Lucy Mack Smith Home
Joseph Bates and Mary Beman Noble built this home in 1843. As the Latter-day Saints were departing for the Rocky Mountains in 1846, Church leaders purchased it for Lucy Mack Smith.
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Mary’s parents, Alvah and Sarah Beman, were old acquaintances of Joseph Sr. and Lucy Smith from upstate New York. Alvah was privileged to heft the gold plates and to help Joseph Smith Jr. in hiding the plates under the hearth of the Smith’s frame home in Manchester, New York.
Meet your tour guide
This home is located on the corner of Kimball and Hyde streets.
Picture of the rear of the home taken prior to it's restoration
Kitchen
Family and close friends would have visited Mother Smith in the kitchen of this home.
Kitchen Alcove
A bed set in this alcove would have been ideal so that Mother Smith didn't have to climb up the steep stairs to a bedroom.
During a visit to Nauvoo in 1853, Frederick Piercy sketched a portrait of Lucy Mack Smith, one of only two portraits drawn in her lifetime; she was 78 years old. In 1905, Utah artist Lee Greene Richards created an oil portrait using the Piercy lithograph as his source. This portrait, which hangs in the kitchen of her home, is a black and white print of that oil painting.
2nd Floor
Parlor
This room is set up as a parlor but it's use in 1840's was more likely a bedroom.
Bedroom 1
There is a "door" over the stairway that can be closed to add useable floor space to this room. There probably wasn't a rail around the stairs so at night another bed could have been placed over that area.
Bedroom 2
This is a small room set up as a child's bedroom.