Jesse N. Smith - Early Life

Early Life

Smith was born the youngest of three sons to Silas Smith (1779–1839) and his second wife Mary Aikens (1797–1877) in Stockholm, New York. His older brothers were Silas Sanford Smith (1830–1910) and John Aikens Smith (1832–38), but John died as a young child. Smith's father, Silas, married his first wife in 1806. She bore seven children, but died in 1826. Silas met Mary while she was teaching school in Stockholm and they married in 1828. Both of Smith's grandfathers, Asael Smith (1744–1830) and Nathaniel Aikens (1757–1836), served in the American Revolutionary War. According to Smith, his Grandfather Aikens served under General George Washington.

Smith's father was a younger brother of Joseph Smith, Sr., making him a first cousin of Joseph Smith Jr. Silas was converted when Joseph Sr. visited him in 1830, but was not baptized into the church until 1835 by his nephew Hyrum Smith. Smith's mother, Mary, would join the church a couple of years later. Jesse was an infant when his parents joined the church and a young boy when his father died of illness. Smith and his brother were considered well educated, for the time, by their mother since she had taught school.

Smith and his family followed the Mormons to Ohio, Missouri, Illinois and finally out west to the Utah Territory. Smith's cousin William tried to persuade Mary Aikens Smith against following Brigham Young and the main body of Latter Day Saints west, but she informed him that this was her intention. The widow took Jesse N. and his brother, Silas S. across the plains with Young's group. At the age of twelve, Jesse N. drove his Uncle John's two yokes of oxen on the journey.