Peggy Fletcher StackAn 1840s locket containing a daguerreotype believed by some to be the only known photograph of Mormonism founder Joseph Smith has found its way to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The Utah-based faith “has accepted” the locket “by donation,” the church said in a Thursday news release.
Since its discovery in 2020 by some of Smith’s relatives, the nearly 18 million-member global church has not authenticated the image as being the faith’s first prophet.
“We cannot draw a conclusion,” the church said this week, “about who is pictured in the daguerreotype.”
Lachlan Mackay, an apostle for Community of Christ (formerly the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) and Smith’s great-great-great-grandson, has come to believe the daguerreotype is his famous relative.
(The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) The locket was donated to the church, the faith announced Thursday.
The story of the locket’s discovery by another Smith direct descendant, Daniel Larsen, was published in an extensive article in the John Whitmer Historical Association Journal. It is titled “Hidden Things Shall Come to Light: The Visual Image of Joseph Smith Jr.”
Larsen could not be reached for comment Friday.
After extensive forensic comparisons, Curtis Weber, an independent Latter-day Saint researcher in Utah, now believes that the daguerreotype is indeed a photo of the man who proclaimed he saw God and Jesus in a New York grove as a boy and launched a global religious movement.
In 2008 and 2009, Weber worked on a forensic study of the remains of Smith and his fellow martyr, brother Hyrum Smith, which concluded that they were correctly identified when their skulls were last exhumed and reburied in 1928.
In the process, Weber built a library of more than 700 photographs of the oldest known death masks of the two men with each mask positioned in a custom-built rig at documented angles.
(The Church History Museum) Death masks of Joseph and Hyrum Smith.
Comparing the reversed daguerreotype image to Smith’s death mask photos revealed the similarities immediately.
“The mouth, nose, and nasolabial folds [creases in the skin from both sides of the nose to the corner of the mouth],” he told The Salt Lake Tribune, are the “closest matches I’ve ever seen in any purported image of Joseph.”
Weber is open to those who arrive at other conclusions.
“I am not a trained expert, though I’ve studied the relevant fields and tried to be careful in my analyses,” he said in 2023. “I may be proven wrong, but I hope others will seriously consider what I’ve discovered.”
