Records detail arrests of Joseph Smith in N.Y.

NORWICH, N.Y. (AP) — Records showing that LDS 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 the son of a former county historian.

The current county historian, Dale Storms, said the records showed Smith's arrests for "glass looking," a 19th-century term for treasure hunting. One document is a bill for two dollars, 68 cents for a judge's fees in Smith's case.

In 1830, Smith founded The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 10 years after he disclosed 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.