Joseph Smith, Sr. and Lucy Mack Smith Family Organization

The Joseph Smith Sr. and Lucy Mack Smith Foundation Newsletter
http://www.josephsmithsr.org

Great Grandfather John was born into a wonderfully well-off family in England where he had just everything a child could want. As soon as he was tall enough, he was sent to Oxford University to study with other well-bred young men and to eat at the head table where the food was the best. Good for John, he was very smart. He became the favorite of Dr. John King who was the Bishop of London, who ran Oxford, and who was very powerful and very rich.

One day, John’s brother Tom came to visit him at Oxford. Tom said that Oxford was a nice place and all that but it was stuck like a cart in a rut. The new ideas were at Cambridge. Tom said “So come,” and John did.

At Cambridge there was a lot going on, especially in religious studies- you know, church stuff-and that took John’s fancy.

This is an excerpt and picture from the full color children’s book by Vivian McConkie Adams; Sometimes you just have to move Across the Ocean: the story of John Lathrop.

HYRUM- LIVING
-Lovina DonnaLee Frogley 435-757-7554 1,691
-John Sam Isom 801-771-6911 863
-Joseph F. Mary Donoho 801-546-4707 4,593
-Jerusha Ben Donoho 801-546-4707 593
-Martha Ann Carole King 435 673-4303 3,095
-Sarah LaRene Gaunt 801-572-0169
Debbie Nelson 801-302-8855 1,218
JOSEPH Jr- Michael Kennedy 801-756-1091 894
SAMUEL Robert Smith 801-489-7589 497
WILLIAM Gracia Jones 435-673-2165 93
CATHERINE Marge Porter 801-876-3265 468
LUCY Wilburta Moore 801-595-8131 68

This is just a last note to invite all to please send an annual contribution. Our newsletter outreach in search of all our family members depends on you. If you aren’t certain when you last paid the suggested $15.00, please note your mailing label for the due date.

Please help us save cost by using your own envelope and cut-out form section.

Send to:
% Spence Nilson
Joseph Smith, Sr. and Lucy Mack Smith Foundation
180 E 2100 S 202
Salt Lake City UT 84115

(Please do not send dues to the newsletter return address)

If you know of living Smith descendants who don’t receive the newsletter, please send their addresses by copying the form from this section of the newsletter and sending them to the return address on the newsletter or emailing to crfrogley@josephsmithsr.org , or , soon you may go to the web page and enter information in yourself: www.josephsmithsr.com.

Thank you.

Some Conclusions:

1. The Foundation has assets thanks to the donations of many who love the Smith Family. We guard these as sacred
funds that provide interest income over the years with which we can manage our family stewardship.

2. Those who manage the investments have done well, providing $3,565.00 of interest income this past year.

3. Bonds mature and must be sold and replaced. The cost of doing so through brokerage fees and increased face value
account for the difference in the $10,221 liquidated and the $12,471 purchased and the $175 fee.

4. Maintaining the cemetery for visitors to learn about and enjoy our family’s heritage is both a sacred family
stewardship and expensive. During most years the interest from the investments pays for the cemetery maintenance.

5. Family newsletter addresses total to around 5,000. If dues were paid only by those addresses the total cash fund
available could be $75,000.00 annually. We could either lower dues or use the fund to do more good for our own
family as indicated in the first article. Many projects stand only as dreams due to insufficient resources since less
than ten percent of the family contribute to through dues. This report only shows $110.00 for the last quarter of
2003. If annualized it would only come to $440.00 for all of 2003.

6. All of us on the Board and on the correlation committee spend our own additional moneys to purchase software, send
correspondence, and make phone calls, etc in the search for family members. Some have spent thousands to publish
books with no hope for return on investment. Theirs is a labor tied to the vision that the Smith Family Values can
serve as a powerful solution to the growing problems that vex our world and especially our families.

Jerusha Barden Smith, first wife of Patriarch Hyrum Smith was born on February 15, 1805. She passed into almost total anonymity when she died in Kirtland, Ohio on Oct. 13 1837, following the birth of her sixth child, Sarah. Many of the grandchildren of Jerusha have expressed an intense desire to put in place a fitting memorial for.

The famous sculptor, Dee Jay Bawden has been commissioned by her grandchildren to sculpt a likeness of this devoted and valiant woman who was the first love of Hyrum Smith to be placed alongside his bust that is already in Kirtland. Though small donations of any amount will be helpful in this effort, a smaller version of Jerusha can be purchased, as well as a companion likeness of Hyrum for $100 each. A purchase of one of the small busts will be counted toward the donation to the fund for the large bust memorial. Mail your contribution or request for a small likeness to: Eldred G. Smith, Hyrum Smith Family Association at 2942 Devonshire Circle, Salt Lake City, Utah, 84108.

More than a half a million people have visited the family cemetery. The Foundation spends much of its resources on maintaining and upgrading this important memorial to all for which the family stands. Recently, new lighting, new headstones for Father and Mother Smith, a new path to their newly marked graves, and new signs were added. We are grateful to Community of Christ, who owns the cemetery, for the care they take in servicing and instructing visitors. Lachlan Mackay, the Community’s Historic Sites Coordinator, and a board member, worked with the board to ensure that the “Frequently Asked Questions” answers were family-friendly and historical. Since many volunteers serve at the cemetery this will ensure our story is as accurate as we can make it.

Would you like to have ready access to a Smith family genealogical line including ancestral pictures? Would you like to access a past newsletter? Would you like to know and contact your family representative to the Foundation? Would you like to register yourself or a family member with the Foundation so as to receive this newsletter or send it to other family members?

www.josephsmithsr.org is the web site that will serve as a portal to the Foundation resources if you will register online. If you have questions you want answered, the “contact” button allows you to send an email which then is directed to the appropriate family representative or Board of Trustees. If you have information to share: pictures, names of ancestors or interesting information about them, just email them with the proper source information using the contact button. If sources are included and verifiable then we will be able to share them and credibility will grow. We welcome and encourage your submissions as we share ideas and information.

During the year 2004, please check to see if your family names and other data are included correctly in the www.josephsmithsr.com web site. Send me any updates for your family regarding births, deaths, marriages, and addresses etc. so the Martha Ann descendants will receive the Smith Newsletter: ccking@xmission.com.

By Craig R. Frogley
The family gathered in Nauvoo, IL this last summer for its regular reunion. Once again under the direction of The Family Reunion Organization rather than the Foundation, we met to enjoy each other as well as the reconstructed city. As I contemplated going back to Nauvoo (The Foundation had sponsored the Family gathering surrounding the dedication of the New Nauvoo temple just a year earlier.), it was without the usual excitement. Perhaps it was because I try to
avoid redundancy, or perhaps it was the twenty-eight hours in the car with the children that killed my enthusiasm in returning to the same place. Then, Gracia Jones remarked to me a most profound thought I have tried to reconstruct since:

“We do reunions, not to see the places, though they are deeply significant because of the ancestral prices paid, but because we are with family. Things will happen if you are there that would not otherwise happen that will affect both lives and relationships eternally.” I went with that in mind and found it deeply true. I noted that there was much that was better than it had ever been before: The speakers were profound, the gatherings were bonding, the food was great, etc. Then the most profound thing happened to me that emblazoned the reunion forever onto my memory and reconfirmed the purpose for which we do what we have been striving to do over the last nine years as a Family Foundation.

The Samuel organization decided to once again feed the family. We met in the grove just north and across the street from the Homestead and west of the Mansion House. As we feasted under the trees with the family sites surrounding us, I happened to shift my gaze from the smiling faces of those sitting and eating, or serving, to look upward; and there it was!!!

The spreading canopy of my dream arched over us. It had been a restless night preceding the public organization of the Joseph Smith, Sr. and Lucy Mack Smith
Foundation to which I had been newly appointed, particularly to find all the living descendants. The early morning hours finally found me drifting in to a deep
and much needed sleep. It was during this time that the following dream portended all that we would do during the ensuing years.

I saw in the morning dreams a large and beautiful tree with a very stout and long trunk. The canopy of branches was high overhead and extended in all directions but most especially to my left towards other trees of like configuration. The wind began to blow and the great tree moved majestically in the wind. The branches seemed to extend and began to mingle with those of the other trees. Then to my surprise the extending branches seemed to form a horse head sculpted in the leaves and branches. Then the head, moving also in the wind, visible intermittently with the waving, mingling more with the other tree branches, began to graze on the branches of the other trees with which it mingled but the branches were not consumed. I looked closer and marveled at what I was seeing-I looked intensely to verify. The grazing continued but instead of consuming the other trees they merged to form a larger canopy, an umbrella covering, until they were virtually one tree with many trunks.

The canopy of The Foundation has been spreading, joining and sometimes spawning other family organizations that carry the load of the work that binds us as a family. We continue to help, counsel, finance, and research, many projects and family organizations as you will note in the following paragraphs. We feel it a privilege to work with and help correlate with the following organizations: Joseph F. Smith Family Association; Hyrum Smith Organization; Joseph Smith,
Sr. Family Reunion Organization; Joseph Smith, Jr. Organization; Samuel Smith Family Organization; John Smith Family Organization; Martha Ann Smith Family Organization; Sarah Smith Family Organization; and The John Walker Family Organization; A Family Media Group and of course Internet Specialists.