SMITH, Bathsheba Kate

1844 - 1920  (76 years)  Submit Photo / Document

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• Name	SMITH, Bathsheba Kate
  Birth	14 Aug 1844	Nauvoo, Hancock, Illinois, United States
  Gender	Female
  WAC	22 Aug 1860	EHOUS
  _TAG	Reviewed on FS
  Death	22 Dec 1920	Crescent, Salt Lake, Utah, United States
  Burial	24 Dec 1920	Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah, United States
  Headstones	Submit Headstone Photo
  Person ID	I43240	Joseph Smith Sr and Lucy Mack Smith
  Last Modified	28 Feb 2018

  
  

  Marriage	25 Jul 1841	Nauvoo, Hancock, Illinois, United States
  Family ID	F22741	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Family	MERRILL, Clarence ,   b. 18 May 1841, South Norwalk, Fairfield, Connecticut, United States South Norwalk, Fairfield, Connecticut, United Statesd. 21 Feb 1918, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake County, Utah, United States (Age 76 years)
  Marriage	2 Jan 1861	Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah, United States
  Family ID	F21538	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
  Last Modified	24 Jan 2022

  
  

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• Notes

  Grandma Bathshebee was very active with women's issues. She was only 18 when she became a charter member of the Relief Society in Nauvoo. As the first of Geo. A. wives she led and housed the family, especially when he away organizing pioneer communities. George A. died in her arms 1 SEP 1875 from unhealed lung inflamation after a St. George trip. The family burials pre-railroad were in the Orchard Plot near her home, mostly infants. She was 2nd Temple Matron for Salt Lake. She was frequently acting matron in Nauvoo Temple where many of the pioneers were married in the frantic days before the FEB 1846 expulsion from Illinois. Despite the starvation and lack of transport, she managed to save the Sutcliffe Maudsley oil paintings from the Nauvoo Temple before an arsonist burned the temple down. She was the only one outside of the Young family present when Brigham Young organized the 1st Young Ladies Retrenchment Society which became the MIA internationally. Originally it was for grooming without faddishness. Later on advancement for the young girls required knowing the different cries of a baby, and being able to do mosquito control. She made sure her grand children spent the school year with her, and that her grand daughters had the opportunity for a college education. Her daughter Bathsheba Smith, and grand daughters, became active suffragettes after the right to vote local elections was stripped from Deseret Territory women. And she was a director of the Deseret Hospital. When she became president of the Relief Society she spearheaded the free nursing service which resulted in the 1920's birthing hospitals throughout the region. The Cottonwood Hospital is a direct descendant of the birthing hospital of the 1920's. Her Relief Society administration created a department for mother's work, and helped fund the marble building that is still the headquarters of the Relief Society. She was a skilled pencil artist. Her portrait of Joseph Smith hung in her office in the Salt Lake Temple. She put out newspaper ads Jan 1876 for women throughout the territory to forward their home industries, embroidery, weaving, etc. to her home so she could get them entered (on very short notice) in the Philadelphia Centennial expo by March. Her granddaughter Alice became the author of the Utah Fine Arts bill that requires all public buildings to display art. Alice saved many obscure paintings from destruction by badgering the Endowment for the Arts admin. and private benefactors to buy and display art from local artists. Another granddaughter, May, traveled the US by selling her art, painting some more, selling, then buying ticket to the next place.