Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 36:2 (Winter 1974)
Article: Joseph Smith’s Bainbridge, N.Y., Court Trials
Author: W. P. Walters

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WTJ 36:2 (Winter 1974) p. 123

Joseph Smith’s Bainbridge, N.Y., Court Trials

W. P. Walters

History is recorded in the strangest places. Who would expect to find colorful fragments of history reflecting the drama and pathos of daily living hidden away in a dusty pile of old county bills! These bills submitted to the County Board of Supervisors to be “audited and allowed” for payment by local school commissioners, road supervisors, surveyors, those in charge of the county poor houses, constables, justices of the peace and the like, each handwritten by the official himself, reflect the life and human heart-throb of the period—“carrying Obediah Newton, his pretended wife and three children to poor house … $10.00”; investigating the claim that a young girl “was with child— $1.00” and “pursuing the alleged father— $2.00”; procuring “a small file … for taking Irons off of Treadwell— 12 1/2.” cents and “whiskey” to keep his guards happy.1 But of special interest to scholars dealing with early Mormon history are some bills from Chenango County, N.Y., submitted by the forgotten officials who played personal roles in the earliest legal difficulties of Joseph Smith, Jr., the founder of Mormonism.

The 1830 Trial

The Mormon Prophet recorded in his history that he was brought to trial in the town of Bainbridge, Chenango County, New York, in 1830 shortly after his organization of the church in April.2 Smith at that time was at the home of one of his

WTJ 36:2 (Winter 1974) p. 124

converts, Newel Knight, when he was “visited by a constable, and arrested by him on a warrant, on the charge of being a disorderly person.” “On the day following,” Smith continues, “a court was convened for the purpose of investigating those charges,” at which investigation, he adds, there were “many witnesses called up against me.” One of the men employed to defend the young Prophet was John Reid, whose personal reminiscence also appears in a footnote in Joseph’s History. Mr. Reid recalls that they “had him arraigned before Joseph Chamberlain,” that “the case came on about 10 o’clock a.m.” and “the trial closed about 12 o’clock at night.”3

There is now contemporary evidence to confirm Smith’s story of this trial in the form of the bills for their services submitted to the county by the constable and the judge at the trial. These bills were in the material Chenango County had in dead storage in the basement of the county jail in Norwich, New York, and were turned up in the summer of 1971 by Mr. Fred Poffarl of Philadelphia and the writer. They were boun...

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