Original portrait for Cloud of Witnesses (AI-generated, after period photographs).
Latter-day Saints
Emma Smith
Pennsylvania to Nauvoo, 1804–1879
Wife of the prophet Joseph Smith, called "an elect lady" by revelation. Scribe for part of the Book of Mormon translation, compiler of the Church's first hymnal (1835), and first president of the Nauvoo Female Relief Society (1842). She buried several children, endured persecution and displacement, and lost her husband to murder at Carthage in 1844. She did not go west; her son later led the Reorganized Church.
On their voice
Plain, dignified 19th-century American English — NOT KJV cadence. A grieving, strong, candid woman speaking from her own experience; reserved about the things that wounded her, never theatrical.
