Mormon Church founder's arrest records rediscovered upstate
NORWICH, N.Y. Records showing that Mormon Church founder Joseph Smith was arrested while living in upstate New York have resurfaced after a three-decade absence.
The documents dating back to the late 1820s were recently handed over to the Chenango County Historical Society by a man whose mother used to be the county's historian.
The current county historian, Dale Storms, says the records pertain to Smith's arrests for "glass looking," a 19th-century term for treasure hunting. One document is a bill for two dollars, 68 cents for a judge's fees in Smith's case.
In 1830, Smith founded what became known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, ten years after he claimed to have seen a vision of God and Jesus while praying in the woods near his home in Palmyra in western New York.
Smith was killed in 1844 by an anti-Mormon mob in Illinois.
Copyright 2005 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo! for Good
Click here to donate to the Hurricane Katrina relief effort.
