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Skulls and Crossed Bones?: a Forensic Study of the Remains of Hyrum and Joseph Smith

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Skulls and Crossed Bones?: a Forensic Study of the Remains of Hyrum and Joseph Smith Weber: A Forensic Study of the Remains of Hyrum and Joseph Smith 1 Skulls and Crossed Bones?: A Forensic Study of the Remains of Hyrum and Joseph Smith Curtis G. Weber For more than eighty years the gravesite of Joseph Smith Jr., his wife Emma, and Hyrum Smith has drawn devoted and curious visitors alike to a small cemetery plot located in the Smith Family Cemetery in Nauvoo, Illi- nois. Today, their graves are marked by a large, sloping granite slab erected in their memory in 1991 by the Joseph and Hyrum Smith Family Foundation, the third such marker placed over the graves since 1928.1 Before that date, visitors to this cemetery would not have found grave markers for the martyred broth- ers, and indeed few would have known that their graves were located there. Following the June 29, 1844, public viewing, the bodies of the two men were secreted in a room of the Mansion House while sandbag-filled coffins were used for the public burial. Under the cover of darkness later that night, a small group of men carried coffins containing the actual bodies and buried them across the street in the basement of the unfinished Nauvoo House.2 With work on the Nauvoo House at a standstill when the brothers were killed, the secret burial site remained undiscovered, unknown except to family members and the select few who assisted with the nighttime burial. But the bodies did not long remain at this initial site. Only months later, in the fall of 1844, Emma had the bodies removed from the Church-owned Nauvoo House and reinterred on Smith-owned land. According to Oliver Huntington, his broth- ers William and Dimick helped move the bodies of Joseph and Hyrum “from where they were first buried, in the cellar of the Nauvoo House, to the cellar or pit under a little outhouse” on Smith property.3 This second burial, a move CURTIS G. WE B ER ([email protected]) is a linguist in the Translation Division of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He received a BA in Near Eastern Studies from Brigham Young University in 2003. This article is based on a presentation given at the Mormon History Association conference held in Springfield, Illinois, May 2009. 2 Mormon Historical Studies designed to maintain Emma’s control over the disposition of her husband’s body, was carried out with even more secrecy than the first.4 But again, the bodies did not lie at this site for long. As many Latter-day Saints were preparing for exodus to the West, Emma feared that Brigham Young might take some action to obtain control of the bodies. Young had publicly declared his willingness to do all possible to see Joseph’s wishes regarding burial in his tomb on the Temple block fulfilled, but Emma was unwilling to cede any control in the matter.5 Joseph F. Smith recalled that “just before the departure of the Twelve from Nauvoo [in 1846], his aunt Emma had the bodies removed again, this time to the Hibbard Woods, below the Nauvoo House, near the river.”6 How long the bodies remained at the Hibbard farm is unknown; but the bodies “were removed back to the old place” once the perceived danger was past.7 At the death of Emma Smith in 1879, there was no visible trace of the little building under which the brothers’ remains lay, and within the next thirty years, knowledge of the exact location of the graves was practically lost, al- though family members and other close and trusted friends knew the graves were on the Homestead property. Joseph Smith III, who had visited the site with his mother, pointed out the spot to a few others on at least one occasion; but with his death in 1914, only the general location of the gravesite was known among the descendants of Joseph.8 The 1928 Exhumation and Reinterment With the completion of the Keokuk Dam in 1913, the waters of Missis- sippi slowly began to rise and encroach on the Homestead property. The Re- organized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, owner of the land since about 1908, became concerned about the possibility that the graves of Hyrum and Joseph would be submerged, and made several unsuccessful attempts to address the issue during the 1920s.9 Finally, in December 1927, RLDS Church President Frederick M. Smith, a son of Joseph Smith III, appointed William Oscar Hands, a close friend and an engineer from Kansas City, to locate the unmarked graves and remove the remains to a new site on higher ground where a suitable monument to the brothers could be erected. Smith also pro- vided Hands with the few details he knew of the secret gravesite to assist in the effort.10 On his arrival in Nauvoo on January 9, 1928, Hands hired a small crew to assist with the search for the remnants of the outbuilding where the bodies of Hyrum and Joseph were said to have been buried. After initially digging unsuccessfully near the shoreline, the team moved uphill, and on the third day of the search began trenching around the grave of Emma Smith. They soon Weber: A Forensic Study of the Remains of Hyrum and Joseph Smith 3 Homestead outbuilding, May 2009. This small structure, located a few yards south of the Homestead, is a replica of the building under which the bodies of Hyrum and Joseph Smith were once buried. In 1928, the remains of the two men were discovered beneath the remnant of the original building. The current gravesite, only a few feet north of the outbuilding, is partially visible through the fence on the right side of this photograph. Photograph by Curtis G. Weber. unearthed a skeleton located nearly three feet east of the foot of Emma’s grave marker, but they quickly determined from grave artifacts—a woman’s hair comb and remnants of a brown silk dress—that these were in fact the remains of Emma herself.11 On January 16, the sixth day of digging, they discovered the brick foun- dation and floor of a small building not far from Emma’s grave; and upon removing the northwest corner of the floor they unearthed a skull. Hands im- mediately identified this skull as belonging to Hyrum.12 A few minutes later a second skull, uncovered lying next to the first, was identified as Joseph’s.13 Hands telephoned President Smith with news of the discovery and had the site covered and guarded until Smith and other RLDS officials arrived in Nauvoo three days later on the January 19. Once on site, President Smith authorized the removal of Joseph and Hyrum’s skulls from the ground so they could be examined further. Accordingly, the skulls were taken to an upper room of the Mansion House, where they were photographed and measured. Ten witnesses signed an affidavit stating they were satisfied that the identifications were -cor rect.14 4 Mormon Historical Studies The next day, Friday, January 20, the remains of Emma, Joseph, and Hy- rum were reinterred side by side in a brief ceremony at the newly prepared gravesite just a few feet from where they had been discovered. Joseph’s re- mains were placed in the center grave, with Emma’s to his right, and Hyrum’s to his left.15 From that cold winter morning in 1928 to this day, they have lain at this site undisturbed. A Recent Controversy In more recent years, a small controversy has arisen over the 1928 iden- tification of the remains of Hyrum and Joseph. At the 1994 Mormon History Association conference in Park City, Utah, Ron Romig and Lachlan Mac- kay presented their belief that the martyrs’ remains had been misidentified in 1928—that Hyrum’s remains are mistakenly buried under Joseph’s grave marker, and vice versa. They had arrived at this conclusion after conducting “primitive comparisons” between the 1928 skull photographs, Joseph’s death mask, and the Scannel daguerreotype, a purported photographic image of Jo- seph Smith taken in life. They noted a “striking correspondence” between Joseph’s death mask, the daguerreotype, and the skull identified in 1928 as Hyrum’s.16 The following year, Shannon Michael Tracy published In Search of Joseph, a book containing evidence supporting this conclusion. In 2008, Tracy refined and expanded his evidence in a second book, Millions Shall Know Brother Joseph Again: The Joseph Smith Photograph.17 Furthermore, Joseph and David Lyon concurred with Tracy’s findings in their analysis of the Carthage Jail crime scene in an article which appeared in a 2008 issue of BYU Studies.18 In March 2008, I met sculptor Dee Jay Bawden, who shared with me unpublished forensic drawings he had created in 1995 in response to Tracy’s first book. He concluded that Tracy had ignored basic principles of anatomy and arrived at the wrong conclusion, and that the 1928 identifications were indeed correct. After Tracy’s second book was released in April 2008, I care- fully reviewed the evidence and arguments on the subject and determined that existing studies were deficient, and that a much more rigorous and scientific examination than had hitherto been attempted was both possible and war- ranted. That month I designed and initiated a two-dimensional forensic study to attempt to settle the matter for myself. Beginning with no commitment to either position in the controversy, I accepted the possibility that the results might be inconclusive. I worked on the study periodically from April 2008 through May 2009 with the encouragement and assistance of many individu- als.19 The remainder of this article is a brief overview of the methodology, results, and conclusions of that study.
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