A Voice of Courage

Joseph F. Smith Was Surrounded by People of Physical and Moral Courage
On 13 November 1838, Mary Fielding Smith gave birth to her first son, Joseph Fielding Smith, in Far West, Missouri. (Note: this is not the Joseph Fielding Smith who was tenth President of the Church, but his father, the sixth President.) Joseph was too young to fully realize what his mother and the other Saints were suffering at the hands of the Missouri mobs who were bent on exterminating the Mormons; but when he was six years old and living in Nauvoo, he came to understand the reality of the struggle and persecution: his father, Hyrum, and Uncle Joseph were killed by an angry mob in Carthage Jail. In his early years he had been a witness many times to the courage of these great men. His mother, Mary Fielding Smith, was another great example of courage and strength of character. It is not surprising that young Joseph showed these characteristics at an early age. He was not quite eight years old when he drove a yoke of oxen pulling their wagon from Montrose, Iowa, to Winter Quarters, Nebraska.