President Grant said that this morning he had called on Sister Mary T. Smith, widow of President Joseph F. Smith. President Grant said the Patriarch, Joseph F. Smith, had told him that in conversing with his Aunt Mary she had said that President Smith at one time had told her that the patriarchal office belonged in his line. Sister Smith confirmed this statement to President Grant. He asked Joseph F. Smith to tell just what she had said to him. Brother Smith made the following statement: 'A week ago Aunt Mary called and asked my wife and me to come down to dinner, and before dinner she said to me that she had heard my grandfather say that the office of Patriarch belonged in his family. This was the first time I had heard this, and that was her report to me.' President Grant then further commented that it was no wonder that he had tried for ten years to get the impression to give this position to someone else and could not get it. Said he: 'I am grateful beyond expression that what we have done met with the approval of President Joseph F. Smith. He also said further he would make it his business to have a talk with Eldred Smith, as the Evil One is on the alert and may try to persuade Eldred that his birthright, as he put it in his testimony at the Conference, has been taken from him. He never had the birthright to be the Patriarch or undoubtedly would have been called. He was not the one who forfeited this position, it had already been forfeited.
[Minutes (Present: Heber J. Grant, David O. McKay., Rudger Clawson, George F. Richards, Joseph Fielding Smith, Stephen L Richards, Richard R. Lyman, John A. Widtsoe, Joseph F. Merrill, Charles A. Callis, Albert E. Bowen, and Patriarch Joseph F. Smith), as quoted in Minutes of the Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1835-1951, Electronic Edition, 2015]
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