Smith Family Cemetery
The Smith Family Cemetery, located in Nauvoo, Illinois, is the site of the burial of many of the descendants of Joseph Smith, Sr. and his wife Lucy Mack Smith, including the Prophet Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum who were martyred on June 27, 1844.
Immediately following the deaths of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, their bodies were taken by Artois Hamilton to his hotel a few blocks away from Carthage Jail. There he built oak coffins for the bodies. The following day, the bodies were moved to Nauvoo: Hamilton moved Hyrum’s coffin in his wagon and Samuel Smith carried Joseph’s in his wagon. Willard Richards, who had been with Joseph and Hyrum at the time of their deaths, accompanied Hamilton and Samuel.
The bodies were taken to the local undertaker, George Cannon, who made death masks of Joseph and Hyrum. He also washed and clothed the bodies and prepared them for the family viewing. The next day the bodies were viewed by the public, numbering approximately 10,000.
Responding to a fear that the bodies would be desecrated, a careful plan was enacted to make sure that it didn’t happen.
“After the viewing, the coffins were locked in a bedroom of the Mansion House while the outer boxes were weighted with sandbags and were buried in the Nauvoo cemetery. And then at midnight, the coffins containing the bodies were buried in the basement of the Nauvoo House.”[1]
Isaac Manning who was employed as a grave digger for the city sexton, reported, “I dug the four graves, for the two men. Two I dug out in the burring grounds, and the other two I dug in the cellar a cross the street west of the ‘Nauvoo House.’”[2]
One scholar wrote:
- Sometime after the Martyrdom, a conflict arose between Brigham Young and Emma Smith regarding the final resting places of the martyrs. Because the remains of Joseph and Hyrum had actually been interred in the unfinished basement of the Nauvoo House—a structure that was Church-owned property—Brigham Young, as the new head of the Church, would have had control over it. In the fall of 1844, Emma gathered a close group of friends and had the bodies of both Joseph and Hyrum removed from Church property and placed in a cellar directly across the street from the Nauvoo House and onto undisputed Smith property. This she did with extreme secrecy, not even informing Mary Fielding Smith, Hyrum’s widow. Once this was done, Brigham had no control over the remains. Brigham Young spoke about the controversy between him and Emma and the remains of Joseph and Hyrum in the October 1845 conference of the Church. “We are determined also to use every means in our power to do all that Joseph told us,” he said, “And we will petition Sister Emma, in the name of Israel’s God, to let us deposit the remains of Joseph according as he commanded us. And if she will not consent to it, our garments are clear.—Then when he awakes in the morning of the resurrection, he shall talk with them, not with me; the sin shall be upon her head, not ours.”[3]
In 1928, nearly half a century after Emma Smith passed away, her body was disinterred along with the bodies of Joseph and Hyrum. They were reinterred alongside one another in Nauvoo in a gravesite near the Smith Homestead.
Also buried in the Smith Family Cemetery are Joseph’s parents Joseph Smith Sr. and Lucy Mack Smith. Numerous other family members and friends are also buried there.
Historians are aware of Joseph’s plan to have a tomb built for him, his parents and siblings, and his children. The tomb was apparently under construction before his death from a design Smith commissioned of William Weeks. Although several places have been considered the possible location for the Tomb of Joseph, archeologists and historians have been unable to definitively discover the whereabouts.
In 2021, a man who bought the Zion’s Mercantile in Nauvoo uncovered a vault that he considers matches the description of Weeks’ design.[4] Brian Christiansen excavated the brick archway in the yard of the Mercantile and uncovered a room. He calls it the Tomb of Joseph Museum, and visitors can view the lower level of the Nauvoo Mercantile building free of charge and learn about the lesser known story of Joseph’s desire to have a family tomb.
"Let my father, Don Carlos, and Alvin, and children that I have buried be brought and laid in the tomb I have built. Let my mother, and my brethren, and my sisters be laid there also; and let it be called the Tomb of Joseph, a descendant of Jacob; and when I die, let me be gathered to the tomb of my father."[5]
A documentary on the tomb and its possible locations as well as Church history at that time is available for purchase through Christiansen's website.
The Smith Family Cemetery is owned by Community of Christ and was not part of the March 2024 transfer of properties to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
