Research focuses on Smith family

KILLINGTON, Vt. — While LDS Church founder Joseph Smith has been scrutinized intensely by both scholars and scoffers since he launched the faith in 1830, several new avenues of research are focused on his family relationships and whether he fathered children by his polygamist wives.

A researcher examining DNA evidence of potential Smith descendants by wives other than his first wife, Emma Smith, told participants at the 40th annual Mormon History Association conference on Saturday he has ruled out three people suspected of being Smith's children.

Ugo Perego, who is working on an independent project funded by the Salt Lake City-based Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation, said he has compiled an initial list of nine such potential Smith descendants but has been able to locate DNA evidence on only four of them — three of them males determined not to be related.

A fourth, Josephine Rosetta Lyon (daughter of Sylvia Sessions Lyon), is still under investigation after five years of scrutiny, he said. But Y chromosome evidence, used to determine paternal relationships from father to son, is not present for Lyon because she is female. The effort to determine Lyon's parentage has cost more than $100,000 to date.

"This is not a complete list of possible descendants. I'm still working on that," he said.

Known descendants from the children of Joseph and Emma Smith number about 2,000, he said, many of them with little or no interest in religion and some with an aversion to their famous ancestor's polygamist practices.

Perego said he will be speaking to known descendants of Joseph Smith during a family reunion later this summer and hopes to be able to gather more DNA through a simple cheek swab to expand his database and to help determine Lyon's parentage. He has DNA from her mother's side of the family but is looking for evidence from Smith's side.

Hair samples from Joseph Smith owned by the LDS Church are poor evidence because there is "very little (DNA) in hair, and it disintegrates over time."

Since his work has become known via the grapevine, he often gets calls from people who believe themselves to be descended from Smith and one of his plural wives.

"I did not go out looking for these people. They came to me," he said.

Perego stressed the project is not being undertaken by the Sorenson Foundation itself but through a grant from it. Founded by billionaire medical devices pioneer James Sorenson, the nonprofit foundation announced several months ago it was compiling a database of DNA-based evidence that would be accessible to family history researchers looking to verify their family tree.