Joseph Smith' great-great-grandfather Samuel Smith was involved in the Salem witch trials of 1692. His testimony led to the hanging of two women.

I know, it was the belief of the time. Beliefs make people do really stupid things. And it's the beliefs of Mormons today that make them do really stupid things. But they just don't get it.

Here are some excerpts taken from a couple of things I Googled on the web. I've provided the links at the bottom if you want to read them.

Speaking of the book, "The Refiner's Fire The Making of Mormon Cosmology 1644-1844" by John L. Brooks:

"Brook's premise relates to Hermeticism of which alchemy was the experimental practice, positing that humanity could regain the divine powers of Adam lost in the fall from Paradise; so too the prophet Joseph Smith promised the Mormon faithful that they would become "gods" through the restoration of ancient mysteries. Brooke explores the ancient forces of hermetic purity and danger - manifested in sectarian religion, magic, witchcraft beliefs, alchemy, Freemasonry, conterfeiting, and state formation - in the making of the Mormon church. Joseph Smith's ancesty was from the area of Essex Co. where the witchcraft hysteria was most prevalent. His family had several connections with families involved. In presenting the early history of the Smith family, Mr. Brooks touches on the era surrounding the witchcraft trials."

"Samuel (Smith), Joseph Smith's great-great grandfather, would move to neighboring Topsfield in 1693, where the faamily would remain for almost a century, before emigrating during the revolutionary years to New Hampshire and Vermont, and after the Cold Summer of 1816 to Palmyra in the Burned-over District of central New York. Two episodes dramatically set off the story of the Smiths in Essex Co. In the spring of 1692, at the height of the Salem witchcraft trials, Samuel Smith testified to the occult powers of his aunt by marriage, Mary Easty,
one of the three daughters of William Towne of Topsfield who were accused of witchcraft in 1692. On the evidence of Samuel Smith, Margaret Reddington, and several of the "afflicted girls", Mary Towne Easty was hanged on 9/22/1692."

And from another source:

"Many Mormons do not know about Joe Smith's family involvement in the Salem witch trials of 1692, when Joe Smith Sr.'s great-grandfather Samuel Smith and Samuel's father-in-law John Gould testified against Mary Easty and Sarah Wilds respectively. The testimony of these relatives of Joe Smith hanged these girls as witches. A belief in witchcraft was passed through the Smith generations."

http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/SALEM-WITCH/2000-06/0961538469

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2669614/posts



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/07/2012 12:02PM by BYUAlumnuts.

Joe Smith had an ancestor involved in the Salem Withch Trials?
It really does make sense: Joey founded a religion with about the same sense of justice. "If accused, guilty without any chance of innocence."

Samuel Smith II did it -- why else! -- because it benefitted him economically and politically!

Page 67; Samuel's one hundred acres were situated on the line between Boxford and north Topsfield, making him a neighbor of the Goulds, and the Smith-Gould connection would continue for decades. After witnessing Robert's will in 1693, Captain John Gould inventoried the estate that September. John Gould II witnessed a further accounting of this estate in 1720 and was the executor of Samuel Smith's estate when he died in 1748;
the three witnesses of Samuel Smith II's will in 1767were all Goulds. In the intervening years there had been at least three Smith-Gould marriages, including two between Samuel Smith II and two first cousins both named Priscilla Gould in 1734 and 1745.

The Smith family's decided shift in affiliation from the Townes to the Goulds is a strong indication that Samuel's accusation of Mary Easty was no passing whim. His fear of occult powers was embedded deeply in a context of kinship, behind which there may have been bitter anxieties over property. And in shifting from the Townes to the Goulds, the Smiths were taking a step that had powerful political implications within the microcosm
of Topsfield. Formed in 1648 from "the village at the new medowes at Ipswich", Topsfield was wracked by intense conflict at regular intervals from the 1660s to the 1740s, conflict that invariably pitted the Goulds and families in their kinship circle with the Townes and their orbit. From the 1660s to the 1680s, the Goulds advanced the cause of the Puritan Commonwealth, while the Townes supported the Stuart authorities. In 1692 the Townes and their allied families were the target of witchcraft accusations, typically brought by Gould allies. In 1739 a shooting accident during militia training brought the two sides into court, and then the Great Awakening pitted the Goulds as ardent New Lights against the Townes as Old Lights. Twice, in 1692 and in 1746, the bitter and public quarrels between the two "parties" had to be reconciled in public meetings. The witchcraft accusations in 1692 were only one episode in a pattern of endemic conflict that would be forgotten only in the drama of the midcentury wars.

"The Refiner's Fire The Making of Mormon Cosmology 1644-1844" by John L. Brooks.

The more I read about the Smith family, the more I consider them a dynasty of lowlife scoundrels who have blighted America for four centuries.

What a nasty family they were!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/07/2012 09:35AM by Soft Machine.