Mormon Church founder's arrest records rediscovered

Records showing that Mormon Church founder Joseph Smith was arrested while living in upstate New York have resurfaced after a three-decade absence. The documents dating back to the late 1820s were recently handed over to the Chenango County Historical Society by a man whose mother used to be the county's historian.

The current county historian, Dale Storms, says the records pertain to Smith's arrests for "glass looking," a 19th-century term for treasure hunting.

In 1830, Smith founded what became known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. That was ten years after he claimed to have seen a vision of God and Jesus while praying in the woods near his home in Palmyra in western New York.

Smith was killed in 1844 by an anti-Mormon mob in Illinois.