The Mormons, especially their leader Joseph Smith, tended to run into legal problems wherever they landed. That makes a consistent narrative hard to compile.

Let's start in upstate New York. As a teen Smith engaged in the profession of using a peep stone to look for buried treasure. He and his band of treasure hunters would hire themselves out to various people to dig for treasure on their land. Smith's role was that of the seer who would tell them where to dig, placate the spirits protecting the treasure, and to offer the excuses when no treasure was found. He was (likely) convicted at least once basically for being a disreputable character during this period. Well, the word "conviction" is disputed. But he was taken to court, and paid a fine to the court. The records are spotty. Before leaving New York he escaped from jail at least once, and was brought up on charges related to fraud and sexual misconduct... both of these will reoccur.

It's around this time he claimed to have found the gold plates. He then published the Book of Mormon as a translation of those plates, and founded what would become the LDS Church. It didn't take long before he was forced to flee to Ohio. Ultimately his "persecution" in this period came from three quarters

1. His band of treasure seekers. They took him at his word that he had found gold, and they wanted their cut as had been previously agreed. He came to understandings with a couple of them. But the rest were left in the cold. They resented that and made multiple attempts to steal the gold plates.
2. His creditors. Smith in the period was a great borrower of money (and other things). He tended to be less good at returning what was lent. He was living and farming on borrowed land, planted with borrowed seed, using a borrowed magical peep stone, to translate his book, which was published with borrowed money. None of these (except the land) was ever returned. And the lenders were getting in some cases murderously impatient.
3. His family and neighbors. He had a rep as a disreputable character. He was known as a shiftless layabout always working on some get rich quick scheme. He was also known as a no-good rake who was "ruining" the local girls. Founding a church was a bridge to far for a lot of them. His father-in-law, the relatives of the Stowe girls, and others first tried to get him in court, and when he skated the charges they were gearing up for a good old fashioned lynching of one type or another. So he skipped town.

And... went to Kirtland Ohio. There he met up with a Campbelite preacher, Sydney Rigdon. They became best friends and Kirtland became the church headquarters. Shortly after Missouri became another center of the church, but we'll get to Missouri in a bit. In Ohio Smith started a lot of different projects including an anti-bank (a quasi-legal non-chartered pseudo-bank) after his attempt to charter a real bank was denied by the Ohio authorities. He didn't have enough assets. This was known as the Kirtland Safety Society. Using funds from the anti-bank, Smith and Rigdon engaged in land speculation using other church member's funds to buy and sell land... just in time for the Panic of 1837. This left many church members, and a lot of local non-members, destitute.

A bit before this time his wife found Smith having sex with their maid, Fanny Alger, in their barn. And other rumors of sexual misconduct also swirled. He was beginning to at least think about the doctrine of polygamy, even if he hadn't fully developed it yet. This apparently included some sort of inappropriate conduct with the teen girl Marinda Nancy Johnson and proposed to 12 year old Mary Rollins Lightner. He would later marry both girls. Between the financial problems and the accusations of sexual misconduct tensions rose between the core faithful members, those who split from the church, and their non-Mormon neighbors. Smith was even tarred and feathered, and almost castrated, by a mob led by Marinda Johnson's uncle and at least one brother. So Smith decided it was high time to move to Missouri. The state of Ohio would pursue him legally for the rest of his life, with him regularly dodging process servers and bounty hunters. He was eventually convicted in absentia for fraud. But he never repaid his fine, debts, or served his sentence.

So we move on to Missouri. This will overlap with the Ohio period for a while. The first Mormon settlers moved into the area in and around Jackson County. Smith had revealed that it was the site of the Garden of Eden, and more importantly would be the location of Jesus Christ's second coming. So the Mormons move in. This caused tension among the existing settlers who were largely slave owners from the South. The Mormons were largely vaguely abolitionist New Englanders. They also were largely buying land with questionable titles, usually on credit, or backed by the Kirtland Safety Society. They also formed a tight-knit community that tended to vote as a block. The Missourians formed their own counter community and voting blocks to counter. Pretty soon tensions boiled over. At one point Smith even raised an army in Ohio of several hundred men and marched to Missouri. A ceasefire agreement of a sort was declared delineating a separation between the Mormons and non-Mormons.

Throughout this period the church in Missouri was being run by members of the Whitmer Family. They considered themselves co-founders of the church. Son-in-Law Oliver Cowdrey was Second Elder of the church and had been the Scribe for the Book of Mormon. They were increasingly unhappy with Smith's increasingly hierarchical organization. They also disapproved of Smith's financial dealings, and his sexual misconduct (as they saw it) and had set themselves up as something of a counter movement within the church. When Smith fled to Missouri he quickly took control of the church there. The Whitmers, Cowdrey, and their supporters were excommunicated and driven from their homes. Rigdon even gave his infamous Salt Sermon declaring a "war of extermination" between the faithful and any who would oppose them.

Of course the only place the newly minted excommunicates could go would be to their non-Mormon neighbors. They appealed to the government and the general populous for aid. This ratcheted up tensions a great deal. That fall it spilled over into open violence in what was basically a riot over access to polling booths. The so called Battle of Gallatin was the starting point that saw both sides attacking the outlying settlements of Mormons and Missourians alike. And the Missouri-Mormon war was on. It even had a set piece battle, the Battle of Crooked River, between the militias. The end result was that the Mormon leadership was arrested as the instigators, and agreed that the Mormons would leave the state. Governor Boggs even signed an infamous order known as the Extermination Order to make sure to drive the Mormons from the state.

The rank and file members spent the winter of 1839-1840 moving to Quincy Illinois (later renamed Nauvoo). The leadership spent the winter in pretty horrid conditions in the ironically named Liberty Jail in Missouri. After a few changes of venue they escaped and followed their fellows to Illinois. From this point on Smith was also on the run from Missouri for treason and murder.

The Mormons, especially their leader Joseph Smith, tended to run into legal problems wherever they landed. That makes a consistent narrative hard to compile.

Let's start in upstate New York. As a teen Smith engaged in the profession of using a peep stone to look for buried treasure. He and his band of treasure hunters would hire themselves out to various people to dig for treasure on their land. Smith's role was that of the seer who would tell them where to dig, placate the spirits protecting the treasure, and to offer the excuses when no treasure was found. He was (likely) convicted at least once basically for being a disreputable character during this period. Well, the word "conviction" is disputed. But he was taken to court, and paid a fine to the court. The records are spotty. Before leaving New York he escaped from jail at least once, and was brought up on charges related to fraud and sexual misconduct... both of these will reoccur.

It's around this time he claimed to have found the gold plates. He then published the Book of Mormon as a translation of those plates, and founded what would become the LDS Church. It didn't take long before he was forced to flee to Ohio. Ultimately his "persecution" in this period came from three quarters

1. His band of treasure seekers. They took him at his word that he had found gold, and they wanted their cut as had been previously agreed. He came to understandings with a couple of them. But the rest were left in the cold. They resented that and made multiple attempts to steal the gold plates.
2. His creditors. Smith in the period was a great borrower of money (and other things). He tended to be less good at returning what was lent. He was living and farming on borrowed land, planted with borrowed seed, using a borrowed magical peep stone, to translate his book, which was published with borrowed money. None of these (except the land) was ever returned. And the lenders were getting in some cases murderously impatient.
3. His family and neighbors. He had a rep as a disreputable character. He was known as a shiftless layabout always working on some get rich quick scheme. He was also known as a no-good rake who was "ruining" the local girls. Founding a church was a bridge to far for a lot of them. His father-in-law, the relatives of the Stowe girls, and others first tried to get him in court, and when he skated the charges they were gearing up for a good old fashioned lynching of one type or another. So he skipped town.

And... went to Kirtland Ohio. There he met up with a Campbelite preacher, Sydney Rigdon. They became best friends and Kirtland became the church headquarters. Shortly after Missouri became another center of the church, but we'll get to Missouri in a bit. In Ohio Smith started a lot of different projects including an anti-bank (a quasi-legal non-chartered pseudo-bank) after his attempt to charter a real bank was denied by the Ohio authorities. He didn't have enough assets. This was known as the Kirtland Safety Society. Using funds from the anti-bank, Smith and Rigdon engaged in land speculation using other church member's funds to buy and sell land... just in time for the Panic of 1837. This left many church members, and a lot of local non-members, destitute.

A bit before this time his wife found Smith having sex with their maid, Fanny Alger, in their barn. And other rumors of sexual misconduct also swirled. He was beginning to at least think about the doctrine of polygamy, even if he hadn't fully developed it yet. This apparently included some sort of inappropriate conduct with the teen girl Marinda Nancy Johnson and proposed to 12 year old Mary Rollins Lightner. He would later marry both girls. Between the financial problems and the accusations of sexual misconduct tensions rose between the core faithful members, those who split from the church, and their non-Mormon neighbors. Smith was even tarred and feathered, and almost castrated, by a mob led by Marinda Johnson's uncle and at least one brother. So Smith decided it was high time to move to Missouri. The state of Ohio would pursue him legally for the rest of his life, with him regularly dodging process servers and bounty hunters. He was eventually convicted in absentia for fraud. But he never repaid his fine, debts, or served his sentence.

So we move on to Missouri. This will overlap with the Ohio period for a while. The first Mormon settlers moved into the area in and around Jackson County. Smith had revealed that it was the site of the Garden of Eden, and more importantly would be the location of Jesus Christ's second coming. So the Mormons move in. This caused tension among the existing settlers who were largely slave owners from the South. The Mormons were largely vaguely abolitionist New Englanders. They also were largely buying land with questionable titles, usually on credit, or backed by the Kirtland Safety Society. They also formed a tight-knit community that tended to vote as a block. The Missourians formed their own counter community and voting blocks to counter. Pretty soon tensions boiled over. At one point Smith even raised an army in Ohio of several hundred men and marched to Missouri. A ceasefire agreement of a sort was declared delineating a separation between the Mormons and non-Mormons.

Throughout this period the church in Missouri was being run by members of the Whitmer Family. They considered themselves co-founders of the church. Son-in-Law Oliver Cowdrey was Second Elder of the church and had been the Scribe for the Book of Mormon. They were increasingly unhappy with Smith's increasingly hierarchical organization. They also disapproved of Smith's financial dealings, and his sexual misconduct (as they saw it) and had set themselves up as something of a counter movement within the church. When Smith fled to Missouri he quickly took control of the church there. The Whitmers, Cowdrey, and their supporters were excommunicated and driven from their homes. Rigdon even gave his infamous Salt Sermon declaring a "war of extermination" between the faithful and any who would oppose them.

Of course the only place the newly minted excommunicates could go would be to their non-Mormon neighbors. They appealed to the government and the general populous for aid. This ratcheted up tensions a great deal. That fall it spilled over into open violence in what was basically a riot over access to polling booths. The so called Battle of Gallatin was the starting point that saw both sides attacking the outlying settlements of Mormons and Missourians alike. And the Missouri-Mormon war was on. It even had a set piece battle, the Battle of Crooked River, between the militias. The end result was that the Mormon leadership was arrested as the instigators, and agreed that the Mormons would leave the state. Governor Boggs even signed an infamous order known as the Extermination Order to make sure to drive the Mormons from the state.

The rank and file members spent the winter of 1839-1840 moving to Quincy Illinois (later renamed Nauvoo). The leadership spent the winter in pretty horrid conditions in the ironically named Liberty Jail in Missouri. After a few changes of venue they escaped and followed their fellows to Illinois. From this point on Smith was also on the run from Missouri for treason and murder.