Lucy Mack Smith (July 8, 1775 - May 14, 1856) was the mother of Joseph Smith, Jr., founder of the Latter Day Saint movement. She is most noted for writing an award-winning memoir: Biographical Sketches of Joseph Smith, the Prophet, and His Progenitors for Many Generations. She was a great and important leader of the movement during the life of Joseph. Lucy is a model of the early nineteenth-century republican mother, who displayed piety, dispensed values, shaped character at the domestic hearth, and brought up her sons in the paths of civic virtue preparing the way for such a restoration with an unshakable faith in her mission.