By Wesley P. Walters
[At our request Wesley P. Walters has prepared the following.]
On March 20, 1826, four years before he published the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith, Jr. was hauled before the local court in Bainbridge, New York. He was accused of being “a disorderly person and an imposter” because of his claim to locate buried treasure through his peep-stone. The record of that trial, torn from the justice’s docket book and taken to Utah in 1870 by his niece, was published in three independent printings and then the original record disappeared. Consequently, Mormon writers like Francis Kirkham and Dr. Hugh Nibley questioned the authenticity of both the trial and the published record of it.
In 1971 this writer and his associate Fred Poffarl came across the bills which Justice Neely and Constable De Zeng had submitted to the county for this 1826 arrest and trial of Joseph Smith. Justice Neely’s bill listed the case as The People verses “Joseph Smith The Glass looker.” The date and the court costs were the same as that on the printed trial record, the costs totaling $2.68 in both instances. Accordingly, Mormon writers like Donna Hill and Dr. Leonard Arrington came to accept the trial as authentic. However, the original docket record still remained missing.
Recently reliable sources in the Salt Lake area have reported that Mormon document dealer Mark Hofmann of Salt Lake City has acquired this missing record. Several years ago we learned that the last person to have the trial record was Rev. Samuel Johnson Carroll. Rev. Mr. Carroll was the editor of the Methodist periodical, the Utah Christian Advocate and he published the record there. After considerable research we succeeded in tracking down the grandchildren of Mr. Carroll. One granddaughter, Miss Eleanor Carroll of Alamos, Sorora, Mexico, reported that her grandfather’s scrapbook was in storage with some family items in Sedona, Arizona. Lacking funds to bring Miss Carroll back to Arizona to retrieve the scrapbook, we shared this information privately with Mr. Hofmann. According to our sources, Mr. Hofmann followed up on this information, brought Miss Carroll to Arizona and purchased the scrapbook, which did contain the original trial record. A current letter, dated May 29, 1985, from Miss Carroll confirms that the scrapbook was indeed removed from storage and is no longer in her possession. It is not presently known if Mr. Hofmann has sold the document or if he still has it in his possession.
According to the agreement made when the information about the potential location of the document was shared with Mr. Hofmann, he was to supply us with photocopies of the document should the information prove correct. To date there has not been such reciprocation.
About the time this information was shared with Mr. Hofmann, he shared with us the news that he had located the original money-digging agreement of November 1825. This agreement spelled out the shares which Joseph Smith, his father and other members of the money-digging company were to receive if their treasure digging activities proved successful. It was Joseph’s involvement in that business agreement that led to his 1826 trial. According to Mr. Hofmann, it was the plan of Mr. Steven Christensen (who had purchased the 1830 Martin Harris letter telling of Joseph’s money digging activities) to publish the Harris letter along with the 1825 letter of Joseph’s to Josiah Stowell (telling of treasure-guarding spirits), as well as a photo of the 1825 agreement. That work did not materialize and the November agreement remains unpublished.
It is hoped that these valuable historical documents will soon be made public, especially because of the current interest in Joseph Smith’s early activities in magic and money-digging.
Note: The reader will notice that Wesley Walters tells of receiving a letter from Eleanor Carroll. In this letter Miss Carroll says nothing about Mark Hofmann, but only indicates that the scrapbook has been “lost.” If Mr. Hofmann did purchase the scrapbook from her, it is possible that there was a nondisclosure clause written into the sales agreement. If such is the case, she would not be able to reveal where it went to. We really do not know what the truth is about this matter, but we hope that if the record does exist, it will not remain another “black hole” in Mormon history.
Walters’ statement about Steven Christensen having a photocopy of the 1825 money-digging agreement is verified in another article in this issue of the Messenger.
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