The Relief Society was organized in Nauvoo, Illinois, on March 17, 1842, when a group of women led by Sarah M. Kimball had already begun meeting to sew clothing for men building the Nauvoo Temple and sought Joseph Smith's approval to formalize their group. Smith proposed instead organizing the women 'after the pattern of the priesthood,' with a president and counselors, and Emma Smith, his wife, was elected the society's first president. Minutes from these founding meetings, preserved and later published in full as The First Fifty Years of Relief Society, record Joseph Smith addressing the group directly on several occasions, including remarks Latter-day Saints understand as extending significant religious authority and responsibility to women within the society's charitable and educational mandate.
The society's early Nauvoo activity centered on relief for the poor and sick within the rapidly growing city, but tension between Emma Smith and Joseph Smith grew during 1842 and 1843, connected to disputes over the practice of plural marriage that Emma Smith opposed, and the society's meetings lapsed after Joseph Smith's murder in 1844 and were not formally reconvened for decades. Brigham Young revived local Relief Societies in the Utah territory beginning in the 1850s and 1860s, and under Eliza R. Snow, who had also been a Nauvoo-era officer, the society was reorganized on a churchwide basis in 1867 and has operated continuously since.