Cunning and Disorderly: Early Nineteenth-Century Witch Trials of Joseph Smith

Padro asserts that Joseph Smith Jr. found himself in court many times throughout his life. Historians argue that his problematic relationship with the law began in 1826 when he faced disorderly person charges in Bainbridge, New York. According to the pretrial sources, some of Josiah Stowell's family members charged that Joseph Smith claimed to have supernatural powers: Horace Stowell and Arad Stowell claimed that he used seer stones to see lost, stolen, and hidden things and to seek treasure. This article proposes that Joseph Smith's early trials were about pretended witchcraft and magic and the related thoughtcrime of "pretended religion," categories of crime generated during the Enlightenment to categorize unorthodox religious traditions as witchcraft while negating their claims to miraculous or supernatural powers. An analysis of the English legislation that informed nineteenth-century New York cases against Joseph Smith between 1826 and 1830 demonstrates that treasure seeking and the cunning-folk use of seer stones had a long association in Anglophone law and theology as a form of witchcraft.