July 12, 1771
Joseph born at Topsfield, Essex Co., Massachusetts, the third of eleven children born to Asael Smith and Mary Duty.
January 24, 1796
Joseph meets and marries Lucy Mack in Tunbridge, Vermont after moving there as a young man.
1796 - 1803
Lucy and Joseph’s first four children are born in Tunbridge, including an unnamed son who died, Alvin, Hyrum and Sophronia.
1803 - 1805
A series of financial setbacks and the loss of their farm in Tunbridge, force the family to move from Tunbridge to Royalton, then to Sharon in Windsor County.
December 23, 1805
Joseph Smith, Jr. is born in Sharon, Vermont.
1808 - 1812
The Smiths return to Tunbridge, where Samuel Harrison Smith is born in 1808. They move on to Royalton, VT where a son, Ephraim, is born in 1810 and dies the same day. Another son, William, is born in Royalton in 1811. The Smith family moves to Lebanon, New Hampshire where Catharine is born in 1812.
1813
Typhoid fever strikes the area and all the Smith children fall ill. Sophronia is the most seriously ill, but is miraculously healed. Typhoid settles in the shoulder and then the leg of Joseph Smith, Jr., resulting in bone surgery and many months of recovery.
1813-1816
The family moves to Norwich, Vermont, to work as tenant farmers. They experience three successive years of crop failure. Don Carlos, is born in 1816. The family relocates to Palmyra, New York.
Spring, 1820
Joseph Smith, Jr. goes to the woods to pray and has the First Vision.
Hill Cumorah
September 22, 1827
Joseph, Jr. makes his final visit to Cumorah and obtains the plates from the angel Moroni.
Peter Whitmer Home
June, 1829
The Eight Witnesses, including Joseph, Sr, see the golden plates and testify of the book’s truth.
April 6, 1830
The Church is formally organized in Fayette, New York.
Later that day, Lucy and Joseph, Sr. are baptized into the Church by Oliver Cowdery.
August, 1830
With his son Don Carlos, Joseph, Sr. serves a mission to the family of his father in St. Lawrence County, New York.
January 1831
Joseph and his family move to Kirtland, Ohio.
June 4, 1831
Joseph, Sr. is ordained a high priest by Lyman Wight.
January 22-23, 1833
Attends the first meeting of the School of the Prophets in Kirtland.
December 6, 1834
Ordained patriarch of the Church and assistant president.
1836
Serves a mission to the eastern states with his brother, John Smith.
September 3, 1837
Sustained as assistant counselor in the First Presidency.
May 1838
Leaves Ohio with his family for Far West, Missouri.
February 1839
Expelled from Missouri and migrates to Quincy, Illinois.
Spring 1839
Relocates to Commerce (later Nauvoo), Illinois.
End of summer, 1840
Realizes he is dying and calls his family around him to administer patriarchal blessings. Blesses and ordains Hyrum to succeed to the office of Presiding Patriarch by right of lineage.
Grave of Joseph Sr. and Lucy Mack Smith, Nauvoo IL
September 14, 1840
Joseph Smith Sr. dies in Nauvoo.