In the last anxious hours before the Prophet Joseph Smith left for Carthage in June 1844, his wife Emma asked for a blessing. Unable to grant her wish at the time, Joseph instructed her to write out “the desires of her heart,” and he would confirm the blessing by his signature upon his return. Among the desires she expressed in her short, self-inscribed blessing was her fervent wish “to honor and respect my husband as my head, ever to live in his confidence and by acting in unison with him retain the place which God has given me by his side.”[1]

What unspoken thoughts moved Emma Smith to write those words? Promises and desires are often expressed in the midst of anguishing distress, and certainly Emma was in the grasp of despair. Perhaps she was affirming her belief that God had called her to be the wife and companion of a latter-day prophet. Might she have been thinking of the ordinances she had received with him in 1843, which promised her exaltation and a place by his side eternally? Or after more than a year of anguishing over the principle of plural marriage, was Emma finally acknowledging that only by acting in concert with Joseph, even on this divisive issue, could she fulfill the revelation given to her fourteen years earlier through her prophet-husband?

Emma’s self-written 1844 blessing, of which the quoted passage is only a part, is in many ways a companion piece to the revelation she received in 1830, which was codified as Doctrine and Covenants 25.[2] Each of these two documents is better understood in relation to the other. The enduring influence of the 1830 revelation to Emma is evident in the 1844 blessing, which carries strong echoes of the Lord’s words to her fourteen years earlier. The later blessing illuminates not only the importance and reality of the 1830 revelation in Emma’s life but also the timeless and universal quality of its content.

Doctrine and Covenants 25 has long been read primarily as a revelation commissioning a hymnbook for the newly organized Church. In recent years more attention has been given to the revelation’s injunction to Emma “to expound doctrine and exhort the church” and to define Emma’s role as an “elect lady.”[3] Less examined have been its points of universal application and its correlation with the 1844 blessing.

The 1830 revelation for Emma was unique. Preceding the introduction of patriarchal blessings in the Church by three years, its form and content were very much their prototype. It was received through an intermediary, it declared to Emma that she was one of the elect, or of the Abrahamic covenant and lineage, and its promises were conditional on her faith and obedience. Why, then, we might ask, was this individual spiritual guide included in a book of scripture for all Latter-day Saints?

The answer might possibly lie in the revelation’s distinctiveness from patriarchal blessings it prefigured. Like other revelations that make up the Doctrine and Covenants, the revelation to Emma came directly from God through his prophet, not through a patriarch, bishop, or other ecclesiastical leader. Moreover, unlike other personal revelations, patriarchal blessings, or even some of the other personally directed revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants,[4] it concludes with these significant words, which Joseph Smith repeated years later to the Relief Society in reference to the revelation: “And this is my word unto all.”[5] Thus, in significant ways, it transcends the merely personal, fitting the parameters of scripture as an expression of God’s will and thereby acquiring permanence, authority, and universality. While its specifics are addressed to Emma, its principles are applicable to all. It is a revelation, not merely a blessing, and canonized as such. And what was God’s message to Emma? The revelation’s sixteen verses address four essential aspects of Emma’s life: her actions and desires, her relationship to her prophet-husband, her responsibilities to the Church, and her relationship with the Lord.

Performance and Promises

In his consistent pattern of promise for performance, the Lord tells Emma in the revelation precisely what he expects of her as a Latter-day Saint and in return promises her aid in fulfilling those expectations. Although verses 4 and 10 appear to be mild rebukes, they could also be read as appeals for trust and faith in his divine will: “Murmur not because of the things which thou hast not seen, for they are withheld from thee and from the world, which is wisdom in me in a time to come,” the Lord tells Emma in verse 4. He may have been referring only to Emma’s regret at not having seen the gold plates, though she had held them, protected them, and acted as scribe in their translation. He may also have been alluding to the tumultuous experiences Emma had endured since her marriage to Joseph three years earlier, which did not portend a peaceful future. She would not see tranquility in her life. The attempts by gold seekers to wrest the plates from Joseph, the harassment during their translation, the mobs who interfered with Emma’s baptism, the unwarranted arrest of Joseph the same night, the alienation of her parents, the loss of home and roots, and the death of her first child all gave Emma a harsh introduction to the life of a prophet’s wife. An early lesson from these experiences was that only patience and trust in God’s wisdom and often inscrutable purposes would sustain her through the difficult times.

Then in verse 10 the Lord counsels Emma, in what certainly must be one of the most oft-repeated commands in Christian literature, to “lay aside the things of this world, and seek for the things of a better,” surely a call to keep perspective on the uncertainties her life offered. But her compliance to these two admonitions would not go unaided. “Lift up thy heart and rejoice,” the Lord encourages her in verse 13, “and cleave unto the covenants which thou hast made.” Only a month earlier Emma had entered into the covenant of baptism, which promised her that if she would “serve [the Lord] and keep his commandments,” he would in turn “pour out his Spirit more abundantly upon [her]” (Mosiah 18:10). Baptized in June, Emma received this revelation in July, and when she was finally confirmed in August, she received the gift of the Holy Ghost, an additional source of solace and guidance for her role in the Restoration.

Husband and Wife

At the time of the revelation Emma had just turned twenty-six and Joseph was not yet twenty-five. They were relatively inexperienced and unsophisticated young people who had been given momentous responsibilities. A supportive and trusting relationship would be crucial to fulfilling their respective callings. Its reciprocal nature is explained in verses 5 and 9 of the revelation. Emma was counseled to comfort and console her prophet-husband in his times of affliction and to continue to assist him when needed in his ecclesiastical duties as scribe (v. 5). In turn, she was promised Joseph’s support in the Church, presumably to enable her to fulfill the mission to which the Lord had called her (v. 9). The importance of this counsel became clear as circumstances challenged Joseph and Emma’s efforts to fulfill their obligations to each other. While Joseph’s endorsement gave legitimacy and significance to Emma’s assignments in the Church, her support of Joseph eased the burden of his calling. But the merging of their marital and ecclesiastical relationships often created an emotional kaleidoscope, alternating joy with sorrow, peace with anxiety, trust with suspicion, and unity with doubt. For equilibrium, the Lord urged Emma to maintain her spirit of meekness and let her soul “delight in [her] husband, and the glory which [would] come upon him.” To enjoy these blessings, he warned, she must “beware of pride” (v. 14).

The binding force of that counsel united Joseph and Emma in a supportive and truly complementary relationship for most of their seventeen years together. Joseph’s letters to her express affection and confidence. Though few of Emma’s letters to Joseph remain, the anxiety and urgency evident in her published letters to Illinois governor Thomas Carlin, pleading against Joseph’s extradition to Missouri, along with her boldness in daring to interfere with the legal process, certainly testify of her willingness to be more than a comfort and consolation. One can only wonder why the strength of their union was not sufficient for Emma to accept plural marriage, a principle accepted in faith by so many other devoted couples. Perhaps for Emma it was because of that unity, the oneness that had so characterized their relationship, that she was unable to open it to others. Could Emma’s reluctance to share her prophet-husband be a manifestation of the pride she had been warned against? Did her faith falter only in this final test when the sacrifice claimed too much of her own identity? The answers remain elusive.

Service to the Church

The revelation called for Emma to do more than support and assist Joseph, however. There were specific tasks for her to perform that would benefit the Church, in preparation for which her time was to “be given to writing, and to learning much” (v. 8). One assignment was “to make a selection of sacred hymns” (v. 11), a beautiful gift to the Church. By this mandate the Lord sanctioned music as an appropriate form of religious worship. Hymn texts have long been a medium to express religious thought and emotion, and the birth of the restored Church evoked a wide range of both, from the millennialist fervor of the poems of Parley P. Pratt and the doctrinal assertions of Eliza R. Snow to the joyous affirmations of W. W. Phelps. Now these and other poetic testimonies would become part of Latter-day Saint worship.

It took two years for Emma to complete the hymn selection, and another three passed before the hymns were printed in a single volume. From July 1830 to April 1832, when the selection process was completed and W. W. Phelps was instructed to correct and publish the hymns, Emma worked on the project despite a growing public antagonism toward the Church in Kirtland and a series of personal tragedies. Through them all, she persisted in fulfilling this assignment of the Lord. Her mother-in-law observed that during this time “her whole heart was in the work of the Lord and she felt no interest except for the church and the cause of truth.”[6] Finally, in June 1832, The Evening and the Morning Star began printing Emma’s selection of hymn texts described as “hymns, selected and prepared for the Church of Christ, in the last days.” The destruction of Phelps’s press in 1833, however, suspended the printing of hymns and other Church publications. Until then, thirty-eight hymn texts had appeared in either the Star or its successor, the Latter Day Saints’ Messenger and Advocate.[7] But in 1835 the Church council instructed Phelps to continue his work with Emma, and early in 1836 the first Latter-day Saint hymnal finally came off the press, entitled A Collection of Hymns for the Church of the Latter Day Saints. The 127-page hymnal contained ninety hymns, approximately forty of them written by Latter-day Saint authors, mainly Phelps himself. Emma’s preface drew on the words of the 1830 revelation, affirming that “the song of the righteous” was “a prayer unto God” and suggesting that the hymnal was only a beginning effort “till more are composed or we are blessed with a copious variety of the songs of Zion.”[8]

The idea that Emma Smith should be the sole compiler of the Church’s hymnal emerged in 1839 when the high council authorized an expanded hymnbook. David Rogers, a New York convert, had previously published for the New York Saints a hymnal that had drawn heavily on Emma’s 1835 selection, and Brigham Young had taken a collection of hymns to England with the intent of publishing a hymnal there. But the Nauvoo high council voted to destroy all copies of Rogers’s hymnbook and to forbid Brigham Young to publish a British edition.[9] The prohibition evidently did not reach Young in time to prevent the publication of three thousand Latter-day Saint hymnals in Manchester, England, in 1840. When he decided to revise the hymnal the next year, Brigham Young wrote to Joseph Smith for permission. Apparently the needs of the growing Church prompted Joseph to permit a second edition in England and a new, enlarged edition, under Emma’s direction, in Nauvoo. Emma’s exclusive stewardship over the church hymnal had been modified to allow the publication of a volume of hymns appropriate for the British Saints under Brigham Young’s direction.[10]

A second, more problematic commission of the Lord to Emma in the revelation was “to expound scriptures, and to exhort the church, according as it shall be given thee by my Spirit” (v. 7). With only a few exceptions, no religious denominations at that time gave women public platforms with mixed congregations. Tradition and contemporary ideals of feminine propriety were powerful agents in defining a woman’s appropriate public behavior, and preaching in public was not a feminine occupation in the nineteenth century.[11] However, these social strictures did not affect the small, informal Church meetings, characteristic of Latter-day Saint worship from its beginnings. In Nauvoo, women regularly addressed the mixed Church gatherings in one another’s homes for a Sunday or weeknight prayer, a blessing, or a cottage meeting. Along with the men, they bore testimony, expounded doctrine, and read scriptures to the assembled members. They prophesied, spoke in tongues, and blessed one another.[12] Emma often accompanied Joseph to such meetings.[13] Few could have been more conversant with Latter-day Saint doctrine or had more incentive to expound its truths than Emma Smith.

The patriarchal blessings of other women during this period admonished them to instruct one another, mentor the young in gospel principles, and “encourage and strengthen” others in the faith.[14] One so blessed was Phoebe Woodruff before she left on a mission to England with her husband, Wilford. Brigham Young promised her that she would be “looked up to as A mother in Israel for council and for Instruction.” He granted her “power & wisdom to teach the truth to thy friends and thy se[x]” and guaranteed that she would “not be at a loss for Ideas & words in [her] teaching.”[15]

The organization of the Relief Society in 1842 provided Emma Smith with the public setting most conducive to the fulfillment of her assignment. At its initial meeting, Joseph Smith proposed that the sisters should “elect a president to preside over them.” After Elizabeth Ann Whitney nominated Emma, she was elected by the nineteen other women present. Joseph then read the 1830 revelation, explaining that at the time it had been given, Emma had been “ordained to expound the scriptures to all and to teach the female part of the community.”[16] Though she met with the Relief Society only from March to October in 1842 (when it adjourned for the winter months) and again for just four meetings in March 1844, Emma was clearly its head and moving spirit.[17]

She took her calling to exhort the sisters seriously and immediately set about following Joseph’s counsel by instructing them to purify their own lives and help in creating a virtuous community. She urged them to extend their compassionate service to all distressed Saints and to draw around them protective bands of unity. Joseph counseled that the Relief Society was to save souls as well as relieve the poor and Emma advised the sisters in this important obligation. “Each member should be ambitious to do good,” she urged, “deal frankly with each other—to watch over the morals—and be very careful of the character and reputation—of the members of the Institution.”[18] To this end, Emma zealously acceded to Joseph’s charge. However, ferreting out iniquity was a delicate task, but Emma, with the help of her counselors, endeavored to fulfill Joseph’s charge. Like that of female moral reform associations throughout the country, all bent on exposing evil, one of the Relief Society’s aims was to cleanse the Church of any wrongdoing. Noting their reluctance to be moral caretakers, Emma lamented that “the sisters are not careful enough to expose iniquity; the time had been when charity had covered a multitude of sins,” she said, “but now it is necessary that sin should be expos’d [exposed].”[19] Her commitment to uphold virtue and put down transgression dominated the final meetings of the Relief Society on March 9 and 16, 1844, in which she used her authority as president to denounce the false doctrine of “spiritual wifery,” a counterfeit of the revealed doctrine of plural marriage, and warn the sisters to guard against it and “any other improper practice.”[20] It is generally conceded that Emma used her position as Relief Society president and her commission to exhort the sisters as a license also to thwart the establishment of plural marriage.[21] The evidence shows that she did indeed attempt to mobilize overt action against the practice through the Relief Society, which numbered more than thirteen hundred by 1844. Moreover, the minutes of the final meetings of the Relief Society clearly indicate that she never questioned her right or her authority to instruct the sisters of the Church in their duties as she saw them.

In contrast to the controversial nature of the Relief Society’s moral purity campaign was Emma’s equally emphatic desire that the sisters clothe themselves in Christian service, seek out and relieve the distressed, and give help and material aid to one another, invoking the Spirit by blessing one another when needed for healing, for comfort, for childbirth, and for spiritual sustenance and guidance. If the sisters needed a model of selfless service, Emma could provide it. From the Kirtland days, when she and Elizabeth Ann Whitney prepared a “love feast” for the poor, Emma, so often a beneficiary of the compassion of friends, was the first to extend it to others. Her compassion and hospitality in Nauvoo were legendary. Her home was often a sanctuary for the homeless, the orphaned, and the sick. Lucy Walker and her siblings were only a few of the dozens of individuals who came under her protective care. Virtually orphaned at their mother’s death because their father was abroad on a mission, the Walker children were offered a home with the Prophet and Emma. “Our own father and mother could scarcely have done more,” Lucy noted when her younger sister died. “The Prophet and his wife introduced us as their sons and daughters. Every privilege was accorded us in the home. Every pleasure within reach was ours.”[22]

Emma’s counselors were also exemplars to the sisters. Elizabeth Ann Whitney, then a stranger to Emma, opened her home to Emma and Joseph when they arrived in Kirtland, almost destitute, to make their home; and Sarah Cleveland, also a stranger at the time, gave Emma and her children refuge in Quincy when they fled from the Missouri persecutions, leaving Joseph still imprisoned in Liberty Jail. It is little wonder that Emma turned to these women for her closest associates and counselors in the new organization.

Another persistent theme in Emma’s exhortations to the Relief Society was her appeal for unity. “Measures to promote union in this society must be carefully attended to,” she urged the members at the outset.[23] As membership dramatically increased, Emma was even more urgent in her plea for unity. “We shall have sufficient difficulty from abroad,” she presciently warned in August 1842, “without stirring up strife among ourselves and hardness and evil fee[l]ings, one towards another.”[24]

But, as is often the case, the principle of unity was easier for Emma to preach than to practice. Even as she pleaded for a united sisterhood, she was herself becoming a symbol of disunion. Both the 1830 revelation and her 1844 blessing centered on her unity with Joseph as the key to the success of her own calling, but in the end unity gave way to doubt, and doubt invoked disloyalty. Her exhortations to the Relief Society in its final four meetings in March 1844 seemed frantic but futile. Immediately thereafter both the Relief Society and Emma’s place as its “elect lady” abruptly ended. Emma’s commitment to the 1830 revelation seriously faltered, and the consequences were monumental.

Relationship with the Lord

Finally, how did the 1830 revelation define Emma’s relationship with the Lord? Was it unique, or can its principles be extrapolated to all? The first three verses of the revelation set forth the primary elements of that relationship. First, the Lord claims Emma as a daughter because of her willingness to accept the gospel, a requisite for all to becoming sons and daughters of God.[25] Second, he covenants with her, promising her eternal blessings in return for obedience and faith, other universal principles. Finally, he forgives Emma her sins, personally validating the efficacy of her recent baptism, and receives her into the circle of the “elect,” who are those, he explains elsewhere, who “hear my voice and harden not their hearts” (Doctrine and Covenants 29:7).

Emma, like others of the elect, had proven her faithfulness even before mortality and through the “covenant of grace” was permitted to enter this life at a time and place that would bring her into contact with the gospel.[26] But being of the elect also carried responsibilities, foreordained missions that varied with each individual according to God’s purposes. A passage in Joseph Smith’s private journal for March 17, 1842, affirms that definition: “Elect meant to be Elected to a certain work,” a broad definition of the term. The prophet then noted that Emma fulfilled this part of the 1830 revelation when she was elected president of the Relief Society, the specific work to which she had been “previously . . . ordained.”[27] In the Relief Society minutes of that date, however, he seemed to narrow the meaning, indicating that “elect lady” specifically meant “elected to preside,” a term presumably applicable to any woman who presided in the Relief Society. Certainly that was how the term was applied in later years. In that same meeting, John Taylor confirmed Emma’s earlier revelation (Doctrine and Covenants 25), also declaring her to be “a mother in Israel” who was “to look to the wants of the needy, and be a pattern of virtue.” Again referring to the 1830 revelation, he said he “rejoiced to see this Institution organized according to the law of Heaven . . . according to the revelation” previously given to Emma “appointing her to this important calling.”[28] His words suggest that the organization of the Relief Society facilitated the fulfillment of Emma’s call as an elect lady.

One might wonder why it took twelve years for this part of the revelation to be realized. Perhaps Emma’s service to the Church before 1842 was merely preparatory, although certainly falling within the range of Emma’s special calling. The Lord evidently directed the proceedings of that organizational meeting, for there was a possibility for other women to be elected president, particularly Sarah M. Kimball, a logical choice, when Joseph opened the meeting for nominations. Elizabeth Ann Whitney, however, gave the nomination to Emma, and her election by the women present ratified her call as the “elect lady.”[29] From that time, the title “elect lady” in reference to Emma Smith developed a mystique that seemed to curtail its use for others until after her death, despite her dissociation with the Relief Society and the Church. Though Brigham Young authorized Eliza R. Snow to organize Relief Societies throughout the Church and direct its activities in 1868, she was not officially set apart “to preside” as the new “elect lady” until 1880, the year after Emma’s death.[30]

The final element that defined Emma’s relationship with the Lord is the fifteenth verse of the revelation. “Keep my commandments continually,” he told her, “and a crown of righteousness thou shalt receive. And except thou do this,” he cautioned, “where I am you cannot come” (Doctrine and Covenants 25:15). In that passage Emma was taught a fundamental principle of the gospel—that God’s blessings are obtained only by obedience to the laws upon which they are predicated (see also Doctrine and Covenants 130:20–21). This principle underlies the commandments and blessings the Lord expressed to Emma in the revelation, which was as complete and certain a personal guide to Emma Smith, the Latter-day Saint, as it was a special calling to Emma Smith, the wife of the Prophet.

Conclusion

Despite the years between the two, the 1844 blessing reads like a reprise of the 1830 revelation on several points. It repeats, expands, and develops several of the themes introduced in the earlier document, reflecting the seasoning of fourteen years. Perhaps more than her words and actions in those final mercurial years before the Prophet’s death, the 1844 blessing is the best index to Emma’s mind and spirit at that perilous time and the enduring effect of the 1830 revelation upon her.

Besides her deepest desire to act in unison with Joseph and “retain the place God has given me by his side,” a remarkable statement in view of the events of the preceding months, Emma made several other self-revelatory requests of the Lord in that 1844 blessing. She expressed a craving for wisdom that she would not do or say anything she would regret; she desired the Spirit of God and a fruitful mind that she would be able “to comprehend the designs of God, when revealed through his servants without doubting”; she sought wisdom to rear her children and prudence to keep healthy so that she would live to perform “all the work that [she] covenanted to perform in the spirit world;” and finally, she asked for humility that she might rejoice “in the blessings which God has in store for all who are willing to be obedient to his requirements.”[31]

Were these the words of a prophet’s wife hoping only to retain her place with him, or could they have been a penitent’s re-covenant with God? Perhaps they were both. As a glimpse into the heart of Emma Smith on the eve of her husband’s death, this final blessing, I believe, expresses an intense desire to reconnect with the 1830 revelation that gave her a blueprint for the extraordinary life that awaited her. If the words of the blessing can be taken as a measure of her soul at that moment, they testify of Emma’s longing to feel the approbation of the Lord and spiritual union once again with Joseph.

What she was then willing to sacrifice to fulfill those longings, however, will remain forever moot. The tragedy that followed closed that chapter in Emma’s life, even as it opened a new one in the life of the Church.

Notes

[1] The original blessing Emma Smith wrote is lost. However, a typescript copy is located in the Church History Library. See Emma Smith blessing, 1844, typescript, MS 5135, CHL. The entire text of the blessing is given in Jennifer Reeder, First: The Life and Faith of Emma Smith (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1981), 71–72. See also Saints: The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days, vol. 1, The Standard of Truth: 1815–1846 (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2018), 543–44. Historian Juanita Brooks reported she studied the original blessing. See Juanita Brooks to George Albert Smith, April 29, 1946, CHL. See also Saints, vol. 1, 544n24.

[2] A discussion of the revelation to Emma is in Jill Mulvay Derr et al., 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), 17–21. See also Revelation, July 1830–C (D&C 25), in JSP, D1:161–64; also see JSP, R2:70–71, 488–89.

[3] See Daniel H. Ludlow, ed., Encyclopedia of Mormonism (New York: Macmillan, 1992), s.v. “Elect of God,” 2:448–49. See also Bible Dictionary, “Election.”

[4] At least thirty-six other revelations are partially or fully addressed to individuals.

[5] Nauvoo Relief Society Minute Book (17 March 1842–16 March 1844), www.josephsmithpapers.org.

[6] Lucy Mack Smith, Biographical Sketches of Joseph Smith the Prophet and His Progenitors for Many Generations, 1853, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, HBLL.

[7] For more details about the development of Latter-day Saint hymnals, see Michael Hicks, Mormonism and Music: A History (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1989), 10–14, 18–34. A work focused on the hymn texts is Karen Lynn Davidson, Our Latter-day Hymns: The Stories and the Messages (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1988), 7–13. E. Cecil McGavin provides an early account in “Emma Smith’s Collection of Hymns,” Improvement Era, January 1936, 38.

[8] Emma Smith, comp., A Collection of Sacred Hymns for the Church of the Latter Day Saints (Kirtland, OH: F. G. Williams & Co., 1835), iv, www.josephsmithpapers.org.

[9] Hicks, Mormonism and Music,23–25.

[10] Hicks, Mormonism and Music,26–27. Emma’s second hymnal was published in 1841 by Ebenezer Robinson in the place of William Phelps, who was temporarily out of favor with Church leaders. Many of the borrowed hymn texts revised by Phelps for the 1835 edition were restored to their original form, giving the 1841 edition less of a restorationist tone than either the earlier edition or the British hymnbook, which contained many of the hymns of Parley P. Pratt. Emma expanded the collection one last time in 1843, but it was never printed. In 1860 Emma Smith was commissioned by the newly formed Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which her son Joseph III would lead, to make a selection of hymns. A number of RLDS publications deal with her contributions. See for instance, Fred’k. M. Smith, “Emma Smith and Her Selection of Hymns,” Saints’ Herald, 1905, 386–87; Audentia Smith Anderson, “Emma Smith and the Church Hymns,” Saints’ Herald, May 6, 1939, 553–54; and Samuel A. Burgess, “Latter Day Saint Hymns,” Journal of History 18, no. 3 (July 1925): 257–60.

[11] Once in 1845, Lucy Mack Smith enjoyed the privilege of addressing the last conference of the Church before the departure of the Saints the following winter. For a complete version of her talk and commentary, see Ronald W. Walker, “Lucy Mack Smith Speaks to the Nauvoo Saints,” BYU Studies 32, nos. 1–2 (Winter and Spring 1991): 276–84.

[12] An interesting description of a cottage meeting is provided in Charlotte Havens, “A Girl’s Letters from Nauvoo,” Overland Monthly, December 1890, 627.

[13] See JSP, J1:77, 106, 139.

[14] For more discussion of these early blessings, see Carol Cornwall Madsen, “Mothers in Israel: Sarah’s Legacy,” in Women of Wisdom and Knowledge: Talks Selected from the BYU Women’s Conferences,ed. Marie Cornwall and Susan Howe (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1990), 191–92.

[15] Wilford Woodruff, journal (January 1, 1847–December 31, 1853), April 13, 1848, 146, www.wilfordwoodruffpapers.org.

[16] Nauvoo Minutes, March 17, 1842, in First Fifty Years of Relief Society, 31. This is a slight variation on the actual words of the revelation instructing Emma “to expound scriptures, and to exhort the Church” (Doctrine and Covenants 25:7). In earlier times, the terms “ordain” and “set apart” were often used interchangeably, both asserting the delegation of authority. Thus Emma Smith was “ordained” to office, whereas twenty-four years later Eliza R. Snow was “set apart” to the same office. More recently, specific distinctions have been made between the two terms.

[17] During its second year, because of the large enrollment, the Relief Society met as ward groups, each meeting conducted by Emma’s counselors. There is no reference to Emma in the meeting minutes.

[18] Nauvoo Minutes, March 17, 1842, in First Fifty Years, 36.

[19] Nauvoo Minutes, May 18, 1842, in First Fifty Years, 66–67.

[20] See Nauvoo Minutes, March 9 and 16, 1844, in First Fifty Years, 126–31; see also “The Voice of Innocence from Nauvoo,” in First Fifty Years, 153–56. William W. Phelps was the author of “The Voice of Innocence,” but Emma made some alterations to the text. The document was read at both of the March meetings.

[21] See Jill Mulvay Derr, Janath Russell Cannon, and Maureen Ursenbach Beecher, Women of Covenant: The Story of the Relief Society (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1992), 61–62.

[22] “An Early Pioneer, Lucy Walker Kimball,” in Our Pioneer Heritage, comp. Kate B. Carter (Salt Lake City: Daughters of Utah Pioneers, 1976), 19:198.

[23] Nauvoo Minutes, March 24, 1842, in First Fifty Years, 37.

[24] Nauvoo Minutes, March 24, 1842, in First Fifty Years, 91.

[25] Hyrum M. Smith and Janne M. Sjodahl explain that “all men and women are the children of God, through Adam, who ‘was the son of God’ (Luke 3:38); those who receive the gospel are sons and daughters in the Kingdom of God.” Hyrum M. Smith and Janne M. Sjodahl, Doctrine and Covenants Commentary (Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1927), 173.

[26] Bible Dictionary, “Election.”

[27] Joseph Smith, Journal, March 17, 1842, in JSP, J2:45.

[28] Nauvoo Minutes, March 17, 1842, in First Fifty Years, 36.

[29] Nauvoo Minutes, March 17, 1842, in First Fifty Years, 36.

[30] See “Pen Sketch of an Illustrious Woman,” Woman’s Exponent 9, no. 5 (August 1, 1880): 39.

[31] See Reeder, First: The Life and Faith, 71–72.