Joseph Smith, Sr., was at times engaged in hunting for Captain Kidd's buried treasure ; and he also became implicated with one Jack Downing in counterfeiting money, but turned State's evidence and escaped the penalty.

...

The boy's education, or rather the rude smattering of learning that went by that name, was but added preparation for that which lay before him ; he was not given to books, and the few he was persuaded to read were of vicious tendency, and set his imagination in the wrong direction. His favorites have been described as the " Life of Stephen Burroughs," a scoundrel dressed in the garb of the church, and the autobiography of the pirate Kidd. Smith afterward made confession that the book last named made a deep impression upon him, and owned to a special fascination in these lines found therein:

"My name was Robert Kidd,

As I sailed, as I sailed ;

And most wickedly I did,

God's laws I did forbid,

As I sailed, as I sailed."

...

As the boy advanced in years he developed a mental aptitude that, amid more favoring circumstances and under the stress of some moral encouragement, might have grown to usefulness. As he grew away from the period in which his fancy yielded to Captain Kidd, the real desire for food of some kind that his mother had bequeathed him, led him into the nearest and most open channel that was before him. He listened to the battle of religious controversy that was then being waged in Western New York, and was controlled by its influence as a boy of 1849 might have been won to the golden fields of California, or one of 1856 to the denunciation or defense of slavery.

...

The children of Mr. Chase claimed it as a matter of natural possession, but young Joe advanced the claim of discovery, and carried it home in his hands. Under the encouragement of his mother, in whose eyes all things took on a supernatural tinge, the stone became a fossilized miracle that had been awaiting his coming for many years. With a bandage over his eyes he would fall upon his knees and bury his face in the depths of an old white hat, where the stone was already hidden. Out of these oracular depths he would tell his gaping audience where the treasures of Kidd and others lay concealed ; locate the trail of wandering flocks ; point out the deposit of stolen goods ; and perform other wonderful things which only those of that faith which asked no questions could believe. His father and brothers accepted his claims with a confidence suggestive of a charming simplicity of mind, or a purpose of making his cunning of substantial benefit to the family. The cupidity of neighbors was excited, and they were determined that no fault of theirs should compel the wealth of the old buccaneers to longer corrode and rust in the bosom of the earth.