"my Father's hair was not curly."
The Salt Lake Tribune, Joseph Smith III letter from March 10th, 1910
July 2022, a locket was declared as Joseph Smith Junior, by his descendant Lach Mackay in the “Hidden Things Shall Come · to Light: The Visual Image of Joseph Smith Jr.” His relative, a direct descendant of Joseph Smith had found it in locket, passed down by his grandmother. His name was Dan Larsen.
“I just knew it was Joseph,” Larsen said this week. “I looked at it for an hour or so with my wife. It was an emotional moment.” It was also a “spiritual confirmation” of a mystical experience Larsen said he had in the Kirtland Temple shortly before converting from the Community of Christ to the LDS Church. “I knew Joseph was with me, I felt his spirit,” he said. “I saw him.” At Long Last, a Photo of Mormon Founder Joseph Smith Emerges, "Lion and Lamb Apologetics, article by Peggy Fletcher Stack.
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Joseph Smith Jun.'s Images' team, has spoken and heard from many others who've made similar claims, of seeing Joseph Smith, even one who told them another photograph was the long last item they'd been looking for, only to change her mind when the Larsen Daguerreotype came forward, now it better matched her "vision" she'd had years past. Many others have made similar claims, almost too many to count, who've not agreed with Dan's visual assessment and conclusion.
I would never assume such visitations to be of the devil, or a sign of mental instability, however, I would suggest that if anyone saw Joseph Smith in Spirit, he would hardly bear the signs of many literal battles he's known to have miraculously survived, and unless they are a trained forensic anthropologist, specialized in identifying people in photographs, and also have a photographic memory, or been holding the actual daguerreotype in hand while meeting the Joseph they all (I know of 5 who've spoken out about alleged images and have had such claims of visitations), it is likely to be wholly unreliable. So, until a member of the First Presidency comes out saying with 100% certainty any image is "him", we should think a little bit more critically and protect our hearts.
In the Article, above mentioned, Lach noted: "We first noticed the watch locket in a photograph of Emma Josepha Smith, Joseph III’s eldest daughter, Emma and Joseph Smith’s first grandchild, and Lois Smith Larsen’s aunt. Located in Julia Murdock Smith’s photo album, formerly in the possession of Rick Grunder, the photograph reveals the artifact hanging from a heavy gold chain...Two slightly different carte-de-visite views of this sitting are extant."
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Emma J. McCallum's 1875 Double Pose Photographs, Depict her wearing... the Larsen Locket?
The article concludes the "locket" shown above is hanging around the neck of Emma J. McCallum (in the picture shown above), and the authors say with much confidence- cannot be the watch she is quoted in his article as being obsessed with. It IS this watch, I theorize Emma Josepha is most certainly is wearing.
There exists a near exact photograph of Emma Josepha, only in the 2nd pose- pictured below, her arms are down; wearing the same clothing, same hairstyle (double french braids tied in a scarf/bow), same wrinkles on her clothing, so we can conclude- they are the same day/hour, only difference, my friends, it is extreme obvious- to be the watch, which had flipped around, showing a rather flat, light watch face. When we compare details to Emma Hale's verified watch, the similarities are apparent. See below.
The Emma Hale watch, shown to our right, has a similar attachment piece as the Larsen daguerreotype's, however, it is of course, a watch, with a bottom heavy watch base.
Image 3. shows Emma's watch was very corroded (but likely was still shiney in 1875, for some context). We can see there is a visible lower place circle, where the minutes are etched, matching image 2.
Oddly missing are any photographs of the back of Emma Hale's watch. Image 1. matches the other photographs of watch Emma J. wears in the 3 photographs featured The John Whitmer Historical Association Journal, which leads me to conclude Emma Josepha never wore the Larsen Locket, and therefore, no evidence exists of it even being in the Smith family, beyond 1992, when Dan inherited the item from his mother Lois Audentia Smith.
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The watch back: photograph of Emma J. McCallum, 1875, cropped from the image above, with her right arm up.
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Cropped, cropped from the photograph of Emma J. McCallum, 1875, with her arm down, discovered on her FindaGrave page, clearly showing the watch front.
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Emma Hale's verified watch, with a unique placement of the hands that are place "bottom heavy", off center, just as the watch Emma J. wore in her photograph above.
"Bushy eyebrows", "NOT curly" hair, "long nose", "oblong face"- Verbal Descriptions of Joseph Smith
In 1962, William B. McCarl submitted a thesis, to BYU, having compiled every verbal description of Joseph Smith Junior, he could find in that decade. One letter, written by the eldest son of Joseph and Emma Smith, who took his father's name, Joseph Smith III, wrote the Salt Lake Tribune, critiquing a painting by a new Utah artist, Lewis Ramsey. In one interesting complaint, he stated,
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"...the picture represents a curly headed man but my fathers hair was not curly[!]"
It is undeniable, the man in the locket Dan Larsen owns, has extremely curly hair (see highlights in Image 4.), when traced in red, shows actual ringlets have formed on this man's head, and does not fit this description. Also of note, is that curly hair is dominant gene, LINK, and the lack of any the biological children of Joseph Smith having curly hair, is also evidence it's not a photograph of Joseph Smith, simply due to genes, and a lock of Joseph's hair (image 5), shows the lack of curl, although stitched in a loop, 20 or more stands have since broken free, showing almost perfectly straight strands, so unless Joseph sat and let Emma curly his hair with a scalding hot curly iron, this is another person entirely. So, unless Dan's great Grandfather was blind his whole life, as he claimed to have had the daguerreotype of his father, over 25 years (since 1885), or the daguerreotype is most certainly not Joseph Smith; but the dissonances between verbal descriptions of the Prophet and obvious physical characteristics of this daguerreotype do not end there...
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The Weekly Gazette of St. Louis Missouri, May 9, 1844 wrote:
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"...the prophets most remarkable feature is his eye; not that it is very large or very bright... is shaded and at times almost veiled by the longest thickest light lashes you ever saw belonging to a man the brows are also light and thick indeed precisely of that description called bettle brow."
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Benjamin Franklin Johnson described the prophet thus:
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“His eyes were shaded by long light eyelashes and bushy eyebrows that were not arched, but ran straight across. The whole arrangement of his eyes, lashes, and brows is said to have produced an unusual or even magnetic effect.”
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Note how the author says Joseph Smith Jun. had eyebrows that were "thick indeed" and a "bettle brow", things the Larsen Locket lacks, in fact the Locket Man has very thin eyebrows (zoomed and cropped in Image 5.), no one in their right mind were ever call them "thick".
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Parley P. Pratt wrote:
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"...his countenance was ever mild, affable, beaming with intelligence and benevolence; mingled with a look of interest and an unconscious smile or cheerfulness and entirely free from all restraint or affectation of gravity..."
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My personal opinion is the Locket male sitter is very full of "gravity" in more ways than one, not mild, and certainly far from looking like he's cheerful, but contains a uniform frown on his mouth, no "unconscious smile" to speak of.
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Cropped, unedited screenshot of the Larsen Locket male, depicted with unilaterally thin eyebrows.
Well, if he is not Joseph Smith Jun., who is he?
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Frederick Madison Smith
Picture above is the matriarch of the Smith Household, Bertha Madison Smith, from 1869-1896; she is the grandmother of Lois Smith Larsen, and is of Norwegian descendent. Having following the lineage of Dan Larsen, his last name- Larsen is descended from Denmark, so it could be said much of his ancestry is heavily Scandinavian; this area of northern Europe is known popularly for having "Nordic Curl", men and women abound with natural, beautiful ringlet hair, evident in Bertha Madison Smith and her daughter Mary Audentia Smith , whose hair appears to be a 3c curly, Bertha a 3b. (it should be noted her brother Frederick M. Smith too had very tight curly hair, whereas the children with the other 2 wives of Joseph Smith III, the author has not found this same genetic trait, resulting in the theory the Curly hair was from Bertha, not a Smith Family line.)
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What I noticed in studying the life of Jospeh Smith III, the past 7 or so years, is any image I come across of Bertha Madison, her hair is curly and appears to be naturally curly. Picture above is also Mary Audentia Smith Anderson, the sister of Fred M. Smith (the Grandfather of Dan Larsen), and Mary appears to have inherited a very tight curly mane. When I compare this image of Bertha, at 50 years old, to the supposed 38 year old locket man, their similarities are incredible, but when I compared a younger picture of the Great Grandmother of Dan, Mary Madison, the similarity to her unique nasal bridge, eyes, nose and mouth were extremely apparent.
Screenshot from Family Search; Edward Julius Larsen is the father of Dan Larsen, and is an immigrant from Denmark.
Mary Madison, an immigrant to La Salle, Illinois, from Norway.
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The resemblance between Mary Madison, (Great, Great Grandmother of Dan Larsen), and the Larsen locket image is undeniable; their most striking similarity is the wide and flat upside-down shape between their eyes, heavy unilateral droopy eyes, thin eyebrows, and short nose.
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When I first saw the daguerreotype Mackay claimed was for sure Joseph Smith Jr., in 2022, and analyzed it to the death mask myself, I could not agree it was "Joseph", as the nose was so very different from the death mask of Joseph Smith, the chin too flat (rounded in the artwork and on Joseph's Death mask), and the artwork (from LIFE), which all show a very prominent nasal bridge, protruding from his upper, not lower lash line, and of course, a large protruding nose.
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Many, such as Joseph Brickey, have made attempts to alter the skull and death mask of Joseph Smith, to better match the Larsen Locket male sitter. Brickey has made blanket statements, that he has "studied forensics", but has no degree in it, and can reconstruct a face as well as any forensic anthropologist, using the photographs of the skulls. He has spoken at the Joseph Smith Senior Family Reunion, summer of 2024, I will summarize as acknowledging that photography has distortions, but his knowledge of vanishing points, per his article Summer of 2024, in Meridian Magazine, he's claimed to know exactly how the camera distortions changed affected said image, and using a high tech 3-D program, flipped the skull around, and somehow with his art background (vanishing points), he magically make it all disappear, resulting in leveling out the unlevel eyes, that many doctors stated was a true injury Joseph Smith obtains when his left orbital bone was blown out like shattering glass, causing a step deformity, which results to a lowering of the left eye, also seen in the Dibble Death mask of Joseph Smith, and SHOULD be seen in a true photograph of Joseph Smith, as according to Dr. Niles Herrod, a maxillofacial surgeon, this injury was old by 1844 and remodeling on the bone was noted (Dr. Niles Herrod's notes, 1995, "In Search of Joseph"). Brickey removed this injury, in his Meridian Magazine article, which asserts the skull buried as Hyrum Smith- is Joseph's, is not perfect angled facing forward and shows a little more of his right parietal bones than his left, I don't think that caused in any way, shape or form, the left eye to be lower than the right, considering the inferior left eye is on Joseph Smith's death mask, at any and all angles, it's not something that can justifiably removed or made to disappear.
Brickey also changed the Dibble Death mask of Joseph Smith, making the eyes smaller, of course- level (which they are not), nose thinner, eyebrows made to be thinner, lips thinner, cheekbones flatter (allegedly post mortem swelling), yet adding a brow furrow, an expression line not there in reality. When I looked at his final sculpture of Hyrum Smith, the lips oddly were enlarged, eyebrow hair added, whereas Joseph's eyebrows were thinned and his lips were thinned, Joseph's lips has nuances that are seen in artwork from life, which Brickey removed; which thinking critically, why would swelling in Joseph's face result in only his lips decreasing in size, but doing the opposite- increasing the thickness of Hyrum's lips? It's rather odd logic to me.
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Scientists CAN and do reconstruct faces from skulls, sometimes with accuracy, sometimes not; however no forensic anthropologist I know would do it from a photograph of a skull, let alone with limited angles. Despite all of these issues, many doctors agree the skull buried as Joseph Smith is Hyrum's and the skull buried as Hyrum is actually Joseph's and when the correct skull is superimposed onto another competitor for photograph of Joseph Smith, the step deformity actually lines up extremely well and that is a CDV of a man, found in a Smith ID family album, authenticated by Gawain Weaver in 2020, as legitimately 1860s, made from photographing an older metal daguerreotype, of a man coincidentlly wearing 1840s clothes, a vest much too similar to one worn by Joseph Smith, with his hair brushed forward (not outward or in ringlets) . This CDV image, fortunately has a photographer's stamp, with the location and name of the photograph, J.S. Bibbins, of Newark, Illinois, which further research has proven 1860s is perfect decade, as that is the height of Joseph Smith III's preaching in that exact county, Kendall County, and Newark/Georgtown, Illinois is mentioned numerous times, even as a place he could go to if he ever got lost, saying he even had friends in that town (mere 10 miles away from his family home, in Plano, Illinois), proving strong provenance, when evidence was also found the Smith descendants were using and aware of this exact copying technique and Emma Smith herself wrote about trying to get this done, early as 1866, video link, with sources attached. ​​
Facial Sketching Comparison Technique
Below I have traced in turquoise the eyes and eyebrows of Joseph Smith, as left as a final physical impression onto his death mask. Of note is the level placement of the bilateral nostrils, cropped just above the eyes, it is obvious Joseph's left eye is lower than his right and his left cheekbone is flattened (described as a step deformity by Dr. Niles Herrod's 1995 notes, when studying the bones and mask of the late Prophet).
Once the tracing from the death mask of Joseph Smith is superimposed onto the eyes of the Larsen Locket male, his eyes are much closer together, than seen on the death mask, you see his left eye is in a totally different location, and where he should have thick eyebrows, he has none, missing a verified, before death injury (as Herrod noted remodeling, this was not a result or injury from the martyrdom). Forensics and doctors have written numerous articles how the placement of the eyes is affected by bone structure, and since Joseph's skull shows intact left orbital rings, the step deformity was an old injury, not one you can simply take away.
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I have place a * symbol on image 9. right where the differences in their right orbital rim is drastically different, where Joseph's mask shows narrowing as this location is his nasal bridge and where his nose begins protruding, the Larsen Locket male's skin is webbed, flat, indication a short nose, and lower placed nasal bridge, which on image 8. lines up with Joseph's upper orbital bone, image 9. the nasal bridge lines up with his lower lash line, exactly where his nose begins narrowing (and where is likely starts protruding).
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nasal bridge
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nasal bridge
Joseph Smith's death mask nose has been traced in magenta, for better contrast, and superimposed onto the cropped Larsen Locket Male. Some major differences are also seen here, as Joseph had a broken and remodeled nose, (seen in the David Roger's forward facing painting, made from life). Image 10. shows a nasal bridge which sharply angles to his right (medically speaking, from the patient's perspective), then sharping pivots to his left (likely done when the nose was placed, either in the mobbing of 1832 attack, or violent attack by William Smith in 1835), from there Joseph's nose tapers into a wider width, with larger flared nostrils, some have falsely claimed was created by cotton being placed into the nostrils, however the Joseph Smith papers entry on this alleged claim only states cotton soaked in camphor was placed INTO the their bullet wounds, not their nostrils. I have shoved hot wax up my own nostrils, a professional skin therapist, and ripped them out, and been just fine, as have many of my past cliental.
"...he put cotton soaked in camphor, into each wound, and laid the bodies out with fine plain drawers and shirts, <​white neckerchiefs​> white cotton stockings and white shrouds." LINK to History, 1838–1856, volume F-1 [1 May 1844–8 August 1844]
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Image 11. shows when the complete opposite, a narrowing along the whole of nose, no widening of the nostrils. Being there is no similarity between the nose width, length and he's missing the remodeled, curving to their right nose, this is only adding up in the line of major differences, which exclude the locket as being of Joseph Smith Junior.
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There exists evidence of the Smith siblings of Joseph Smith, having wider noses, particularly Lucy Smith Millikin, seen below.
Lucy Smith Millikin
Image 12. shows the death mask of Joseph Smith's mouth traced in green, superimposed onto Image 13., cropped version of the Larsen Locket male's mouth. Joseph Smith's "unconscious smile" seems to be a result of a scar, pulling the right side of his mouth, evidence as existing before his death, in the Roger's painting, which will be compared later in this analysis. Image 13. shows a man with the opposite feature, the right side of his mouth droops further down. Image 12. also shows another unique feature seen in the forward facing painting, a thick medial upper lip which curves more sharply upward on the right lateral commissure. We can see their left later commissure lines up, the lower lip is relatively similar in thickness, but image 12. again shows a man with a thicker and larger lower lip overall (lower lip is thicker laterally as well).
Image 13. shows a man with a more straight upper lip which is much thinner than the traced upper lip of Joseph Smith, from Image 12.
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According to forensic Anthropologists Teghan Lucas, and Maciej Hennberg, who've taught comparative Anatomy, in Universities, (Henneberg who's been published over 400 times), wrote that the CDV from a Smith ID Family Album is "likely" Joseph Smith and in reference to the Larsen Locket male, they stated the opposite in the January 2023 Issue of the Anthropological Review, LINK:
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"Many people have come forth with daguerreotypes claiming to be the prophet, however, none have been conclusively proven to be Joseph Smith Jnr (McCarl 1962). The latest of these claims has been made in 2022 when Ronald Roming and Lachlan Mackay presented a picture found in the locket inherited from Joseph Smith III’s son’s wife. The origins of this image are still discussed, while the similarity of the person depicted on this image to Joseph Smith Jnr is not apparent..." A morphological comparison between a death mask of the American Prophet Joseph Smith and a photograph likely to depict him, Teghan Lucas, Debra Hatfield, Maciej Henneberg.
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Lucas and Henneberg were never paid by the owner of the CDV they analyzed, and as non-members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, totally free from bias, meaning they have no emotional or financial sway towards it or the Larsen Locket male. Below, is the death mask of Joseph Smith and the Larsen Locket Male, zoomed out, better showing how unlike Joseph Smith the Larsen Locket male truly is.
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