Эмма Хейл Смит: Жозеф Смиттің әйелі және ерте Латтер-Дей Сент қозғалысының көшбасшысы

Wife of Joseph Smith Jr. and Latter Day Saint leader (1804–1879)

Emma Hale Smith Bidamon (July 10, 1804 – April 30, 1879) was a leader in the early Latter Day Saint movement and a prominent member of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (RLDS Church) as well as the first wife of Joseph Smith, the movement's founder. In 1842, when the Ladies' Relief Society of Nauvoo was formed as a women's service organization, she was elected by its members as the organization's first president. After the killing of Joseph Smith, Emma remained in Nauvoo rather than following Brigham Young and the Mormon pioneers to the Utah Territory. Emma was supportive of Smith's teachings throughout her life with the exception of plural marriage and remained loyal to her son, Joseph Smith III, in his leadership of the RLDS Church.

Emma Hale was born on July 10, 1804, in Harmony Township, Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, in her family's log cabin. She was the seventh child and third daughter of Isaac Hale and Elizabeth Lewis Hale. She was descended of primarily English ancestors, including seven passengers on the Mayflower. Isaac and Elizabeth arrived in Susquehanna County in 1791 where they bought land and became the first permanent settlers. Isaac and Elizabeth were members of the first Methodist Episcopal congregation in Harmony, where Emma's uncle preached. Beginning at age seven or eight, Emma was involved in the church, reading the Bible and singing hymns. Emma's father stepped away from the church for a time and became a deist, but later returned to the church after Emma's requests. The Hale family was relatively wealthy. Isaac hunted and Elizabeth hosted lodgers and boarders in their home. in South Bainbridge, New York, where they were married the following day. On September 22, 1827, Joseph and Emma took a horse and carriage belonging to Joseph Knight, Sr., and went to a hill, now known as Hill Cumorah, where Joseph said he received a set of golden plates. The announcement of Joseph having the plates created a great deal of excitement in the area. In December 1827, with financial support from Martin Harris, the couple accepted and invitation from Emma's parents to move to Harmony. The Hales helped Emma and Joseph obtain a house and a small farm. Once they settled in, Joseph began work on the Book of Mormon, with Emma acting as a scribe. She became a physical witness of the plates, reporting that she felt them through a cloth, traced the pages through the cloth with her fingers, heard the metallic sound they made as she moved them, and felt their weight. She later wrote in an interview with her son, Joseph Smith III: "In writing for your father I frequently wrote day after day, often sitting at the table close by him, he sitting with his face buried in his hat, with the stone in it, and dictating hour after hour with nothing between us." In Harmony on June 15, 1828, Emma gave birth to her first childa son named Alvinwho lived only a few hours. He was buried east of their house. For the next two weeks, Emma remained gravely ill.

Due to increased hostility towards Joseph as he worked on the Book of Mormon, Emma and Joseph went to live with David Whitmer in Fayette, New York, to finish the Book of Mormon. While there, both Emma and a schoolteacher named Oliver Cowdery worked as Joseph's scribes. Joseph received a copyright for the Book of Mormon in June 1829 and the book was published in March 1830.

Emma and her family lived with friendly non Mormons John and Sarah Cleveland in Quincy, Illinois, until Joseph escaped custody in Missouri. The family moved to a new Latter Day Saint settlement in Illinois which Joseph named "Nauvoo". On May 10, 1839, As president of the Ladies' Relief Society, she authorized the publishing of a certificate in October 1842 denouncing polygamy and denying her husband as its creator or participant. In June 1844, the press of the Nauvoo Expositor, a newspaper published by disaffected former church members, was destroyed by the town marshal on orders from the town council (of which Joseph was a member). This set into motion the events that ultimately led to Joseph's arrest and incarceration in the jail in Carthage, Illinois. A mob of about 200 armed men stormed the jail in the late afternoon of June 27, 1844, and both Joseph and his brother Hyrum were killed.

Upon Joseph's death, Emma was left a pregnant widow. On November 17, 1844, she gave birth to David Hyrum Smith, the last child that she and Joseph had together. In addition to being church president, Joseph had been trustee in trust for the church. As a result, his estate was entirely wrapped up with the finances of the church. Joseph had also been in debt when he died, leaving the responsibility to pay it on Emma Smith's shoulders. Historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich argues that "Emma vacillated in her support for plural marriage, sometimes acquiescing to Joseph's sealings, sometimes resisting." Although she knew of some of her husband's marriages, she almost certainly did not know the full extent of his polygamous activities. In 1843, Emma temporarily accepted Smith's marriage to four women of her choosing who boarded in the Smith household, but later regretted her decision and demanded the other wives leave. That July, at his brother Hyrum's encouragement, Joseph dictated a revelation directing Emma to accept plural marriage. Hyrum delivered the message to Emma, but she furiously rejected it. Joseph and Emma were not reconciled over the matter until September 1843, after Emma began participating in temple ceremonies, and after Joseph made other concessions to her. The next year, in March 1844, Emma publicly denounced polygamy as evil and destructive; and though she did not directly disclose Smith's secret practice of plural marriage, she insisted that people should heed only what he taught publiclyimplicitly challenging his private promulgation of polygamy. Despite her knowledge of polygamy, Emma publicly denied that her husband had ever taken additional wives. While Smith was still alive, Emma spoke against polygamy, and she (along with multiple other signatories directly involved in polygamy) signed an 1842 petition denying that Smith or his church endorsed the practice. After his death, she continued to deny his polygamy. When Joseph III and Alexander specifically asked about polygamy in an interview with their mother, she stated, "No such thing as polygamy, or spiritual wifery, was taught, publicly or privately, before my husband's death, that I have now, or ever had any knowledge of  He had no other wife but me; nor did he to my knowledge ever have". Many of the Latter Day Saints who joined the RLDS Church in the midwestern United States had broken with Brigham Young and/or James Strang because of opposition to polygamy. Emma's continuing public denial of the practice seemed to lend strength to their cause, and opposition to polygamy became a tenet of the RLDS Church. Over the years, many RLDS Church historians have continued to state that the practice had originated with Brigham Young.