Taking the easy way

Joseph Smith was harassed from the very beginning. “Soon after the Church Began to gro,” remembered Joseph Knight, Sr., “the people Began to Be angry and to persecute and Cald them fools and said they ware Decived.”[1] Knight tells of one occasion, for example, when Joseph was arrested in Chenango County and, because the trial could not be convened soon enough, was held over night. But when the charges against him were dismissed the following day, he was immediately arrested by an officer sent from Broome County, and hauled off to the south—where the charges were again dismissed.[2] As the saying goes, this was the first day of the rest of Joseph’s life. His enemies would allow him very little rest.  He would eventually be a defendant in something on the order of fifty legal cases, but he was evidently never convicted in any of them.

[1] Jessee, “Joseph Knight’s Recollection of Early Mormon History,” 38. See also page 37, which speaks of persecutions accompanying some of the very earliest baptisms.

[2] Jessee, “Joseph Knight’s Recollection of Early Mormon History,” 38. 

Posted from Victor, New York