Samuel Smith Poisoned

According to William Clayton’s Journal, Samuel Smith was to be appointed the head of the church in the event that his brothers Joseph and Hyrum did not return from Carthage.  Then, in July 1844, within a month of the fateful events at Carthage in June 1844 at which Joseph and Hyrum both died, their brother Samuel also was dead and rumors of murder could be heard among the saints.

Although Samuel’s official cause of death was “bilious fever,” the remaining Smith family accused Brigham Young of ordering Samuel murdered because of Samuel’s opposition to polygamy. William Smith, another Smith brother and a former apostle (before Brigham Young excommunicated William) vocally denounced Brigham’s role in Samuel’s death.  William published two newspaper articles about this tragedy.  The first article stated that his brother Samuel had been poisoned, and the second article directly accused Brigham Young of the crime:

“I have good reason for believing that my brother Samuel H. Smith, died of poison at Nauvoo, administered by order of Brigham Young and Willard Richards, only a few weeks subsequent to the unlawful murder of my other brothers, Joseph and Hiram Smith, while incarcerated in Carthage jail.

“Several other persons who were presumed to stand between Brigham Young and the accomplishment of his ambitions and wicked designs, mysteriously disappeared from Nauvoo about the same time, and have never been heard from since.” -William Smith, “Mormonism,” letter to the “New York Tribune,” 28 May 1857

Samuel’s wife Levira and daughter Mary also accused Brigham of murdering their husband and father.  Levira claimed that Samuel realized that he had been poisoned: “[He] spit it out and said he was poisoned. But it was too late–he died.”  Brigham denied from the pulpit any knowledge of Samuel’s suspicious death, although Brigham certainly benefited from Samuel’s removal from the line of succession after Joseph’s death as Brigham became the leader of the largest faction of Mormons.  However, notably, the Smith family never joined Brigham’s branch.