Have Stone. Will Travel.
by Kathleen Baldwin and Sharon Lindbloom

Young Joseph Smith had an entrepreneurial spirit. While he waited for the angel Moroni to hand over the golden plates, he started a business. That business was gazing into a chocolate-colored seer-stone.

Joseph hired himself out as a "glass-looker" -- a consultant of sorts -- promising to peer in his stone and discern the location of "hidden treasures in the bowels of the earth." 1 He would then tell his employer the best place to dig in order to find the riches. By doing this Joseph earned a reputation for being a "money digger." 2

According to contemporary witnesses, Joseph was "gifted" in the use of magic peep-stones. Unfortunately for the enterprising young man, Joseph's clients often became annoyed when his peep-stone would reveal angry spirits moving the hidden treasure deeper into the earth and far out of reach. At other times the "enchantment" surrounding the treasure would become so powerful Joseph could no longer see in his stone and the search would have to be abandoned. Such was the case when Josiah Stowell hired Joseph to find a mine believed to have been hidden by Spaniards.

After several months of digging, Stowell's nephew, Peter Bridgman, became concerned that his uncle was being swindled. Peter brought a formal charge against Joseph, resulting in Joseph's arrest for being "a disorderly person and an imposter." 3

Existing affidavits reveal that Joseph was engaged in money-digging from the early 1820s until at least 1826. This is the same time period which, in later years, Joseph claimed to have been communing with God, angels and other heavenly beings.

Court records from Chenango County, New York4 evidence that Joseph appeared before Justice Albert Neely for examination5 on March 20th, 1826. The court heard from witnesses and the defendant himself, all of whom testified of Joseph's use of a seer-stone in attempting (and failing) to acquire buried treasure. The record shows Justice Neely found Joseph guilty, but no penalty was ever administered.

Within a year Joseph eloped with Emma Hale, whom he had met while working for Josiah Stowell. Emma's father, Isaac, was very upset. In an effort to quell his father-in-law's fears, Joseph told Isaac that he "had given up what he called 'glass-looking,' and that he expected to work for a living." 6 If this reassured Isaac, his peace was short-lived. Later that year (1827) Joseph claimed to have retrieved gold plates out of the earth and began his "work" of translating what would become the Book of Mormon. The translation was achieved, said his friends and helpers, with the aid of Joseph's magic, chocolate-colored seer-stone. 7

  1. Joseph Smith's defense statement from Justice Neely's court record as reported in Fraser's Magazine, quoted in H. Michael Marquardt and Wesley P. Walters, Inventing Mormonism, 72. A concise and well-documented report of Smith's money-digging career can be found in Inventing Mormonism, 63-87
  2. See Joseph Smith�History 1:55 for this designation
  3. New York law defined "Disorderly Persons" in various ways, including "those who pretended to discover where lost goods could be found." Marquardt and Walters, 71
  4. "State of New York vs. Joseph Smith"
  5. i.e., a pre-trial hearing
  6. Affidavit of Isaac Hale, Harmony, PA, March 20, 1834, quoted in E.D. Howe, Mormonism Unvailed, 264
  7. David Whitmer, An Address to All Believers In Christ, 12; Andrew Jensen, Historical Record, 216