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Permission to publish material from Katharine Smith Salisbury Family Collection must be obtained from the Supervisor of Reference Services and/or the L. Tom Perry Special Collections Board of Curators.
Katharine Smith Salisbury, sister to the Prophet Joseph Smith, was born 28 July 1813 at West Lebanon, Grafton County, New Hampshire, the seventh surviving child and second daughter of Joseph Smith Sr. and Lucy Mack Smith. On 8 June 1831 she married LDS convert Wilkins Jenkins Salisbury, who later apostatized from the Church and was erratic in his support for Katharine and their children. Katharine suffered much persecution, but remained true to her testimony of Joseph Smith and the latter-day work. She died of pneumonia on 2 February 1900 in Fountain Green, Illinois. Although Katharine, like her sisters, remained in Illinois when the body of the Church moved west, Katharine kept up good relations with her nephews and her cousin, George A. Smith, in the west. George A. Smith, Samuel H. B., John, and Joseph F. Smith all visited Katharine between the late 1850s and early 1870s. Katharine’s decision to stay in the Midwest was due in part to the fact that her two sisters; her sister-in-law, Emma Hale Smith Bidamon; and her children and grandchildren were beginning to take root in Illinois. Katharine, like her sisters and her brother William, also disagreed with Brigham Young’s assuming leadership of the Church, although she and Brigham Young corresponded cordially and Brigham Young sent her money to build her own house, for which she was profoundly grateful. In later years Katharine and her sisters joined the RLDS Church.
Upon her death, Illinois Senator Orville F. Berry said, “There resided in this county, until her death, Catherine Smith Salisbury, sister of the prophet. The writer knew her personally, has been in her house many times and has grown up from boyhood days with her sons and grandsons, and the world would be wonderfully well off if all women were as good as Catherine Smith Salisbury.”
For a more complete biography of Katharine’s life, see Kyle R. Walker,
“Katharine Smith Salisbury: Sister to the Prophet,”
The Katharine Smith Salisbury Family Collection, 1850–1950, was divided into the following 5 series:
SERIES I: Correspondence
SERIES II: Music Written by Katharine Salisbury’s Granddaughters
SERIES III: Restoration Project Materials
SERIES IV: Miscellaneous
SERIES V: Photographs
Description: Copy of a letter written to the
Description: Letter to Katharine from her sister-in-law (sister of Wilkins Jenkins Salisbury, Katharine’s husband) regarding Wilkins’s death.
Description: Page 3 of the letter from Samantha to Katharine regarding Wilkins Jenkins Salisbury’s death.
Description: Letter thanking Mrs. Brooks for letting him
copy the
Description: Katharine asks both men to lend her $150 to be able to hire a lawyer for her son Frederick. Two men tried to kill him and she wants to prosecute them.
Description: Katharine asks for $600 to keep her house from being mortgaged. Says she has heard he has received the income for her mother’s history and remembers his kindness to her mother when she was alive, so is appealing to him for help in her dire circumstances.
Description: Asks for money for her house again because she has not heard from him.
Description: Sends her $200 with Warren N. Dusenbury, who
will convey all the news.
Description: A typed copy of the previous letter in which Brigham Young tells Katharine he has sent her $200, etc.
Description: Wants to warn the public of Brigham Young’s “hellish” plot to leave a group in Nauvoo with a printing press, under the guise of transacting Church business, but with the real intent of reeking havoc on the surrounding community.
Description: This is a handwritten copy of a letter. A note attached to the back reads, “Copy of a letter to Catherine from Don Carlos in Mom Dean’s handwriting- I understood she gave Herbert the originals and he said they were later destroyed somehow- can’t recall how”).
Description: One of a bundle of letters found in a folder
labeled,
Description: One of a bundle of letters found in a folder
labeled,
Description: One of a bundle of letters found in a folder
labeled,
Description: One of a bundle of letters found in a folder
labeled,
Description: One of a bundle of letters found in a folder
labeled,
Description: One of a bundle of letters found in a folder
labeled,
Description: One of a bundle of letters found in a folder
labeled,
Description: One of a bundle of letters found in a folder
labeled,
Description: One of a bundle of letters found in a folder
labeled,
Note: A sticky note attached to the top of the document
reads,
Description: A generic, typed card expressing thanks for thoughtfulness shown at the death of their father, President George Albert Smith.
Note: An attached sticky note reads,
Description: No apparent signature on the card, but a sticky
note attached to the front says,
Note: A sticky note on the back of the letter reads,
Note: A sticky note on the letter reads,
Description: Anderson, a BYU Professor, writing to Dorothy in regards to a new edition of Lucy Mack Smith’s history that he is publishing. Asks if she has original letters between Lucy and Orson Pratt regarding publication of the original manuscript and also whether she has a fuller version of Lucy’s narrative than the one Orson published. Lastly, he asks if she has access to any letters written between Joseph and Emma.
Note: A sticky note attached to the program explains that the
Heber C. Kimball home was the first one restored in Nauvoo and that
Description: Discusses Don C. Salisbury’s military service.
Doctrine and Covenants owned by Don Carlos Salisbury. RLDS version, includes the Lectues on Faith.
Photograph album contains 20 photographs, including 3 tin types. The following identifies the photographs in order: Emma Hale Smith, Charlie E. Orr, Sandwich, Ill.; Unidentified woman, tin type; Spencer Mack, Biel, Terre Haute, Ind.; Unidentified woman, Charlie E. Orr, Sandwich, Ill.; Unidentified woman (different than #2 and #4), Charlie E. Orr, Sandwich, Ill.; Audentia and Israel, 1874, D. J. Hoff, Plano, Ill.; George A. Smith, C.R. Savage, Pioneer Art Gallery, East Temple Street, Salt Lake City, UT; Henry A. Stebbins, “To Aunt Catherine Salisbury with esteem and affectionate regard. Henry A. Stebbins, Plano, Ill., April 19, 1880,” Charlie E. Orr; Summer Nichols; Uncle Fred [?] Salisbury; William M. B. Smith; Fred Salisbury and Newt Duke (?); Jerusha Barden Smith (copy, not a photograph); John Smith (son of Jerusha and Hyrum Smith), E. Martin’s City Gallery, Great Salt Lake City, U. T.; John Smith (younger and without beard), E. Martin’s City Gallery, Great Salt Lake City, U. T.; Unidentified man, tin type; Jim Salisbury?; Unidentified man , I. A. W. Pittman, Carthage, Ill.; Unidentified two children, tin type; Katharine Smith Salisbury, “over 80.”
Katharine Salisbury's locket contains a photograph of her husband, Wilkins Jenkins Salisbury.
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1
Original copy of the Doctrine and Covenants