More than 170 years ago, portraits of the pioneer Apostle George A. Smith, his wife, Bathsheba W. Smith, and his mother, Clarissa L. Smith, hung in the celestial room of the original Nauvoo Temple.
Now those three portraits belong to the Church History Museum thanks to the generosity of the Smith family descendants.
On December 13, the L. Stephen Richards Jr. family passed ownership of the oil paintings to the Church during a small ceremony at the museum. Elder Marcus B. Nash, a Seventy and the assistant executive director of the Church History Department, presided at the event.