Elect Lady, Scribe, and First Relief Society President

Emma Hale was born in Harmony, Pennsylvania, in 1804, and married Joseph Smith in January 1827 against the wishes of her father, who thought little of him. She was present at the beginning of everything that followed. She acted as scribe for part of the translation of the Book of Mormon, and the manuscript pages she wrote survive. A revelation dictated to her husband in July 1830, now Doctrine and Covenants section 25, addresses her directly, calls her an elect lady, tells her to be a comfort to her husband and to expound scripture and exhort the church, and assigns her the task of making a selection of sacred hymns.

That hymnbook, published at Kirtland in 1836, founded the Latter-day Saint hymn tradition, and several of the texts she selected are still sung. On 17 March 1842 she was organised as the first president of the Female Relief Society of Nauvoo, an office whose charter the surviving minute book records in unusually expansive terms.

Her losses were extraordinary even by the standards of the period. She bore eleven children including two sets of twins and adopted two more; six died in infancy or early childhood. She was driven from Missouri in winter, crossed the frozen Mississippi with four children while her husband was imprisoned at Liberty, and was widowed at forty with four surviving children and pregnant with a fifth.