Joseph Smith Sr.
The dreaming patriarch who saw the tree of life before the Restoration began
A Man of Dreams
Joseph Smith Sr. was born in 1771 in Topsfield, Massachusetts, into a family shaped by the Second Great Awakening’s religious ferment and its disappointments. He was a farmer and occasional schoolteacher who struggled financially throughout his life — moving the family repeatedly through Vermont and New York in search of stable ground. What set him apart was not worldly success; it was the quality of his interior life.
Lucy Mack Smith’s memoir records seven prophetic dreams that her husband received in the years before the Restoration — dreams of barren fields and dead trees, of a narrow path through fog, of a tree bearing beautiful fruit, of a messenger who guided him. The tree-of-life imagery in his dreams strikingly parallels Lehi’s vision in 1 Nephi 8 — a vision his son would translate from ancient plates within years of these dreams being received.
The Father Who Believed
When Joseph Jr. came home from the Sacred Grove in 1820, he told his father what had happened. Joseph Sr.’s response was immediate: “I know it is true; go and do as commanded by the messenger.” He did not demand additional witnesses, express embarrassment, or worry about neighbors’ opinions. A man who had been dreaming prophetic dreams for years recognized prophetic experience when his son described it.
He was baptized in April 1830, the day the Church was organized — one of the first members. He was with Joseph Jr. through the early persecutions, the publication of the Book of Mormon, the mob attacks in Missouri. He suffered with the Saints. He also received a patriarchal blessing from his son, which he noted with characteristic humility was a sacred and unexpected reversal of the natural order — a father blessed by his child.
First Patriarch of the Church
In December 1833, Joseph Smith Sr. was ordained the first Patriarch to the Church — a role that echoed the patriarchal blessings given by ancient fathers to their children, particularly Jacob’s blessings to his twelve sons. He gave patriarchal blessings to members, pronouncing lineage and calling and promise. It was, in a sense, the role his whole life had been preparing him for: the faithful father who had held the family in the covenant while the dispensation gathered around them.
He died in September 1840 in Nauvoo, just four years before the martyrdom of two of his sons. His final blessing to Joseph Jr. was: “I will not and dare not plead for any other thing than that God’s will be done.” He is the model of the faithful parent whose calling is not to build a great institution but to raise the person who will, and to believe in that person before anyone else does.