But here’s the kicker - Mary Fielding Smith was married at the time. The story leads you to think she was a poor widow with no husband, but she had been married to Heber C. Kimball since September 1844!!!Joseph F. Smith centered his faith in his Father in Heaven, in the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the simple and constant truths of the gospel. When Joseph F. Smith was young, his faith was greatly strengthened by his mother’s devotion to duty and to righteousness.
He said: “I recollect most vividly a circumstance that occurred in the days of my childhood. My mother was a widow, with a large family to provide for. One spring [between 1849 and 1852] when we opened our potato pits, she had her boys get a load of the best potatoes and she took them to the tithing office; potatoes were scarce that season. I was a little boy at the time, and drove the team. When we drove up to the steps of the tithing office, ready to unload the potatoes, one of the clerks came out and said to my mother, ‘Widow Smith, it’s a shame that you should have to pay tithing.’ … He chided my mother for paying her tithing, called her anything but wise or prudent; and said there were others who were strong and able to work that were supported from the tithing office. My mother turned upon him and said: ‘… Would you deny me a blessing? If I did not pay my tithing, I should expect the Lord to withhold his blessings from me. I pay my tithing, not only because it is a law of God, but because I expect a blessing by doing it.’”
She wasn’t poor because she didn’t have a husband - she was poor because she had to keep her marriage secret because polygamy was secret at the time, and her deadbeat husband Heber had more wives than he could support (eventually marrying 43). And yet this was presented as though she didn’t have a husband at the time...the person telling the story was probably just ignorant, but this is yet another example of the misinformation we are constantly fed about Church history.