Joseph and Emma Smith Home
Joseph and Emma Smith lived in Kirtland, Ohio, from February 1831 until January 1838 when they fled the city because of persecution and threats of violence. While in Kirtland, they lived in four different places until late 1833 when they moved into a home that had been built for them. This home, near the Kirtland Temple was to be their home where they lived the longest during their married life.
When they moved into the home, their family included their 2-year-old adopted daughter, Julia Murdock, and their 1-year-old son, Joseph III. Another son, Frederick Granger Williams Smith, was born there in 1836.
- The home was often busy with visitors. Extended family and friends gathered there. Strangers came to quench their curiosity about Joseph’s prophetic claims and about the church he led. The Smiths also welcomed boarders. Some long-term guests paid for the privilege of living here. Others did not — for example, Joseph’s parents lived there for more than a year until their home was built next door.
- And with so many visitors, Joseph and Emma sometimes sacrificed comfort and privacy.
- “They have a constant stream of visitors,” said Mark Staker, a master curator in the Church History Department. People, as soon as they arrive to Kirtland, often come to visit Joseph. He would invite them to stay in his home until they got their own place. So often Joseph and Emma are sleeping on the floor on their coat. Their parents are sleeping on the floor to accommodate all of these visitors. As you go into the home, you say, ‘Where could they have slept? How could they have fit everybody?’”
On August 26, 2023, Elder David A. Bednar of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles dedicated the restored home of Joseph and Emma Smith. The Church had purchased the home and surrounding property in 2012. Extensive archaeological and architectural research was conducted to determine which parts of the existing structure were original to the home. Construction to return the home to its original appearance began in May 2022.
“It has really been a labor of love for the past 10 years,” said Church Historic Sites Director Ben Pykles. “[The 2012 purchase] started a decade of research—architectural research, archeological research, historical research, material culture research. And so many experts and intelligent individuals have come together to really make this home as accurate and as authentic as possible so that we can bring people here and tell them this is what the home looked like when Joseph and Emma lived here in the 1830s.”[1]
In the home, Emma completed the compilation of the first Church hymnal. Joseph met there with other Church leaders and instructed missionaries. He also oversaw and participated in the work to build the Kirtland Temple.
Speaking at a Brigham Young University devotional in 1994, then-Elder M. Russell Ballard of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles said “we may yet discover that Kirtland is our most significant Church history site.”
President Ballard, now Acting President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, listed several notable events that occurred in and around Kirtland:
- All of the priesthood offices found in the Church today were revealed.
- About one-half of the revelations recorded in the Doctrine and Covenants were revealed, far more than any other location, and the first edition of the Doctrine and Covenants was printed.
- The School of the Prophets started as part of an educational period for Latter-day Saint leaders.
- Joseph Smith made his Bible translation and largely translated the Pearl of Great Price.
- More heavenly manifestations occurred there than any other place. Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ appeared or were seen in vision four times, and the Savior was seen at least six more times by Joseph Smith.
- The Church’s first temple was built and heavenly messengers restored significant keys. President Ballard said the Kirtland Temple is the site of “some of the greatest spiritual events of this, the dispensation of the fulness of times” as the heavens opened to hundreds of early Saints.
- “Kirtland is truly a holy ground of this dispensation,” said President Ballard. “The Church basks in the light of revelation today to a great extent because of the great pentecostal outpouring that Joseph and the Saints received in Kirtland.”
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