Smiths' descendant on family quest

Growing up in small-town Nevada, Michael Kennedy's wildest dreams could not have foreseen that dead ancestors would consume his life one day.

Yet today — on the eve of the 177th Semiannual General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — he spearheads production of a new film on his third great-grandmother, Emma Smith. And he travels the world seeking out descendants of Emma and her husband, Joseph Smith, who founded the faith in 1830.

Film crews just finished shooting the last footage of the full-length, narrative film called "Emma Smith: My Story," Kennedy said. Once the film premieres in Utah, it will go into wider distribution, with premieres in Montana, Independence, Mo., and Sydney, Australia, where many of Smith's descendants live.

Many Latter-day Saints will recognize the same actors as those featured in the church-produced film, "Joseph Smith: The Prophet of the Restoration," now showing in the Legacy Theater at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building in Salt Lake City.

The film is the latest project in Kennedy's decades-long quest to help identify and reunite Joseph and Emma Smith's posterity — and to correct long-standing myths and misjudgments about Emma Smith, he said.

Virtually none of the Smiths' descendants were affiliated with the LDS Church for more than 100 years after Joseph Smith's death in 1844, and Emma Smith's papers and artifacts were passed down through her children. One became president of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, now known as the Community of Christ.

Kennedy said he and others have spent more than two decades tracking down and meeting those descendants, many of whom knew nothing about their famous ancestor. He understands their surprise upon hearing details about Mormonism's founding story, which includes gold plates, angels and a subsequent worldwide church.

As a boy living in Nevada, Kennedy had never heard of Joseph Smith. But after a high school history teacher assigned him to write about an ancestor who had an impact on American history, he asked his father for a suggestion.

Told he had an ancestor "who founded the state of Utah," Kennedy said his father pulled out a box of old photos and documents the teenager had never seen. As he laid them out, the doorbell rang. "Two young men were standing there with name tags and the first name 'Elder,'" he recalled.