In 1842, after the Relief Society was organized in Nauvoo, Illinois, the Prophet Joseph Smith said, “The Church was never perfectly organized until the women were thus organized” (“Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith,” 2007, p. 451.)
The Relief Society general presidency is inviting all women to study the origins of the Relief Society in preparation for the 2025 worldwide Relief Society devotional and testimony meeting on Sunday, March 16, which will commemorate the 183rd anniversary of the founding of the organization. Ward Relief Societies are encouraged to plan to meet together for the event.
Relief Society General President Camille N. Johnson and her counselors, Sister J. Anette Dennis and Sister Kristin M. Yee, filmed their remarks in the reconstructed Red Brick Store in Nauvoo and spent some time in the places where Joseph and Emma Smith and other early Saints lived.
Anne Berryhill and Emily Utt with the Church History Department were with the Relief Society general presidency in Nauvoo during that experience and shared their thoughts with the Church News about the roots of the Relief Society and its parallels to today.
The beginnings of Relief Society
The women who gathered in the upper room of the Red Brick Store on March 17, 1842, came from a variety of circumstances — different socio-economic backgrounds, marital status, locations, levels of education and broader family situations. Some had been members of the Church from the very beginnings in 1830 and 1831, others had just been baptized.
Berryhill said Relief Society today continues to bring women together “in a unifying effort in the work of elevating and making our communities better.”
The Red Brick Store was located down the street from Joseph and Emma Smith’s home and surrounded by other houses in Nauvoo where these women all lived. This was a building where they might have been in almost every day and interacted with others. But Utt said it became a holy place, like the Waters of Mormon, where the women came to know God.
Utt said earth-changing moments don’t always happen in large or significant places — often they are quiet, unassuming and unexpected places, like a storage room above a working store.
“That same place that is hallowed by these women coming together to consecrate and to give their very best selves to the building of the Kingdom of God just a few weeks later becomes the place where the first temple ordinances were received in the latter days,” Utt said.
This is a reminder to Utt that the powerful work of women — eternally significant work — is done in places today that also may not seem to be significant but become holy places.
And the Red Brick Store was a place where, as Berryhill explained, that Joseph Smith helped women see that there has been a place for them since ancient times within Jesus Christ’s church. The women came to the Prophet saying they wanted to help with building the temple — suggesting sewing shirts or other service — and he listened and elevated their efforts with prophetic vision.
Utt said, “They came with a beautiful idea that will elevate their community and then in conversation with the Prophet, it became even bigger than anybody could have ever imagined.”
Added Berryhill, “Women coming together and doing the work of providing for each other, lifting each other — really that community connectedness paired with prophetic vision I think is something that we can draw parallels to today, regardless of the location that we are in.”
Sister Andrea McConkie, a member of the Relief Society general advisory council, pointed out that there were many different times the women in Nauvoo gathered together, often in the Red Brick Store.
“I think if we learned all of their stories, we would easily see ourselves reflected in one of them,” Sister McConkie said. “Women are natural gatherers. We love to be together, and when we gather together in the Savior’s name, those places of gathering become holy, and we draw closer to Him.”
A covenant community
While serving as the second general president of the Relief Society, Eliza R. Snow wrote the following: “What is the object of the Female Relief Society? I would reply — to do good — to bring into requisition every capacity we possess for doing good, not only in relieving the poor but in saving souls. United effort will accomplish incalculably more than can be accomplished by the most effective individual energies.”
Berryhill said community was everything for the women in the Nauvoo Relief Society. They knew they were not going through this life to be saved by themselves but rather to preserve and save their community — their covenant community.
In an early Relief Society meeting in Nauvoo, the Prophet Joseph Smith’s mother, Lucy Mack Smith, told her fellow sisters, “We must cherish one another, watch over one another, comfort one another and gain instruction that we may all sit down in heaven together.”
These efforts are seen today through counseling together in Relief Society and ministering to one another — because members of the Church are bound to each other through the covenants that they have made, Berryhill said.
While some women don’t have those covenant connections right now to a husband or children or parents, they do have a covenant bond with their sisters in Relief Society.
‘One step away from the Red Brick Store’
The Nauvoo Relief Society met for a relatively short time. After Joseph Smith was martyred, the Saints needed to get out of Nauvoo for their own safety. But the women still had a foundation where they understood that their responsibility was to look out and care for the community as it became mobile and transferred to a new place, Berryhill said.
Sister Snow dutifully and carefully brought the Nauvoo Relief Society Minute Book with her to Utah. Then, she was commissioned by Brigham Young to begin setting up official Relief Societies and Relief Society meetings again. Over decades, she carried the book with her everywhere, using it as a constitution or framework and reading from it out loud to the sisters. Utt said the current Relief Society general presidency still refers back to that document today.
As the Saints settled in the western United States, the Relief Society women fundraised and built their own halls when they could — creating their own sacred spaces. In some cases, they also opened their own stores where they sold goods and also met together.
Over time, as uses changed, Church meetinghouses around the world started to be built with their own designated Relief Society room. In places without a meetinghouse, women have met in living rooms or even under a tree together.
“When sisters gather in that Relief Society room to discuss the welfare of their souls, we are one step away from the Red Brick Store,” Utt said. “Every week we meet in our own Red Brick Store, if you will. So even if our sisters can’t make it to the physical building in Nauvoo, we are still meeting as descendants of that room.”
Remember and record
Berryhill pointed out that one of the three purposes on the title page of the Book of Mormon is to be “reminded what the Lord has done for our fathers,” she said.
“There’s a sacred aspect to the process of remembering and recording our history. All of this ties into this history of Relief Society — that there is a sacred and kind of worshipful act of remembering what the Lord has done for those who’ve gone before us,” Berryhill said.
Utt said the sacrament prayers include the commandment to remember. Moroni in Moroni 10:3 exhorts people that when they read the Book of Mormon, “ye remember how merciful the Lord hath been unto the children of men.”
Studying the history of Relief Society and its roots will help women remember how merciful the Lord has been, Utt said. “We are commanded as Saints to remember, to honor those who came before — and not just to remember them but to know that God loves His children.”
Resources to learn more include the Nauvoo Relief Society Minute Book; "Saints, Volume 1;" "The First Fifty Years of Relief Society;" the Gospel Topics essay on the Relief Society; and "At the Pulpit: 185 Years of Discourses by Latter-day Saint Women."
Sister Mitzi Semo, a member of the Relief Society general advisory council, invited women to particularly study chapter 37 of "Saints, Volume 1," and also chapter 1 of “Daughters in My Kingdom: The History and Work of Relief Society.” Both can be found in the Gospel Library app and in the Gospel Library on ChurchofJesusChrist.org and then selecting Church History.
Said Sister Semo, “While you study these events, I hope you will think about the Relief Society women in your life, and I hope you will make a connection between the blessings that have come into your life because of the events that formed the organization we affectionately call Relief Society.”
To add to that, Utt said Saints are also commanded to keep a history. “The work of our Relief Societies today are acts of love to God … our acts of service, our acts of ministry. Our acts of mercy are the things that future generations will also want to remember. So keep a history and learn the history.”
A place where women can record their own Relief Society histories through the Church History Department’s Unit History Tool, found at https://unithistory.churchofjesuschrist.org.
As women learn the history and keep a history, they can find out more about the purpose of Relief Society, what they can contribute today and continue the legacy of generations of women who came before, Utt said.
All of this brings to mind imagery of roots and branches for Berryhill — especially Aspen trees with their huge underground network of roots and how tiny trees pop up through the ground in clumps together. “There’s growth that continues and there are clumps that spring up, and we can be facilitators of that growth,” she said.
