DNA tests rule out 2 as Smith descendants

After more than a century of speculation about whether LDS Church founder Joseph

Smith had children with any of his plural wives, a local geneticist said he

recently has crossed two such purported descendants off the list of potential

candidates.

Ugo Perego, director of operations at the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy

Foundation, told the Deseret Morning News that technological advances in DNA

testing during the past couple of years have helped prove with "99.9 percent

certainty" that two early Latter-day Saints thought by some to be Smith's

children are not his descendants. They are:

• Mosiah Hancock, son of Clarissa Reed Hancock, who was married to Levi

Hancock.• Oliver Buell, son of Prescindia Huntington Buell, who was married

to Norman Buell.

Perego said that brings to five the number of people that some believed were

Smith descendants whose paternal DNA does not match up with his. To date, at

least seven other early Latter-day Saints have been identified in various

historical documents or in later writings as potential Smith offspring, he said.

In 2005, Perego said DNA testing also ruled out three other alleged male

descendants — Moroni Llewellyn Pratt (son of Mary Ann Frost Pratt, married to

Parley P. Pratt), Zebulon Jacobs (son of Zina Diantha Huntington Jacobs Smith,

married to Henry Bailey Jacobs) and Orrison Smith (son of Fanny Alger).

Some candidates are surrounded by what he called "strong historical evidences

like journal entries," while other alleged descendants have little historical

basis to be related, other than "speculation based on conclusions that sometimes

may have been too rushed," Perego said.