Julia Murdock Smith Dixon Middleton

Portrait of Julia Murdock.

According to Emma Hale Smith's handwritten account, in the Smith family Bible, her adopted daughter, Julia Murdock Smith was born May 1, 1831, in Warrensville, Ohio, to John and Julia Clapp Murdock. Her twin brother, Joseph, was also born the same day. The exact date of the birth comes into dispute but other contemporary information we have used the Smith family bible date in our data base, since that is the earliest recorded date.

 The Murdock twins were brought to Emma, who had lost her own twins, who were born and died on 30 April. At the age of seven, Julia shared young Joseph III's trek with his parents out of Ohio, in 1838, and the hard winter trek out of Missouri, crossing the frozen Mississippi on foot holding onto Emma's skirts as she fled to Quincy, Illinois in February 1839. All of her young life was filled with turmoil and when she was quite young she complicated her life by eloping with Elisha Dixon, at the age of seventeen, in 1848. For a time the couple attempted to run the Mansion House Hotel for Emma, but ill health prompted Elisha to move to a warmer climate. They moved to Galveston, Texas, where Elisha was employed on a River boat. His death in 1853, due to an explosion on the river boat, left Julia a widow with no children. She returned to Nauvoo and spent some time at the Mansion House with Emma before she remarried. On 19 November 1856, she was married to John Middleton who was a Catholic. They were married by the same Presbyterian minister who married Joseph Smith III and Emmeline Griswold that same year.

One year after their marriage, 9 November 1857, Julia was baptized at the Church of St. Francis Xavior, in St. Louis, and on November 11, she as confirmed in the Church of the Immaculate Conception.

It was not until late in 1858 that correspondence occurred between Julia and her brother, John Murdock, and later from her father. Julia did not choose to continue contact her father, though she saved his letter, and later had ongoing correspondence with her brother. Julia explained in her letter to her brother than she had lived a bitter life, feeling confused and abandoned by her 'real' family, but fearful too that they would take her away from those who raised her and whom she loved.

Julia's letters to Emma clearly reveal that she devotedly loved her adopted mother and brothers, and held in reverent memory her father, Joseph Smith Jr. When Joseph Smith III took leadership of the Reorganization in 1860, Julia was not motivated to join in his cause, for she was already settled into her life as a devout Catholic.

John Middleton became an alcoholic and was abusive to Julia; the marriage ended in divorce, and she returned to Nauvoo, in 1876. There were no children. She was with Emma at the difficult time when David Hyrum was placed in the mental hospital at Elgin, Illinois. And she was there to tend to Emma during her last illness and present at her death, 30 April 1879. After Emma's death, Alexander and Elizabeth invited Julia to come to them at their farm near Andover, Missouri. Julia herself was unwell, suffering from breast cancer. While with Alexander's family, niece, Vida Elizabeth Smith wrote of her:

"She was a source of great delight to the older children of our home, for she as a delightful talker and had led a most romantic and unusual life that she picked stories from here and there and told to us in the shut-in weeks (winter) on the farm. Stories form a life as brilliant and wonderful and proud as the glowing pages of a fairy tale, and at last as sad and unlovely and poor as the most prosaic of life stories. It was indeed a strange story that began in that little Ohio town among a hunted and persecuted people." (Vida E. Smith, "Biography of Patriarch Alexander Hale Smith," Journal of History, Vol. 6 (Lamoni, Iowa: Board of Education of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, 1911).

In the spring of 1880, Julia decided to visit her friends, Samantha and James Moffitt, in Nauvoo; while there she became too ill to return to Missouri, and she died in the Moffitt's home, 10 Sept, 1880. Her burial took place in the St. Peter and Paul Cemetery in Nauvoo. Julia left no posterity.

In 2003, her grave was marked by a memorial placed by the Missouri Mormon Frontier Foundation in a ceremony attended by many Murdocks, Moffitts, and Smiths descendants. The words engraved on her first grave marker were repeated on the new one: "Gone but Not Forgotten"

Joseph Smith III

Portrait of Joseph Smith, III.

Joseph Smith III was born 6 November 1832 in Kirtland, Ohio. He traveled by wagon with his parents to Far West, Caldwell, Missouri, January to March 1838. Shortly after his sixth birthday, his father, Joseph Smith Jr., was taken to Liberty, Clay, Missouri, and unjustly held prisoner there until April 1839, when he joined his family in Quincy, Illinois where they had taken refuge from the Missouri persecutions. His early boyhood was spent in Nauvoo, the city built up in the place once called Commerce, Hancock, Illinois. He was baptized by his father in Nauvoo. On 27 June 1844, his father, and Uncle Hyrum Smith were killed by a mob while held in protective custody in the Hancock County Jail in Carthage, Illinois. Such shocking events in his young childhood and early youth left him with a lifelong hatred for injustice and oppression. He also held a deep and abiding reverence for his mother, Emma, and felt a great responsibility as protector and defender of his family name.

Marriage and family:

Emmeline Griswold.

Ada Rachel Clark

Bertha Madison

Joseph III married Emmeline Griswold, in Nauvoo, 22 March 1856. The couple had five children, Emma Joseph, Evelyn Rebecca, Carrie Lucinda, Zaide Viola, and Joseph Arthur. Evelyn, and Joseph Arthur, died in infancy and are buried in the Smith family cemetery in Nauvoo. They made their home in Nauvoo and Amboy, Illinois. Heartbreak struck again when his died 25 March 1869. She is also buried in the family cemetery in Nauvoo. On 12 November 1869, he married Bertha Madison, in Sandwich, DeKalb, Illinois. Bertha had been caretaker for his children and Emmeline during her illness, so she moved easily into the position of mother to his daughters. Bertha bore him nine children during their 27 happy years together. The children were: David Carlos, Mary Audentia, Frederick Madison, Israel Alexander, Kenneth, Bertha Azuba, Hale Washington, Blossom, and Lucy Yeteve. David and Blossom died in infancy, Bertha Azuba, at the age of six, and David Carlos at age fourteen. Again tragedy struck when Bertha was injured in an accident and died 19 October 1896. They lived in Amboy, Illinois 1896-1881, and in Lamoni, Iowa.

Joseph III remarried 12 January 1898, at Waldemar, Dufferin, Ontario, Canada, to Ada Rachel Clark. They became the parents of Richard Clark, William Wallace, and Reginald Archer. They lived at Lamoni, Iowa, and Independence, Missouri. Their three boys were in their teens when their father died in 1914, and their mother died less than a year later, 20 October 1915, their Uncle Israel Alexander Smith and his wife Nina moved into the home in Independence, to see them to maturity.

Father--Grandfather--Great Grandfather:

Joseph Smith III was the father of 17 children, 11 grew to maturity. At the time he died his grandchildren numbered 27, of whom fifteen, ages 5-17 were living; he had 6 great grandchildren, age 1 month to 13 yrs. Today, (June 2009), we count in his posterity 31 grandchildren over all; 60 great grandchildren. The total descendants in our data base, is 243 (not counting spouses); 175 are living.

Public life:

He was a devoted minister of the Gospel all of his adult life:

Joseph at work.

Joseph III was recruited by Reorganization organizers. He at first refused then accepted the position. He served as president and prophet to the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints (RLDS) from 1860 to 1914, a period of 54 years. He left a legacy of intense devotion to his mother, Emma, and testified with firm conviction to the virtue and integrity of his father, insisting his father had no part in founding polygamy, which he abhorred. He outlived his brothers, Frederick, Alexander, and David Hyrum, his adopted sister, Julia, who died in 1881, and his step-father, Lewis C. Bidamon, who died in 1891.

Early portrait of Joseph.

He published his father’s Inspired Translation of the Bible in December 1867.

Joseph III revered education, founding Graceland College, which was one of his primary achievements. Graceland has become a university. Under the leadership of Joseph III, the Kirtland Temple was purchased and deeded to the RLDS Church; they have preserved that historical building for present and future generations.

The RLDS Church, (now Community of Christ) purchased, restored, and now maintains the Smith Homes in Nauvoo, viz., Old Homestead, Mansion House; and the Riverside Mansion (Nauvoo House) which was built by his step father in 1870. His mother Emma died there in 1879.

Frederick Granger Williams Smith

Portrait of Frederick Granger Williams Smith.

Frederick Granger William Smith, born 20 June 1836, came into the world at a most challenging time in the lives of his parents, Emma and Joseph Smith Jr. They had arrived in Kirtland, Ohio in January 1831, refugees from the state of New York, where in 1830, Joseph had founded a new church, established an all-out missionary effort to acquaint the world with the testimony that the Lord had opened the heavens and a new dispensation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ was about to roll forth upon a wicked and unsuspecting world. The Smiths arrived in Kirtland as a result of the missionary labor which converted over one-hundred souls in that area to the new church variously named, Church of Christ, Church of the Latter Day Saints. By 1833, the Church had begun to build a temple, and in 1835, had adopted the official name of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. In March 1836, just a few weeks before Frederick G. W. Smith was born, the beautiful Kirtland Temple was dedicated amidst magnifi cent heavenly manifestations which attested to the fact that this was indeed a time when God’s voice and power was being revealed to men (and women) on earth. it was also a time when the devil’s rage was being manifest both without and within The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Before young Frederick would reach the age of two, his family was forced to flee from Kirtland, and make a difficult winter trek across country, to Far West, Missouri. As a babe in arms, he was too young to know or understand the trials his parents were going through; but, as a child of three, he was able to articulate the dreadful night dreams he had, in which he told his family at breakfast that “the Missourians came and got their heads knocked off.”

At the age of eight, he suffered the loss of his beloved father, murdered with his uncle Hyrum in Carthage on June 27, 1844. At such a young age, he could little have understood the causes, but he certainly realized the grief and pain of the loss of his loved ones. That loss was magnified when his beloved uncle Samuel Smith died within a few weeks after that event; the deaths of these good men would change his life forever.

Alice Fredericka Smith.

Frederick left no written works; his memorial remains in a few comments about his character by his brothers, Joseph III and Alexander who attest to his sweet nature and his disinterest in participating in any conflicts over religion. On 13 November 1857, Frederick married Anna Marie Jones. A little over a year later, 27 November 1858, a daughter, Alice Fredericka, was born to them at Nauvoo. In 1861, his younger brother, Alexander, and his wife Elizabeth moved to the Smith farm southeast of Nauvoo. In January, 1862, when Elizabeth gave birth to her fi rst child, her health became so seriously compromised Alexander took her from the farm into Nauvoo to be nursed by his mother. Apparently, Frederick, and his wife Anna Marie, and little Alice Fredericka moved to the farm so Frederick could take care of things there.

Little information exists from which to contrive any sort of personal accounting of their lives other than that in the spring of 1862, Frederick became very ill. Instead of contacting his family to report his condition, his wife left him at the farm and went to her mother’s home. Joseph Smith III happened to stop to see his brother and family. To his great dismay, he discovered Frederick alone in the cold house, desperately ill, with no food, and no wood to make a fire. Joseph immediately took Frederick to the Mansion House to be nursed by their mother.

Emma was skilled in nursing the sick; she was well known for being able to cure the sick through the use of herbs and tender care. It was not to be this time however, and on 27 April 1862, Frederick succumbed to his illness, possibly tuberculosis. He was about two months short of his twenty-fourth birthday. Frederick’s death left the entire family in stunned sorrow. Anna Marie took her daughter away from Nauvoo; she later remarried and returned expecting and hoping for some legacy from Frederick’s share of the estate. Frederick had owned nothing of his own. His daughter grew up away from Nauvoo and never knew much of the family until she was grown. She never married; there is no living posterity.

David Hyrum Smith

Portrait of David Hyrum Smith.

The youngest of the nine children born to Emma and Joseph Smith Jr., David Hyrum, came into the world on 14 November 1844, in the Old Homestead, in Nauvoo, Illinois. Five months before his birth, his father, Joseph Smith Jr., had been killed by a mob in Carthage, Illinois. A frail, colicky baby, he was cherished by his widowed mother, his elder (and adopted) sister, Julia, his brothers, Joseph III, Frederick, and Alexander. He was three years old when his mother married Louis C. Bidamon. With that marriage he gained two new step-sisters, Mary Elizabeth 11, and Emma Zerelda Bidamon, 13, who, like so many other children, were welcomed by his mother, Emma, who could never stand to see a soul in need go without giving aid.

In his youth he became an accomplished artist, poet, and musician. He was at the age of about sixteen when his brother Joseph III took leadership of the Reorganization in 1860. He soon became eagerly involved in the ministry with his brother. As he matured, he became a good preacher, and always touched the hearts of any congregation with his wonderful hymns of faith and devotion to God and the cause of the restoration. Never having known his father, he penned a sad ballad entitled, “The Unknown Grave” which tells of the death of his father, his uncle Hyrum, and their sacrifice for the cause of the gospel.

Portrait of Clara Hartshorn.

David traveled west with Alexander on a mission to Utah, California, and points west, in 1869. They pursued that journey, going by wagon to Omaha, where they boarded the Union Pacific Railroad, becoming some of the earliest travelers on that road after its completion in May of 1869. They arrived in Salt Lake City on 15 July. David was excited about the opportunity and thoroughly enjoyed the western country. He and Alexander were made welcome in their cousin, John Smith’s home. They were together for an unpleasant encounter with Brigham Young and other leaders of the Church in Utah; Brigham Young refused the Smith boys use of the Tabernacle and scolded them for their activities, speaking harshly to them of their mother.

They left the meeting smarting with indignation that someone would ever speak so against their dear mother, whom they loved so deeply. They felt Brigham had misjudged her, and they would like to have corrected him, but they held their tempers and wrote home describing the incident with great indignation. In December they were in California. David suffered illness which was very debilitating but struggled to continue his missionary labors.

Alexander was called home due to his wife’s illness, so the two went home in March 1870. David was cared for by his mother and seemed to improve. On the 10 May 1870 he married the young woman who had captured his heart, Clara Hartshorn, at Sandwich, Illinois. The young couple set up housekeeping in the Mansion House, living with Emma and Pa Bidamon. On 8 March 1871, a son, Elbert Aoriul was born to Clara and David in room #10, of the old hotel wing. Things got very crowded there when Alexander and Lizzie, with their four children moved back to Nauvoo. Louis Bidamon hastened to get the Riverside Mansion ready and he and Emma moved into it.

David and Clara.

David went to Utah In the middle of the summer of 1871, without church authorization where his harsh words were published in the Salt Lake Daily Tribune in July. He was back to Nauvoo within a few weeks and continued his travels throughout Iowa, Missouri, Illinois preaching and publishing his sermons. He became a popular and formidable speaker. He was anxious to return to Utah.

David Hyrum Smith, son of Joseph Smith, Jr.

In July 1872, he was finally called to accompany Charles Jensen on another mission back to Utah. While there he seemed to lose the sense of his religious purpose; he suffered a complete physical and emotional breakdown. During the early months of 1873, he fought to recover, but he was returned home in May in the care of Josiah Ells. Unknowing of David’s severe illness, Joseph had called him to serve in the First Presidency in April. David seemed to feel better. He and Clara set up housekeeping in Plano; but his illness overtook him, and he was never well enough to serve in that capacity due to ongoing bouts of depression and confusion. His emotional and physical breakdown was not due to his missionary labors in Utah as some mistakenly implied. From 1874 through 1876, his family struggled to care for him passing him back and forth between Plano, Lamoni, IA. When he became violent, it was decided there was nothing that could be done except to place him in the asylum for the mentally ill in Elgin, Illinois. Joseph Smith III took this sad step on 19 January 1877. David was thirtytwo.

For the rest of his life, David had times of lucid thought but it did not last. His book, Hesperis a book of Poems, published in 1875 brought a small income to his wife and child. Emma said of his condition to a friend calling it her “living trouble.” Emma, and the entire family mourned the terrible loss of their brilliant, and gifted, deeply beloved, son, brother, uncle and cousin.

David died 29 August 1904, a few months short of his sixtieth birthday.

His son Elbert married and had three sons.