document her remarkable life.
She is one of a small cluster of first-generation female members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for whom a full-length biography can be written. Thus, Katharine’s recollections, despite most coming later in life, contribute to our appreciation of women’s lived experience and contributions in the early church, as well as enriching our understanding of the founding family of the Restoration.
Katharine Smith Salisbury was one of eleven members of the Joseph Smith family who were present during the time her brother Joseph first recounted his earliest visionary experiences. She often recounted listening to Joseph describe Moroni’s initial visits, and added supplementary details about his appearance and the impact his visits had upon the family.
She recited details that are not mentioned in any other source.
She was at home when her brother Joseph retrieved the Book of Mormon plates from a hiding place in the woods in late September 1827, and was the first family member to heft the plates when he brought them in the house. Along with other family members, she was active in protecting the plates during those few months while the plates were housed in the Smith home.
In one instance, when Joseph Smith was being chased by a mob, he thrust the bundle containing the plates into Katharine’s hands telling her to take them and hide them. Katharine, obviously prepared for such circumstances, took the plates and hid them in her bedsheets where she and her older sister Sophronia slept.
When the mob subsequently searched the home and looked in the room where the Smith sisters slept, they quickly moved on as they appeared to be asleep. Katharine left multiple accounts of hefting the plates while covered and described the metallic sound the pages of plates made when she ran her fingers along its edges, similar to what Emma Hale Smith recounted.
Joseph Smith’s sister, Katharine, also attended the meeting of the church’s organization on April 6, 1830, and was baptized at the first church conference held a few months later, on June 9, 1830. Her recollections of the Saints’ migration to Ohio adds materially to our understanding of the difficulties of that journey.
Katharine’s attitude softened during the last decades of her life.
While in Kirtland, Katharine attended the dedication of the Kirtland Temple and contributed significant work efforts to the interior of the finished edifice. She migrated with the Saints from New York to Ohio, then to Missouri, and finally to Illinois.
Before her family’s move to Illinois, she was often present at major events, as she frequently resided with her parents in Kirtland and Missouri, even after her marriage to Jenkins Salisbury in 1831. Thus, Katharine’s surviving recollections about early church history contribute to our understanding of these early Restoration events—particularly from a female perspective.
Her recitals about the First Vision, Moroni’s visits, her company’s migration to Kirtland, and the hostilities the Saints experienced in Missouri and Nauvoo contain details that are not mentioned in any other source.
Why Joseph Smith’s Sister Didn’t Go West
Katharine’s recollections are also critical in understanding the views of Smith family members as to why they did not follow Brigham Young’s leadership after the year 1846.
William Smith, the only surviving male member of the Smith family after the summer of 1844, had a profound influence on his sisters, including his advocating for lineal succession after his own clash with leaders at Nauvoo in the year 1845. Nowhere is William’s teachings and influence on his siblings more evident than in the surviving writings of Katharine and her posterity.
However, unlike William’s persisting hostility towards the Mountain Saints, Katharine’s attitude towards those in the West softened during the final decades of her life. More so than any of her siblings, Katharine maintained positive exchanges with church leaders in Salt Lake Valley—as well as with her Smith nephews as they crisscrossed through Illinois during their missionary travels.
Those documented interactions fill important gaps in the historical record, resulting in a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between surviving Smith family members in the Midwest and church leaders in the West during the second half of the nineteenth century.
Joseph Smith’s Sister and the Reorganized Church
During the decade of the 1870s, Katharine Smith Salisbury and her children linked themselves with the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (now Community of Christ). In her final years, she was viewed as a living link between the early church, which her brother Joseph Smith had founded, and the Reorganization, led by her nephew Joseph Smith III.
Because of the respect RLDS church members held for the Smith family, Katharine was afforded privileges that were denied other women of her day, including speaking at the Church’s general conference and sitting on the stand at RLDS district meetings. In both the venue of RLDS conferences, and with the publication of her letters in the church-sponsored newspaper the Saints’ Herald, Katharine found channels where she could express her views.
Through these mediums she often recounted her recollections of early church history and perpetuated feminine ideals, much like her mother Lucy Mack Smith had done in Nauvoo in an earlier era.
The Faith and Loyalty of Joseph Smith’s Sister
Katharine’s life was filled with hardships and challenges. Beginning in her teen years, her life was riddled with religious prejudice and the resulting ostracism she experienced from her peers.
After her marriage, three of her children died in infancy.
She experienced a challenging marriage to her husband, who was only intermittently available as a provider and vacillated in his loyalty to the faith she espoused. This led to a life of poverty and struggle, made more challenging when the Salisburys were driven from Ohio and Missouri in company with the Saints, and more especially after her husband passed away at forty-four.
Raising four boys as a widow in rural Hancock County, Illinois, surrounded by neighbors who had earlier driven the Saints from town, she and her children continued to experience untold hardships as her connection to Joseph Smith became known to neighbors.
Through all these challenges she remained loyal to her brother, vouching for his prophetic appointment for the remainder of her life. She successfully perpetuated that belief to her posterity. The challenges she endured only further solidified her commitment to take up her cross for the cause of her faith.
About the author
Kyle R. Walker is an administrator in the Counseling Center at Brigham Young University-Idaho, where he also teaches in Religious Education. He received his PhD in Marriage and Family Therapy from Brigham Young University and graduate minor in Church History and Doctrine. His doctoral dissertation focused on the dynamics of the Joseph Sr. and Lucy Mack Smith family. He is the editor of United by Faith: The Joseph Sr. and Lucy Mack Smith Family. His is also the author of the award-winning biography William B. Smith: In the Shadow of the Prophet. He serves as the president of the John Whitmer Historical Association.
Further reading
- What Did Joseph Smith’s Family Know About the First Vision?
- Why Did Emma Smith Stay in Nauvoo?
- What Was Joseph and Lucy Mack Smith’s Tunbridge Farm?
- Who Was Jane Manning James?
- What Are the Discourses of Eliza R. Snow?
Joseph Smith’s sister resources
- Sister to the Prophet: The Life of Katharine Smith Salisbury (Deseret Book)
- Katharine Smith Salisbury’s Recollections of Joseph’s Meetings with Moroni (BYU Studies)
- Katharine Smith Younger Biography (Joseph Smith Papers)
- Picturing History: Katharine Smith Salisbury Grave (Deseret News)
- Joseph Sr. and Lucy Mack Smith Family (Church History Topics)