Spending Christmas with Joseph and Emma

"Alexander was 6 at the time his father was murdered, so he had little memory of him. He grew up and got married and had nine children. The youngest was my mother's mother." The family eventually moved to southern Idaho and then, in the 1930s, to Montana. Jones' mother married a member of the Flathead tribe, and the family settled on the reservation.

Jones' grandmother was a member of the Reorganized LDS Church, but her mother was never baptized into it. "I was raised without any knowledge of the church, and although I knew I was related to Joseph Smith, my mother admonished me not to tell anyone. She was afraid I would be teased."

In the 1950s, there was a lot of prejudice against the LDS Church in that area, Jones says. When she was a senior in high school the family moved to Conrad, Mont., and there Jones ended up getting a baby-sitting job for a woman who was a member of the LDS Church. "Despite my mother's advice, I told her about my connection to Joseph. She introduced me to the missionaries and gave me a Book of Mormon. I began to read it, and it was a marvelous experience."

Jones' parents were "less than pleased. I had to wait until after I was 18 and had left home to join the church."

Since then, she has spent a lot of time tracking down other descendants of Joseph and Emma.

Since then, too, she has realized that she does have a rich heritage that has been passed down through the family.

"I think what Joseph and Emma passed on to our family was a matter of attitude." Jones grew up in a family that was never well-to-do, so they had to make do with less in material gifts than some people they knew. However, "we were always told we had an abundance and we believed it. My mother learned that from her mother, Emma's granddaughter, who learned it from her mother, Emma's daughter-in-law, Elizabeth Kendall, who was raised among the Smiths and married Alexander."

For the holidays, says Jones, "Mother always managed to make homemade gifts and obtain maybe one special family gift."

Her book talks about other precious gifts that have come because of Joseph and Emma — gifts such as knowledge, hope, humility and faith. She also hopes the book will help people "feel closer to them in a very concrete way, that they will realize they were real people with real feelings and hopes and dreams, many of which were set aside in this life so that we can have what we have today."

Besides that, she says, "Because of Joseph Smith, the world has a better knowledge of Jesus Christ. That's the ultimate message of Christmas."

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E-mail: carma@desnews.com