Posted by:
contrarymary
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Date: July 23, 2022 03:13PM
https://religionnews.com/2022/07/21/mormon-founder-joseph-smiths-photo-discovered-by-descendant-after-nearly-180-years/The evidence is compelling.
"Larsen, 79, is a great-great-grandson of Smith, who was killed by a mob near Nauvoo, Illinois, in 1844. Among the effects passed down to Larsen was a pocket watch that bore the initials of his great-grandfather Joseph Smith III, the prophet’s oldest son and founder of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, now called Community of Christ. There was also a second object, a locket that resembled a pocket watch.
When Larsen inherited the locket shortly before his mother’s death in 1992, its finial was bent and he was not able to open it, so he put it away for safekeeping."
What followed was more than two years of verification. Larsen called his nephew, the historian and Community of Christ apostle Lachlan Mackay, to help him assemble experts and test the hypothesis that the image was that of Smith. Mackay joined forces with historian Ron Romig, the retired chief archivist for Community of Christ.
In an article in the spring/summer issue of The John Whitmer Historical Association Journal, out Thursday (July 21), the two historians detail the steps they took to authenticate the daguerreotype.
They hired facial recognition experts to compare the daguerreotype to Smith’s death mask. The company reported back that 19 of 21 measured features matched, within a 95% confidence interval.
Another expert compared the daguerreotype’s facial features with those seen in the most famous oil painting of Joseph Smith, noting that the hairline and other features were a match and that both images showed the same “distinctive frown line near the left eyebrow,” the article states.
Meanwhile, Mackay and Romig tried to verify the find through historical research. Now that they knew the long-rumored daguerreotype was housed inside a locket, they realized that it had, in fact, been “hiding in plain sight” all this time.
“The locket shows up on prominent Smith family women through the years,” Mackay said. Bertha Madison Smith, who married one of Joseph Jr. and Emma’s sons, wore it in a portrait in 1869. In 1875, a granddaughter wore it in her wedding portrait, in which the locket was hanging from a chain.
It’s believed that the locket remained in Emma’s possession until her death in 1879 and that she loaned it to female family members for special occasions. It eventually made its way to the family of the RLDS prophet Fred M. Smith (1874–1946), Joseph Jr.’s grandson and Larsen’s grandfather.
Mackay and Romig also investigated links to the likely photographer, a man named Lucian Foster. A Mormon branch president in New York City in 1839, when daguerreotypes first reached U.S. shores, Foster was an expert in the craft by the time he moved to Nauvoo to join his fellow Mormons in April 1844. Since he rented a room in the prophet’s home, he had close proximity to the Smith family. Experts think it’s during the brief period of May or early June of 1844 that Smith had Foster take his picture.
Now it’s time for the photo’s story to be told."