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Joseph Smith’s Signature

Joseph Smith’s Signature• Did Joseph Smith Jr. actually sign the Kirtland Bank Note? This is a question that has been debated for

quite some time. Many professional historians have expressed their opinions on the matter and regardless of their belief, one way or another this continues to be a debated topic.

• Without having a professional analysis of the handwriting, it is difficult for an untrained eye to identify the validity of the signature. With the extensive collection of hand written letters, legal documents etc., it is believed that some of the signatures of Joseph Smith Jr. were signed by a third party or what is often referred to as a secretarial signature.

• While I am convinced that many of the notes that I have reviewed, are in fact signed by Joseph Smith Jr. there may be a few notes floating around that could use some professional review before drawing the same conclusion.

• I will show you an example of note #39 and how I determined that the signature is a very close positive match to Joseph Smith Jr. using some advanced technology and allot of patience. In this test I am simply identifying similar matches between the two signatures. When validating signature many other facts come into play. Some of these are the ink used, the paper, time frames, pressure points, angle of writing etc. First I had to locate a true signature of Joseph Smith in a relative close time frame of the signed note. I chose to go with the signature on the note written to Emma Smith when Joseph was in Liberty Jail. I chose this note because he signed it J. Smith Jr. and the note appeared to be written by him and not a secretary. It also is within a couple of years from the kirtland note signature.

Joseph Smith’s Signature

• From the letter to Emma while in Liberty Jail

Joseph Smith’s Signature

• From Kirtland Bank Note #39

Joseph Smith’s Signature• The first thing I wanted to do was perform a heat map of the note & signature. A heat map

is a graphical representation of data where the values taken by a variable in a two-dimensional map are represented as colors. When creating a heat map of a signature or note it will identify the “Hot Spots” (The hotspots are also referred as fixations) usually the pressure points of the ink or the dominating images on a note. This will help me compare the handwriting on the note vs. the letter from a graphical stand point and determine if a similar pattern of pressure points exist on the two signatures.

Joseph Smith’s SignatureOnce the heat map was completed I added the gaze path and gaze order number. The numbers next to each hotspot represents the order in which they will be viewed. This provides you a graphical representation of where the eye will track across the signature. The interesting thing that stood out to me when creating the heat map was that both signatures identified the “th” in the signature as gaze position #1 and the most likely first place the eye will focus in on when looking at the signature.

Heat Map of Note #39

Heat Map of Note #39

Joseph Smith’s Signature

• I then broke each letter own and built a comparison/analysis of the handwriting.

• The “J”

Joseph Smith’s Signature

• The “S”

Joseph Smith’s Signature

• The “I”

Joseph Smith’s Signature

• The “th”

Joseph Smith’s Signature

• The “Jr”

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• KirtlandBankNote.com• Twitter.com/kirtlandbank