From a recent thread, for those who missed it:

http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1235005,1235758#msg-1235758

Winchester was an early GA and the editor of a Mormon newspaper, "The Gospel Reflector."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Winchester

Thanks for pointing to that reference. That was good.

What a dirt bag JS was...so glad I'm not sucked in anymore.

Thanks RandyJ

Good work, randy. I was raised to believe that Joseph Smith was a nineteenth century Jesus who only cared for the needs of others. He never smoked, drank or caroused. He was so perfect that he made me feel like a worthless piece of crap, which is the strategy.

wow

just wow

many thanks for the treasure you have found with your own peerless patented peepstone brother j

...the people who deserve the accolades are guys like Dale Broadhurst, who made the efforts to locate these old documents and archive them on websites. All I did was read the material and copy the relevant portions.

I think that the accounts from people such as Benjamin Winchester are so valuable because they refute Mopologists like Daniel Peterson who continue to assert that "The people who knew Joseph Smith the best thought highly of him" blah blah blah. Benjamin Winchester knew Smith very intimately from 1831 until his death in 1844. Who's to say that Winchester's opinions of Smith are any less valid than those of people who only told of Smith's positive attributes?

When TBMs like Peterson continue to repeat those assertions, they are only revealing that they're ignorant or liars. You'd think that someone as educated and supposedly intelligent as Peterson would know better.

Peterson is a straight up fool. I just watched him on some video over on mormon discussions, lying his way through a Q&A about josephs polygamy and BOM anachronisms.

It was hard to watch and not throw up in my mouth.

Thanks again randy for this info Winchester. It's good stuff