Saturday, August 13, 2022

Lucy Mack Smith's Reputation for Ministering to the Sick

  

Former neighbors remembered [Lucy Smith] as a wise woman with a reputation for ministering to the sick. Orlando Saunders recalled that the Smiths “were the best family in the neighborhood in case of sickness. One was at my house nearly all the time when my father died.” [144] Hyram Jackway recollected that “old lady Smith was kind in sickness.” [145] The sister of Porter Rockwell, who lived just down the road from the Smiths, remembered that “Jo Smith’s mother doctored many persons in Palmyra.” [146] And, according to Anna Eaton, Lucy “knew the virtues of remedial roots and herbs, and was ever ready to administer and assist when her lowly neighbors were sick or dying.” [147]

 

Notes for the Above:

 

[144] Orlando Saunders, interviewed by William H. Kelley and Edmund L. Kelley, Palmyra, New York, 6 March 1881, William H. Kelley, Notebook No. 5, p. 6, in EMD, 2:85. See also William H. Kelley, “The Hill Cumorah, and the Book of Mormon,” Saints’ Herald, 1 June 1881, p. 165, col. 1.

 

[145] Hiram Jackway, interviewed by William H. Kelley and Edmund L, Kelley, Palmyra, New York, 6 March 1881, William H. Kelley, Notebook No. 5, p. 6, in EMD, 2:86. See also William H. Kelley, “The Hill Cumorah, and the Book of Mormon,” Saints’ Herald, 1 June 1881, p. 166, col. 3.

 

[146] Mrs. M C[aroline]. R[ockwell]. Smith, Statement, 25 March 1885, in Deming, “Mormon Prophet” Naked Truths about Mormonism, April 1888, p. 1, col. 3.

 

[147] Mr. Dr. Horace Eaton, The Origin of Mormonism (New York: Woman’s Executive Committee of Home Missions, 1881), 3. Dan Vogel informs me that the author’s name is Anna Ruth.

 

Source: Mark Ashurst-McGee, "A Pathway to Prophethood: Joseph Smith Junior as Rodsman, Village Seer, and Judeo-Christian Prophet" (M.A. thesis., Utah State University, 2000), 96-97

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