I've not been able to find info on whether Smith skipped town with the Church's money when he ran away from his legal troubles. He kept the Church's funds in his own bank account.

Does anyone here know about this? I'm assuming he did. It would certainly fit his profile. He may have left "some" of it behind with his cohorts, but I'll bet he absconded with the rest.

Fawn Brodie's "No Man Knows My HIstory" offers an in-depth and detailed exploration of what drove JS and Sidney Rigdon to hightail it to Missouri.

I recall one LDS "scholar" descring the matter on Helen Whitney's PBS Show "The Mormons" where he concluded the situation trouble Joseph immensely and led him to do what he did...

Which as your source tells you, involved skipping town.

The background is there were a number of "wildcat banKs" that gave rise to new regulations, and JS chose to skirt them. The Kirtland Safety Society failed in 1837...

http://www.utlm.org/onlineresources/josephsmithsbank.htm



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/15/2017 03:13AM by SL Cabbie.

All of the church assets were in Smith's name only at the time of his death. He hadn't incorporated a church. The tithes and "consecrated offerings" of the earliest saints flowed directly to his pockets. And there they stayed.

He amassed a small fortune by time he died. His wife Emma was able to keep all those assets when Brigham Young sued her for the estate. The court ruled in her favor because she was Smith's legal widow. His property passed to her through I suppose what was an intestate estate.

As for currency there was a time Smith tried to form his own bank and currency system. That failed obviously.

There is a fairly new book out about Smith's counterfeiting money - the author, Kathleen Kimball Melanakos is presenting that in a talk at the ExMormon Conference this coming weekend.

"The inner-circle secret counterfeiting affected the fate of the Smith brothers and the Mormon migration to Utah. Secret Combinations: Evidence of Early Mormon Counterfeiting 1800-1847" is available on Amazon, through Utah Lighthouse Ministry (utlm.org), Benchmark Books, and mormoncounterfeiting.com. An EBook PDF version is available on the website.

This is the first book documenting this aspect of Mormon history. It contains over 1,400 footnotes and 100 photos and illustrations.

Book Synopsis: Using original documents and on-site research in Vermont, New York, Missouri, Michigan, Illinois and Utah, this book begins with figures in 18th- and 19th-century America who developed secret networks to promote counterfeiting and other illegal schemes and often used religion as a cover.

Kathleen states, "The historical record indicates how Joseph Smith, Sr., father of the Mormon Church founder, was involved in counterfeiting and how this involvement was passed on to Joseph Smith, Jr. and was practiced by Mormon leaders throughout the development and migration of the early church."

https://www.charismanews.com/us/60354-new-expose-on-mormon-church-claims-joseph-smith-ran-a-counterfeiting-ring

Thank you for your insights, "SL Cabbie" and "Amyjo". I might just order that counterfeiting book. I've pretty much stopped reading anything about JS because I've read extensively already, and I really dislike him. But that book does sound interesting.

I appreciate your responses!

fwiw... When was a uniform centralized currency system adapted for the u.s.?

"The apple doesn't fall Far from the tree", ya know;
BY had much the same situation, most change was the locale...

His dealings with the U.P. RR were a scandal just be themselves.

Today, LDS Inc. Continues to insist that All Is Well (cough)



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/15/2017 11:02PM by GNPE.

http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,2032215



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/16/2017 12:19AM by steve benson.