Lydia Alexander Smith is a Smith family early Latter Day Saint ancestors. Her story is typical of many Latter Day Saint women, until we learn about the circumstances of her death.
Lydia married Warren Smith in 1826. Our genealogy shows them married in Quincy, Illinois and their children being born in Nashville, Tennessee. The recorded marriage location is pretty much an impossibility. Unless they were “living in sin”, it is pretty likely they were married in Davidson or Nashville Tennessee and the Quincy, Illinois location is in error.
Tucked between popular Church history chapters about Liberty Jail and Nauvoo is a little-known but vitally important chapter dealing with the Latter-day Saints’ seven-month struggle to survive the winter of 1838–39 in Missouri and to leave there by spring 1839. Triggered by Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs’s October 1838 extermination order against them, some ten thousand Saints engaged in a mass exodus, many going to Quincy, Illinois. It was difficult, dramatic, sometimes harrowing, and only partly organized. Their tough experiences produced definite impacts—both short- and long-term—on Missouri and Illinois, on the course of the Church, and on individual members.
According to one of Lydia’s descendants, Jay Eldon Smith, “Lydia [Lydia Alexander Smith] joined the church and moved to Missouri [with her husband, Warren Smith, and five children – all under nine years old,] during the intense persecution of the Saints in that state.”
Lydia and her family made the 170 mile-long trek from Far West to Illinois during the winter of 1938 – 1839. Eventually 12,000 saints lined the shores of the Mississippi River, on both the Iowa and Illinois sides.
Extracted from their homes and traveling from Far West, Missouri, the exiles lived in tents and dugouts and subsisted mainly on corn. Sickness and disease due to exposure took a heavy toll, while they awaited settlement in Illinois.
Lydia was one who succumbed to exposure in February 1839, on the west bank of the Mississippi river waiting to cross to Quincy, Illinois. This was just a few short months before the settlement of Nauvoo in the summer of 1839.
Although our records indicate Lydia was buried in Montrose, Missouri, it seems more likely she was buried in Montrose, Iowa, just across the river from Nauvoo.
Lydia was only 29 years old.
Warren Smith, became a widower with five children — one boy was only two months old. Warren continued across the Mississippi river to the area known as Commerce City, later known as Nauvoo.