Is it true that Joseph and Emma eloped?
"Owing to my continuing to assert that I had seen a vision," Joseph explained, "persecution still followed me, and my wife's father's family were very much opposed to our being married. I was, therefore, under the necessity of taking her elsewhere; so we went and were married at the house of Squire Tarbill, in South Bainbridge, Chenango county, New York. Immediately after my marriage, I left Mr. Stoal's, and went to my father's, and farmed with him that season" (Joseph Smith—History 1:58).
Who were the children of Joseph and Emma Smith?
Nine children born to Joseph and Emma included Joseph III (b. 1832), Frederick Granger Williams (b. 1836), Alexander Hale (b. 1838), Don Carlos (b. 1840), and David Hyrum (b. 1844). Two other children died before receiving names: sons in 1828 and 1842. Infant twins, Thaddeus and Lousia, died in 1831. Shortly thereafter, Joseph and Emma adopted the Murdock twins, Julia and Joseph, whose mother died during childbirth. Joseph Murdock Smith died in 1832. Don Carlos died in Nauvoo in 1841. The other five children lived to adulthood.
What were Joseph Smith's feelings for his wife, Emma?
"My dear wife," he wrote from New York City, when Julia was their only living child and Emma was about to give birth. "The thoughts of home, of Emma and Julia, rush upon my mind like a flood, and I could wish for a moment to be with them. My breast is filled with all the feelings and tenderness of a parent and a husband. . . . God is your friend in heaven and . . . you have one true and living friend on earth, your husband" (Letter to Emma Smith, Oct. 13, 1832, New York City, New York, in Personal Writings of Joseph Smith, comp. Dean C. Jessee [2002], 278–79; spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and grammar modernized).
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