Testimony Given At Js'S 1826 Trial

[Dan Vogel]

Friends: I have uploaded “Joseph Smith’s 1826 Trial (Pt 2) The Testimony.” The purpose of this video will be to discuss in detail the testimony given at Joseph Smith’s 1826 trial. It is key in understanding Smith’s transformation from magician to prophet.

[Bob Crockett]

I hate videos. Do you have a transcript. Was it really a trial? There were affidavits which usually signified in the 19th century an arraignment or bail hearing.

[inquiringmind]

Friends: I have uploaded “Joseph Smith’s 1826 Trial (Pt 2) The Testimony.” The purpose of this video will be to discuss in detail the testimony given at Joseph Smith’s 1826 trial. It is key in understanding Smith’s transformation from magician to prophet.

I can't play the video (it says something about my browser not recognizing any of the video formats available, and asking me to click on FAQ about HTML5 video.

I hate videos. Do you have a transcript. Was it really a trial? There were affidavits which usually signified in the 19th century an arraignment or bail hearing.

This is a subject that I find very confusing.

What actual original documents do we have?

Depending on the website, it sometimes seems like there's an actual court transcript, and it sometimes seems like all there is are bills and receipts relating to court expenses and fines.

What is there, and what does it prove?

Is there one scrap of real, first hand evidence that Joseph was convicted or pled guilty to glass looking, juggling, or fraud?

And if there is such evidence, where were the documents all this time, how and when did they show up, and what is the possibility of forgery?

Edited May 3, 2013 by inquiringmind

[Glenn101]

This is a subject that I find very confusing.

What actual original documents do we have?

Depending on the website, it sometimes seems like there's an actual court transcript, and it sometimes seems like all there is are bills and receipts relating to court expenses and fines.

What is there, and what does it prove?

Is there one scrap of real, first hand evidence that Joseph was convicted or pled guilty to glass looking, juggling, or fraud?

And if there is such evidence, where were the documents all this time, how and when did they show up, and what is the possibility of forgery?

The only origianl documents that we have are the bills of the constable who arrested and held Joseph for the trial, examination, or whatever proceeding that happened, and the bill of the justice of the peace that held the proceeding. The other documents are secondary, purporting to be from a transcript of the proceeding taken from jusatice Albert Neely's docket book.

I don't think there is any dispute that the documents from Constable DeZeng and Justice Neely are genuine and accurate.

The accuracy of the testimonies that Dan is referring to is uncertain because there is no original document to check against for completeness, changes, deletions, or additions. Those testimonies were recorded in a couple of magazines and in an article by a Doctor W. D. Purple who claimed to have been at the trial and took notes.

What we can be pretty certain of is that Joseph did have charges brought against him by one or more people, there was some sort of trial or other type of legal proceeding, and Joseph was allowed to go free.

The actual details are very murky and there is no real proof either way about any type of conviction or acquital.

I have not listened to Dan's video so I do not have his take on the significance of the testimonies. I will have to wait upon a transcript because my hearing is so bad that I cannot make out much.

I doubt that this really helps you.

Glenn

Edited May 3, 2013 by Glenn101

[Bob Crockett]

Are they genuine? Weren't the documents stolen from the court file?

[Glenn101]

Are they genuine? Weren't the documents stolen from the court file?

They appear to be genuine. Wesley Walters did remove them without authorization from the basement in the Norwich jail where they had been stored. I understand that he had them preserved and after some pressure was exerted he returned them, after making copies. I don't think there is any dispute that the bills are the genuine articles and that there have been no observable alterations.

Glenn

[Bob Crockett]

Under the law they are no longer presumed genuine. That doesn't mean that folks are prohibited from believing they are genuine based upon the veracity of Wesley Walters. However, the provenance has been spiked.

It has been a long time since I looked at the records, but I've studied several 19th century proceedings. This is the earliest one I've looked at, admittedly, and it is in a cow county and I'm used to looking at federal courts. But things don't add up procedurally. Too much of Vogel's analysis rests on non-official sources, I'm presuming until I see the videos.

Edited May 3, 2013 by Bob Crockett

[Ron Beron]

An appellate attorney friend and I once went over the trial papers and he adamantly felt they represented not the trial itself, but a mittimus or request of the local constable for fees associated with the trial.

[Glenn101]

Under the law they are no longer presumed genuine. That doesn't mean that folks can choose to believe they are genuine based upon the veracity of Wesley Walters. However, the provenance has been spiked.

It has been a long time since I looked at the records, but I've studied several 19th century proceedings. This is the earliest one I've looked at, admittedly, and it is in a cow county and I'm used to looking at federal courts. But things don't add up procedurally. Too much of Vogel's analysis rests on non-official sources, I'm presuming until I see the videos.

Legally you are correct. The fact that the documents were removed illegally, by a person rather inimical to the church places the onus upon the critics to prove the validity of the documents satisfactorally. But, after viewing copies of the documents, I don't see any way that there could have been any alterations or that they are forgeries. People with better access than I and with more training have opined that the documents are genuine.

Walters' rather furtive and certainly illegal actions open the possibility to an inquiring mind that he may have removed other documents which may have shed more light on those proceedings, maybe a light more favorable to the LDS side of things. That is something that we probably will not know in this life.

An even more unsettled problem lies with the various accounts of the legal proceeding in the magazines. They were purported to hvae been taken from a couple of pages that Emily Pearsall, a niece of Justice Neely, had torn from a book belonging to Justice Neely. The original pages are no longer available for examination and thus the veracity of the various statements cannot be ascertained. No one can state with certainty that there were not alterations, additions, or deletions in those statements.

Dan seems to think that they are pretty trustworthy and proceeds from that set of assumptions. There are those who do not share that faith.

Glenn

[Darren10]

Friends: I have uploaded “Joseph Smith’s 1826 Trial (Pt 2) The Testimony.” The purpose of this video will be to discuss in detail the testimony given at Joseph Smith’s 1826 trial. It is key in understanding Smith’s transformation from magician to prophet.

That dang Joseph Smith. Magicians are so much more fun than prophets.

[Darren10]

The absolute best article I know about regarding the 1826 trial was written by Gordon A. Madsen called Joseph Smith's 1826 Trial: The Legal Setting.I read the full article previously and I now do not understand how I could have done it since it does not seem to be avaiable for free. But in the article Masen reconstructs te trial principally by citing the laws and procedures on te books and in practice regarding placing a citizen on trial. To my knowledge nobody else has done this.

[Bob Crockett]

Thanks for the cite. I will read that and attempt the videos. I object to the use of videos and podcasts by scholars because one has difficulty citing them, but what can you do. Soon we will have to get our updates from ScholarTwit.

[Dan Vogel]

I hate videos. Do you have a transcript. Was it really a trial? There were affidavits which usually signified in the 19th century an arraignment or bail hearing.

We’ve already discussed the legal aspects in the previous video (Part 1). This is about the testimony. If you want to know my views see the first video and the thread where it was discussed. Briefly, it began as a preliminary hearing and Neely decided to send the case to a Court of Special Sessions. Neely changed his mind and decided the case himself, which he had authority to do. However, an off-the-record agreement was apparently made and the verdict wasn’t made official.

[Dan Vogel]

I can't play the video (it says something about my browser not recognizing any of the video formats available, and asking me to click on FAQ about HTML5 video.

This is a subject that I find very confusing.

What actual original documents do we have?

Depending on the website, it sometimes seems like there's an actual court transcript, and it sometimes seems like all there is are bills and receipts relating to court expenses and fines.

What is there, and what does it prove?

Is there one scrap of real, first hand evidence that Joseph was convicted or pled guilty to glass looking, juggling, or fraud?

And if there is such evidence, where were the documents all this time, how and when did they show up, and what is the possibility of forgery?

I wish you could see the first video, which explains all this.

[Dan Vogel]

The accuracy of the testimonies that Dan is referring to is uncertain because there is no original document to check against for completeness, changes, deletions, or additions. Those testimonies were recorded in a couple of magazines and in an article by a Doctor W. D. Purple who claimed to have been at the trial and took notes.

Justice Neely’s nice tore the transcript from his docket book and took it to Utah and it was subsequently published on three occasions. The most accurate was in the Utah Christian Advocate of 1886. There is no reason to speculate that this document was somehow altered except for some apologetic concern. If someone was to alter the document to make JS look bad, they certainly would not have let Josiah Stowell say JS could describe his farm accurately 130 miles away and other favorable testimony in the transcript. Purple remembered Jonathan Thompson’s testimony and related a similar story about enchanted treasure. There is no credible reason to question the integrity of the published transcript.

[Dan Vogel]

Are they genuine? Weren't the documents stolen from the court file?

They are genuine. Walters removed them from the water soaked box in the basement. He shouldn't have done that. He had them professionally preserved and then returned them. There has been no serious doubt about their authenticity.

[Dan Vogel]

An appellate attorney friend and I once went over the trial papers and he adamantly felt they represented not the trial itself, but a mittimus or request of the local constable for fees associated with the trial.

The documents recovered by Walters were bills justice Neely and Constable DeZeng submitted to the county for services. The transcript of the trial from Neely's docket book was published three times in 1873, 1883, and 1886.

[Dan Vogel]

Glen,

Walters' rather furtive and certainly illegal actions open the possibility to an inquiring mind that he may have removed other documents which may have shed more light on those proceedings, maybe a light more favorable to the LDS side of things. That is something that we probably will not know in this life.

This is a tabloid form of speculation. Walters didn’t even understand the meaning of what he had found until years later. He was just happy to prove that a trial had occurred. What you mean by the LDS side of things has changed from denial that there was a trial (it was an anti-Mormon fraud) to he was found not guilty. Why that is now so important is puzzling to me. The transcript says he was found guilty, and the testimony supports that finding. So to suggest that there was some other documents supporting the LDS side of things is unfounded speculation.

An even more unsettled problem lies with the various accounts of the legal proceeding in the magazines. They were purported to hvae been taken from a couple of pages that Emily Pearsall, a niece of Justice Neely, had torn from a book belonging to Justice Neely. The original pages are no longer available for examination and thus the veracity of the various statements cannot be ascertained. No one can state with certainty that there were not alterations, additions, or deletions in those statements.

There is no reason to question the testimony other than you don’t like it. It is completely consistent with what is known about JS’s method of operation from other sources. You are suggesting the document was altered knowing your theory can’t be tested. This is nothing but an ad hoc escape from adverse evidence and is not to be taken seriously.

Dan seems to think that they are pretty trustworthy and proceeds from that set of assumptions. There are those who do not share that faith.

It’s not about faith, at least not on my part. It’s your faith that causes you to question a document on such flimsy grounds that you would otherwise not challenge.

[Dan Vogel]

The absolute best article I know about regarding the 1826 trial was written by Gordon A. Madsen called Joseph Smith's 1826 Trial: The Legal Setting.I read the full article previously and I now do not understand how I could have done it since it does not seem to be avaiable for free. But in the article Masen reconstructs te trial principally by citing the laws and procedures on te books and in practice regarding placing a citizen on trial. To my knowledge nobody else has done this.

I have done this in my first video and elsewhere. Madsen's theory that JS was tried for fraud and Stowell was the only person with standing to complain is wrong. He was tried for "pretending" to find lost objects "and like crafty science", which he was guilty of doing.

[Dan Vogel]

Thanks for the cite. I will read that and attempt the videos. I object to the use of videos and podcasts by scholars because one has difficulty citing them, but what can you do. Soon we will have to get our updates from ScholarTwit.

Nearly everything on my videos has been published for years, even more than a decade. I resort to this method as a way of getting this information out in a more popular concise form.

[Bob Crockett]

They are genuine. Walters removed them from the water soaked box in the basement. He shouldn't have done that. He had them professionally preserved and then returned them. There has been no serious doubt about their authenticity.

Well, as a lawyer I can tell you that they would not enjoy the presumption of being genuine. It then depends upon the veracity of a thief. He obviously knew what he was doing.

When I first saw the Salamander letter I thought to myself that it looked suspiciously like Howe's material. Ever since then I've come to distrust materials handled by scoundrels. Walters is not a scoundrel for being an anti-Mormon. He's a scoundrel for stealing from a government file and mishandling materials. In California this would be a felony.

[Glenn101]

Glen,

It’s not about faith, at least not on my part. It’s your faith that causes you to question a document on such flimsy grounds that you would otherwise not challenge.

Dan, what is flimsy about noting that when there is no original document with which to compare the various published accounts it is possible that insertions, deletions, and other changes may have been made in the published accounts?

Glenn

[Nevo]

Dan, what is flimsy about noting that when there is no original document with which to compare the various published accounts it is possible that insertions, deletions, and other changes may have been made in the published accounts?

Dan was responding to your comment that "Dan seems to think that [the various accounts of the legal proceeding] are pretty trustworthy and proceeds from that set of assumptions. There are those who do not share that faith."

I haven't watched Dan's YouTube videos yet, but elsewhere he has written, "analysis of the variant readings among the three versions indicates that each copied from the original record rather than from one another. . . . Of the three, the Utah Christian Advocate of January 1886 is evidently the most carefully copied" (EMD, 4:240-41).

You characterize Dan's view that the published accounts (particularly the 1886 account) are "pretty trustworthy" as an assumption based on (misplaced) "faith." That is unfair. Dan is a seasoned historian. His view is grounded in a thorough examination of the sources and is pretty much the standard one nowadays.

Mark Ashurst-McGee, for example, has written:

"One of the most important . . . sources is the record of Joseph Smith's 1826 trial or pre-trial examination. It is the only contemporary source that speaks directly to Joseph's use of seer stones in the 1820s. The court record is no longer extant. A verbatim transcript was published in 1886 in an anti-Mormon newssheet. Many believed that this published version of an alleged court proceeding was a fraud. However, a record of bills for Justice Albert Neely, who presided over the court, later turned up in the Chenango County Courthouse. Smith's case is recorded with the date and fines given in the published court record. Historians now accept the court record as a genuine document" (Mark Ashurst-McGee, "A Pathway to Prophethood: Joseph Smith Junior as Rodsman, Village Seer, and Judeo-Christian Prophet," [Masters Thesis, University of Utah, 2000], 45).

Do you also think that Ashurst-McGee is simply assuming that the 1886 document is a genuine court record? Would you also accuse him of babe-in-the-woods credulity?

[ERayR]

And this all makes a difference. How?

[Bob Crockett]

Do you also think that Ashurst-McGee is simply assuming that the 1886 document is a genuine court record? Would you also accuse him of babe-in-the-woods credulity?

To some extent, yes. I find that many historians seem to accept without any critical thought the provenance of documents presumed authentic. For a time I worked for one of the world's wealthiest private museums. Provenance is often a joke. Here we have provenance entrusted to non-neutrals.

I've dealt with authenticity issues plenty of times in my publications. Will Bagley relies on highly questionable accounts of John D Lee's trial transcripts when there are better available, but he's just doing what many before him did. If it is a government file it is highly trustworthy, but even then people rip stuff out and plant stuff.