Lucy SmithLucy Mack Smith (July 8, 1775 – May 14, 1856) was the mother of Latter-day Saint founder Joseph Smith. She is most known for her book, Biographical Sketches of Joseph Smith, the Prophet, and His Progenitors for Many Generations, and she was a key figre in the movement during Joseph's lifetime. Lucy Mack was born in Gilsum, New Hampshire, on July 8, 1775, amid a period of political, economic, and social revolution. The second part of the eighteenth century saw a gradual transformation in the roles of the American family. Even if the Revolutionary War accelerated the transition, the primary impetus came from the shifting economic landscape. Women's historian Linda Kerber claims that the expanding market economy and "industrial technology reshaped the contours of domestic labor" (7). Because of this change toward commercialism, the father's work became more distant from the family, and the mother assumed the father's traditional position of final responsibility for the children's education and moral and religious formation (Bloch, 113). Mothers were lauded as "the chief transmitters of religious and moral values" in magazines and educational media (Bloch, 101). Read More Read Less