Amanda Barnes Smith

Amanda Melissa Barnes was born Feb 22, 1809 in Becket, Massachusetts to Ezekiel and Fanny Johnson Barnes. Amanda is known for her faith during the Haun's Mill Massacre by restoring her son's broken pelvis. She has been the main topic of the Massacre, including, most recently, 2018 Saints: The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days, Vol 1.

Early Life

Though Amanda was born in Massachusetts, her family was relocated to Amherst, Ohio where she grew up. She writes about her early youth, "My father was one of the honorable men of the earth, strictly honest but made no profession of religion, or at least, did not belong to any church. My mother belonged to the Presbyterian Church but was not as exemplary as my father, was very excitable and nervous. I took to my father very much, which caused great jealousy which rather cut me off from my mother's good graces and made me rather an odd one in my father's house, but nothing particular happened in my young days."

At the age of 17, Amanda married Warren Smith July 9, 1826 in Amherst, Ohio. Warren was a black smith by trade, and they lived for many years because of this. Together, they had five children: Willard Gilbert, Sardius Washington, Alma Lamoni, Alvira Lavona, and Ortencia Howard.

Latter-day Saint Conversion

On April 1, 1831, Amanda and Willard joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, being baptized by Simeon D. Carter. Just before her conversion, she gave birth to her two first children and was advised not to have any children after nearly dying. She then gave birth to Alma and Alvira, twins. She wrote about the experience, "My mother would not stay in the house because she found out that I had the elders pray for me when I was sick or when they [the twins] were born. My neighbors thought I ought to be drummed out of town. My husband had been baptized before that time so we were united and they could do nothing." In fact, Willard was so sound in the Church that he helped to establish the Kirtland bank and helped with the construction of the Kirtland Temple.

However, the persecutions were strong. The Smith family were forced out of Kirtland, Ohio and forced to travel to Missouri. "We journeyed about six months as we were forced to stop at times and work for food and clothes. We were often threatened on the way and sometimes traveled at night and lead over during the day to avoid mobs. Several time we were warned of mobs waiting ahead for us and we would then leave the road and travel over unbroken prairies and through the woods to avoid them."

Haun's Mill Massacre

WARNING!! SOME MATERIAL MAY NOT BE SUITABLE FOR YOUNG AUDIENCES. 14 YEARS AND OLDER IS ADVISED.

After some time of traveling, the Smith family reached Haun's Mill and pitched their tents, with Warren pitching his tent near the blacksmith to work. 

"I sat in my tent. Looking up I suddenly saw the mob coming... They came like so many demons... Before I could get to the blacksmith's shop door to alarm the brethren, who were at prayers, the bullets were whistling amongst them. I seized my two little girls and escaped across the mill pond on a slab-walk. Another sister fled with me. Yet though we were women and tender children, in flight for our lives, the demons poured volley after volley to kill us.

"A number of bullets entered my clothes, but I was not wounded. The sister, however, who was with me, cried out that she was hit. We had just reached the trunk of a fallen tree, over which I urged her, bidding her to shelter there where the bullets could not reach her, while I continued my flight to some bottom land. When the firing had ceased I went back to the scene of the massacre, for there were my husband and three sons...."

At the time of the Massacre, Willard Gilbert, 11 years old at the time, hid himself until all the shooting was over. He had known that his father, Willard, and two brothers, Sardis and Alma, were in one of the shops before the attack. Once the shooting was over, he entered the shop to find his father and brother Sardis dead. Alma was still alive, barely. Father Willard's last words were, "Oh, you hurt me," as one of the men took off his boots to keep for himself.

Amanda writes, "Passing on I came to a scene more terrible still to the mother and wife. Emerging from the blacksmith shop was my eldest son, Willard, bearing on his shoulders his little brother Alma. 'Oh! My Alma is dead!' I cried, in anguish. 'No, mother; I think Alma is not dead. But Father and brother Sardis are killed!' What an answer was this to appall me! My husband and son murdered, another little son seemingly mortally wounded, and perhaps before the dreadful nigh should pass the murderers would return and complete their work!"

"But I could not weep then. The fountain of tears was dry; the heart over-burdened with its calamity, and all the mother's sense absorbed in its anxiety for the precious boy which God alone could save by his miraculous aid. The entire hip joint of my wounded by had been shot away. Flesh, hip-bone, joint and all had been ploughed out from the mussel of the gun which the ruffian placed to the child's hip through the logs of the shop and deliberately fired. We laid little Alma on a bed in our tent and I examined the wound. It was a ghastly sight. I knew not what to do. It was night now. There were none left from that terrible scene, throughout that long, dark night, but about half a dozen bereaved and lamenting women, and the children. Eighteen or nineteen, all grown men exceling my murdered by and another about the same age, were dead or dying; several more of the men were wounded, hiding away whose groans through the night too well disclosed their hiding places, while the rest of the men had fled, at the moment of the massacres', to save their lives."

A Miracle in the time of Death

"The women were sobbing, in the greatest anguish of spirit; the children were crying loudly with fear and grief at the loss of fathers and brother; the dogs howled over their dead master, and the cattle were terrified with the scent of the blood of the murdered. Yet was I there all that long, dreadful nigh, with my dead and wounded, and none but God as our physician and help. 'Oh, my Heavenly Father,' I cried, 'what shall I do? Oh Heavenly Father, direct me what to do!" And then I was directed as by a voice speaking to me. The ashes of our fire were still smoldering. We had been burning the bark of the shag-bark hickory. I was directed to take those ashes and make a lye and put a cloth saturated with it right into the wound. It hurt, but little Alma was too near dead to heed it much. Again and again I saturated the cloth and put it into the hole from which the hip joint had been ploughed, and each time mashed flesh and splinters of bone come away with the cloth, and the wound became as white as chicken's flesh. Having done as directed I again and prayed to the Lord and was again instructed as distinctly as though a physician had been standing by speaking to me. Nearby was a slippery-elm tree. From this I was told to make a slippery-elm poultice and fill the wound with it. My eldest boy was sent to get the slipper-elm roots, the poultice was made, and the wound, which took fully a quarter of a yard of linen to cover, so large was it, was properly dressed....

"I removed the wounded boy to the home of David Ebans, some distance off, the next day, and dressed his hip, and the Lord directing me as before. I was reminded that in my husband's trunk there was a bottle of balsam. This I poured into the wound, greatly soothing Alma's pain. 'Alma, my child,' I said, 'do you believe that the Lord made your hip?' 'Yes, Mother.' 'Well, the Lord can make something there in the place of your hip, don't you believe he can, Alma!' 'Do you think that the Lord can, Mother?' inquired the child, in his simplicity. 'Yes, my son,' I replied, 'he has shown it all to me in a vision.' Then I laid him comfortably on his face, and said, 'Now you lie like that, and don't move, and the Lord will make you another hip.' So Alma lay on his face for five weeks, until a flexible gristle having grown in place of the mission joint and socket, which remains to this day a marvel to physicians. On the day that he walked again I was out of the house fetching a bucket of water, when I heard screams from the children. Running back, in affright, I entered, and there was Alma on the floor, dancing around, and the children screaming in astonishment and joy. It is now nearly forty years ago, but Alma has never been the least crippled during his life, and he has traveled quite a long period of the time as a missionary of the gospel and a living miracle of the power of God."

Aftermath and Westward Journey

After the miracle, the remaining family of five moved to Quincy, Illinois. Word later got around about the miracle and five physicians came to Quincy to see Amanda and Alma. They were all astonished to see that the hip was completely well. When they inquired as to who performed the surgery, Amanda responded, "Jesus Christ." "Not the Savior of the world?' they questioned. "Yes, the same, Sir" she responded in confidence. "He was the physician and I was the nurse."

While in Quincy, Amanda met and married a man with five children. Coincidentally, the man's name was Warren Smith and was also a blacksmith. They were married in May of 1840. The family worked well with each other. Wrote Amanda, "We were one, united in all things and it was wonderful how our children got along together."

However, the persecutions did not end. Joseph Smith, President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was assassinated in Carthage, Illinois in 1844. The Smith family fled Nauvoo, Illinois in 1846 while Amanda was pregnant. The family only got as far as Council Bluffs, Iowa before stopping to work and obtain the means to go farther into the Rocky Mountains.

Alvira writes about their journey. "We crossed the plains in the year 1850. There were twelve in our family and everything we owned on this earth was put into two wagons. I guess I walked over halfway across the plains to Utah. We left in May and we didn't get to Utah until September. There was a large company of us, but we divided ourselves into smaller companies of about twelve to nineteen wagons each. Some men would ride ahead and let us know a good place where we could get grass and water. These things were hard to have. We didn't have any ruble coming across the plains. The buffaloes didn't bother us at all, and sometimes Indians would come up to us and laugh and then go away again. We crossed the Mississippi River in a little skiff with oars."

Life in the Salt Lake Valley

The family finally arrived in Salt Lake City Sep 18, 1850. Some time after, the couple divorced as Willard was becoming disaffected with the Church. Afterwards, Amanda and family lived on the northwest side of Salt Lake City, Utah. While there, Amanda was ordained as the first President of the Re-organized Relief Society of the Salt Lake Twelfth Ward.

While in Salt Lake, Amanda was a key influencer in the suffrage of women. In 1870, the Governor of Utah allowed the ability for women to vote, becoming one of the first places in America to do so.

Epilogue

Amanda's health began to deteriorate for some time. She was thus in the act of visiting her daughter, Alvira, who was married to William D. Hendricks in Richmond when she died June 30, 1886. Just before her death, she wrote the following:

"Thus I have given a very brief sketch of my life, which has been a checkered scene of joy and trouble. I have drank the dregs of the cup of sorrow and affliction as sell as partaken of the blessings of an all merciful God, for I have drank from the fountains freely. I have seen the Lord's power manifest to a great degree. I have seen the lame leap as an heart, the eyes of the blind see, and as it were, the dead raised to life—all in my own family. Since I have been a member of this Church of Jesus Christ I have born six children and of these, five were born without pain by the power of the priesthood, and I do say of all creatures, I have the greatest reason to rejoice and thank my Heavenly Father and I do thank and praise his holy name for his blessings to me and I do pray that I may ever kept faithful to the end, that I may, with my posterity be crowned with Eternal Lives in the Kingdom of our God, in the name of Jesus, Amen.

Example of Today

Today, the example of Amanda Barns Smith is shared worldwide by her descendants and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She has been immortalized in the Church's history book, 2018 Saints: The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days, Vol 1. In the second volume of the book, while Alma Smith, Amanda's son, was on a mission to the Hawaiian Islands, Apostle Lorenzo Snow was near death from drowning. From the example of his mother who saved him in Haun's Mill, Alma prayed for guidance. He was directed to perform the first documented record of CPR and resurrected Elder Snow. Elder Snow would later serve as the President of the Church of Jesus Christ.