As a variety of scholars have contended over the past decades, Joseph Smith and his family were involved in cunning-folk practices that their critics viewed as magic. Historian Stephen Fleming referred to these practices as an “extra-liturgical” liturgy within folk Christianity.1 Several family artifacts align with the accoutrements and practices from the Pennsylvania Dutch tradition of powwowing.2 For instance, Hyrum Smith owned a serpent cane similar to a Pennsylvania Dutch cunning-person's “throw-stick” used for “healing and divination.”3 Lucy Mack Smith's confession of “trying,”4 the use of “magic circles,” the “faculty of abrac,” and “soothsaying,” linked their family to the folk-medicinal practices of German Americans.5 The anonymous author writing as Maria Ward claimed as much when she wrote that a German peddler had taught Smith mesmerism.6 Indeed, the Smiths could have been exposed to these traditions through several potential sources available to them.
Yet, while...
