"The Unknown Grave"

In honor of the upcoming anniversary of the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, here’s a hymn you might not be familiar with. David Smith, son of the Prophet, wrote The Unknown Grave for a father he never knew who, until 1928, lay in a grave only a handful of people ever knew about.

I am no historian (which this post may prove; leave a comment if you read anything that needs correcting). Until I wrote this, my knowledge concerning Joseph and Hyrum’s burial was fuzzy, if I had any. I knew the otherworldly hatred against them dictated extreme secrecy, but of what happened in secret, I was never sure.

Even now, I’m not much surer because no one else seems sure, either. We know the final resting place of Joseph and Hyrum because their unknown grave was located in January 1928. But how and when they came to rest there seems to depend on whose memory and which tradition you consult.

Whatever the case, one thing is certain about the events of 1844. They were tragic.

The Road to The Unknown Grave

“To seal the testimony of this book and the Book of Mormon, we announce the martyrdom of Joseph Smith the Prophet, and Hyrum Smith the Patriarch. They were shot in Carthage jail, on the 27th of June, 1844, about five o’clock p.m., by an armed mob–painted black–of from 150 to 200 persons. Hyrum was shot first and fell calmly, exclaiming: I am a dead man! Joseph leaped from the window, and was shot dead in the attempt, exclaiming: O Lord my God! They were both shot after they were dead, in a brutal manner, and both received four balls.”

red stone two story pioneer building, Carthage Jail — Carthage Jail – Carthage, Illinois

This is only the beginning of John Taylor’s account in D&C 135, written with a righteous indignation he’s well entitled to. The mob at Carthage shot him four times, too.

Three men riddled with bullets. Two dead, the other nearly so. And it wasn’t over. Dead wasn’t dead enough, and the threat the bodies would be stolen and either desecrated or returned to Missouri for a reward loomed tangibly.

They were laid out in the Mansion House, where their devastated families said their last heart-wrenching goodbyes. Then the bodies were hidden, coffins filled with sand went to a public burial, and a few trusted men buried Joseph and Hyrum that night within the walls of the unfinished Nauvoo House.

Some months later, likely under the direction of Emma Smith and in even deeper secrecy than before, they were finally laid to rest under the brick floor of a bee house near Joseph and Emma’s homestead. Accounts vary as to whether the bee house was already there, whether they moved it there later, whether it was a bee house at all, who helped Emma, and how involved Hyrum’s wife, Mary, was, but however it came to be, there they remained for eighty-three years. “The best blood of the nineteenth century,” in John Taylor’s words. Lying in an unknown grave. But, as David Smith wrote, never forgotten.

white sided home with shutters and brick chimneys — Mansion House where the bodies were viewed.

red brick and white stone building with blue sky and green grass — Nauvoo House where the bodies were temporarily buried.

pioneer house with white siding and logs — Joseph Smith Homestead near which the bodies were finally buried. The stone slabs in the foreground are where Hyrum, Joseph, and Emma were laid to rest one last time in 1928.

The vicinity of the graves was known, as Emma’s request for her own burial was very specific. Twenty-five paces from the southeast corner (actually the southwest corner) of the homestead, to be near Joseph. But it took over a week of trenching and pockmarking the ground with holes before the graves were found and the bodies identified by the bullet hole in Hyrum’s skull.

They found Emma, too, identified by the dress people remembered her wearing. She, Joseph, and Hyrum were buried side by side for the last time, not too far from the original graves, on January 20, 1928.

A Modern Day Unknown Grave

For almost a hundred years now, the location of the Prophet’s grave has not been in question.

Can the same be said for what he restored?

God paints truth for me as I write. Things I didn’t know I knew until I put them into words. Deeply felt yet mostly undefined emotions and struggles suddenly understood in a seedling, emergency responders, a pair of sandals, Gettysburg, a gold medal.

And now an unknown grave.

I wonder if the gospel of Jesus Christ is lying in one.

Satan is at war with the work of God. Look at our nation for one example among thousands. Established under God over two hundred years ago, it’s now hanging by a thread. Can we really believe the Church has escaped his shenanigans?

Hardly. In fact, the thread by which it’s hanging may be in even worse shape than America’s.

Maybe that thought makes you uncomfortable. Maybe you don’t agree. You don’t have to. But if it’s true, that doesn’t mean the gospel isn’t. Joseph Smith didn’t cease to be a Prophet because he died, and the truth doesn’t become a lie if it’s buried. What Joseph and Hyrum died for is as true today as it was in a grove of trees in 1820. As true as it was when Jesus walked the earth, as true as it was in Eden.

But Satan has relentlessly buffeted the institutions through which that truth operates, many of his attacks so surreptitious we don’t even know he got his foot in the door, let alone seized the house. Is God still at the helm of this ship? He will always be at the helm of his gospel, but whether it’s actually his gospel that’s steering us…

It seems we’ve turned doctrines into mere traditions, made traditions into doctrines, and lost what the Prophet restored in a maze of man’s interpretation.

Where is the truth? What is the truth?

“God Grant That We May Watch and Pray”

Though the search for the unknown grave was tedious and often discouraging, how much worse would it have been if they’d started in Carthage? Or even as close as the temple lot?

Obscured as the facts were, they at least offered a place to start.

Still, that first hole held no bodies. They didn’t dig there for no reason. Something must have led them to believe it was a likely spot. But it was empty.

They didn’t head off to Carthage or the temple lot then. Throw out the entire story because part of it got lost between generations. They trenched to a new spot and dug again. On it went for several frigid January days until at last, their shovels hit a wood box.

This feels like the story of my testimony. I don’t know where the truth is buried. Perhaps only the Prophet does. But I know I’m in the right vicinity. There are gaps in the story, but they don’t invalidate the parts I know. If the gospel I love isn’t somewhere in this place I’m searching, I don’t know where it is.

I’ve dug a few holes and found no Prophet, though it seemed he should be there. Actually, I’ve dug a lot of holes. Now I think I’m resting on my shovel, exhausted, out of breath, staring with some despair at the piles of dirt and dashed hopes around me, homesick for the gospel I can’t seem to find.

But not about to leave.

The last verse of David Smith’s hymn is my prayer. God grant that I may watch and pray and keep my feet in the narrow way, that when the truth arises from its unknown grave, I’ll be there to see it.

Joseph Smith, the Prophet and Seer of the Lord, has done more, save Jesus only, for the salvation of men in this world, than any other man that ever lived in it. In the short space of twenty years, he has brought forth the Book of Mormon, which he translated by the gift and power of God, and has been the means of publishing it on two continents; has sent the fulness of the everlasting gospel, which it contained, to the four quarters of the earth; has brought forth the revelations and commandments which compose this book of Doctrine and Covenants, and many other wise documents and instructions for the benefit of the children of men; gathered many thousands of the Latter-day Saints, founded a great city, and left a fame and name that cannot be slain. He lived great, and he died great in the eyes of God and his people; and like most of the Lord’s anointed in ancient times, has sealed his mission and his works with his own blood; and so has his brother Hyrum. In life they were not divided, and in death they were not separated!
D&C 135:3

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