Episode 2: The First Mother in Israel

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (0:03)
In the winter of 1844, 69-year-old Lucy Mack Smith sat down with relatively recent convert Martha Jane Nolten Corey to commit to paper her firsthand account of the history of her son and the church he had founded. Several versions exist of why the project started. It's possible that Lucy approached Martha Jane or vice versa. Also, intriguingly, given the later controversy, Lucy hints that the 12 apostles commissioned the project. Whatever the actual origins of this history, the results are one of the most important sources for Joseph Smith's life. Not to mention the first autobiography of a Mormon woman.
Who was the woman that created this manuscript? The First Lady of Mormonism's First Family.
Hi, this is Lindsay Hansen Park.

**Bryan Buchanan** (0:53)
And this is Bryan Buchanan.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (0:55)
Bringing you the story of Mormonism from the shadow of the Everlasting Hills, straight out of Zion, this isn't your grandpa's Mormon history.

**Bryan Buchanan** (1:22)
This is the tale of Mormon saints and sinners from our roots until present day.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (1:28)
Gird your loins, lock your hearts, and pay your tithing, because we're bringing you the story of Mormonism in all its paradisiacal glory.

**Bryan Buchanan** (1:36)
It's the Sunstone History Podcast.
Lucy Mack was born in 1775, but she always thought it was a year later. As the last of eight children, her family was kind of complicated, and in a lot of ways, it set a pattern for how her future family would be structured. So her father, Solomon Mack Sr, was kind of a jack of all trades. He was a farmer, he was a manufacturer, he was a merchant, shipmaster, real estate investor, and a freighter. So depending on what day of the week it was, he might have been doing something different. He was frequently away from home on adventures. He fought in both the French and Indian War and the Revolutionary War. And because of this, seems like he entrusted much of the family's religious life to the care of his wife, Lydia Gates. And characteristic of rural life at that time, remember this is long before the advent of modern medicine, much of Lucy's narrative of the family's early years would center on sickness. So her beloved older sisters, Lavina and Lovisa, both succumbed at young ages to the dreaded consumption, what we would call tuberculosis today. Though Lucy describes some miraculous events associated with these illnesses, the all too frequent result was a painful drawn out death.
When she later wrote about Lavina's passing, she noted, The grief at occasion was preying upon my health and was likely to be a serious injury to me for months after this. I did not feel as though life was worth seeking after. Close quote.
So obviously you can sense her sadness and it's kind of one of those hints we get that Lucy experienced depression from time to time.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (3:21)
I like that you bring this up, Bryan, because depression on the frontier is not unheard of. In fact, as you know, because you've gone through a lot of old journals like I have, depression was quite common. They just didn't have a word for it. But the good thing about not having a word for it means that there was no stigma attached to it. People would get down sometimes and it was known.
And especially dealing with grief. When you lived on the frontier, you had to deal with people dying a lot.

**Bryan Buchanan** (3:45)
And sure, you did happen a lot, but that doesn't mean that you wouldn't be sad about it. And you think about infant mortality rates, you think about things like tuberculosis, diseases that they absolutely did not understand and had zero way of treating. This would have happened all the time.
I mean, if you look at your own family history, you go through every family of that time, at least one child on average would have died either at birth or very, very young and plenty of deaths before adult life.
So this was a constant backdrop to people's lives. And so we'll see that crop up many times in Lucy's young life, but then also her married life.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (4:24)
And when we talk about consumption, I mean, that's like the, it's like the Oregon Trail version of what everyone always had on the planes when they died, you know, like warning, you've got dysentery or you died of consumption.
I have often thought about why consumption, you know, I thought maybe it meant they, as a Mormon girl growing up where alcohol was forbidden, I thought, well, maybe it meant that they drink alcohol. They consumed alcohol, but that is not what it means. It was tuberculosis, which was an infection of the lungs. And the reason why I understand they called it consumption is because when you got it, it would cause extreme weight loss. It would seem to, quote, consume the patient.