Talk:Smith family (Latter Day Saints)

Function of the Smith Family article
OK -- I'll bite. "Political" in Nauvoo, the State of Deseret and Utah Territory was intimately tied to religion. We find descendents of all these folks in the upper councils of the LDS church (and RLDS for a couple of generations) during the first 50 - 60 years after Joseph's Smith's death, and serving in Utah territorial positions as well. Church responsibility led to being a "judge in Israel" and hence to political activity. Many of these families are still prominent socially, politically and religiously, but prominence is still centered around the hub of the LDS Church. Many modern Mormons feel that political activity and public service can be a religious duty. But the title of the article implies a different viewpoint -- a look at a family tree or generational history. So, can you spell out your central concept about the article and/or where the article is going? It would be good to define things in the first paragraph. Best wishes. WBardwin 03:47, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Smith Family
I didn't mean to be insensitive to your ideas or input. There are a whole series of articles on U.S. political families, and this was meant to be related to that series. No doubt the Smiths got their power from religion, just as the Rockefellers did from oil, and the Kennedys did from bootlegging. My goal in defining the Smiths as a political family was to avoid references to Joseph Smith III, Joseph Fielding Smith, etc., who were influential folks, but not politicians. I just grabbed the name Smith Family first. Someone could just as easily start a Smith Family (Mormonism) thread to discuss their religious influence, etc. Perhaps a disambiguation caveat/link at the top of the thread is in order. I just spent a ton of time proving that most Mormon political families are closely related (completely shocking that a few thousand formerly polygamist families living in the same state would be linked by now, huh :) ), and the series of articles I've been posting lately are the result of that research. My hope is that others will read my articles and glean a new perspective (most people know that these dudes were Mormon big shots, most people are ignorant of their direct political participation or family relations).  If I don't focus the article, it is likely to become a hodge-podge of unrelated Smith info. Thank you for your input and suggestions! Dr U 04:17, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Title
I moved this from Smith Family to Smith (family) (which agrees better with the naming conventions), but it's hardly the only Smith family around and should probably be moved further at some point. Uppland 06:57, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

... not to be confused with The Smith Family, a popular comic strip (1951-1994) by George Smith. 147.70.242.40 (talk) 20:57, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Organization
I notice that in most subsections the people are organized by birth date---but not always. Is there a methodology I'm missing? Thmazing (talk) 00:50, 1 February 2021 (UTC)