Luman Walter

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Luman Walter (ca. 1789–1860) is known for his connection with the family of Joseph Smith, Jr., the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement.

Little is known of Walter's life. He was born in Winchester Litchfield County, Connecticut around 1789. Sometime after 1798, his family relocated to Burke, Vermont. Walter reportedly received his higher education in Europe. He is alleged to have there mastered the arts of animal magnetism and Mesmerism, which may indicate that he had some connection with the disciples of Franz Anton Mesmer at the Sorbonne.

Luman Walter returned to the United States by 1818, and began acting the part of a physician and occult expert. He was arrested for "juggling" in August 1818 in Hopkinton New Hampshire, but escaped from jail. In November 1819 he married in Vermont. By 1822, Walter had apparently taken up residence in Gorham, Ontario County, New York, moving several years later to Sodus Township, New York. In 1822 and 1823, Luman Walter served as a seer for a treasure dig on the property of Abner Cole in Palmyra, Wayne County, New York. Joseph Smith, Sr., Alvin Smith, and Joseph Smith, Jr. reportedly participated in this dig. Walter possessed a magical book and a seerstone, which he used to locate buried treasure.

Abner Cole, a newspaper editor by profession, printed a parody of the Book of Mormon in his Palmyra paper The Reflector in 1830. This parody described the role of "Walters the Magician" in these treasure digs, who "sacrificed a Cock for the purpose of propitiating the prince of spirits .... And he took his book, and his rusty sword, and his magic stone, and his stuffed Toad, and all his implements of witchcraft and retired to the mountains near Great Sodus Bay".[1] Cole also surmised that Joseph Smith Jr. worked under the inspiration of "Walters the Magician." [2]

Mormon historian D. Michael Quinn has argued that Walter crafted the magical parchments owned by the Smith family, and that the young Joseph Smith, Jr. looked to Walter as an occult mentor.[3] Walter was one of the early members of Joseph Smith's Church of Christ, but he did not follow the group when they relocated to Ohio.[4]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Dogberry, pseud. [Cole], "Book of Pukei," The Reflector (Palmyra, NY), 1830-06-12, 36.
  2. ^ Bushman, 120.
  3. ^ On the parchments, see Quinn, 131.
  4. ^ For his conversion to Mormonism, see The Essential Brigham Young, Signature Books, 1992, 35.

[edit] References

Brooke, John (1996). The Refiner's Fire: The Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644-1844. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521565642. 

Bushman, Richard (1984). Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0252011430. 

Palmer, Grant (2002). An Insider's View of Mormon Origins. Signature Books. ISBN 1560851570. 

Quinn, D. Michael (1998). Early Mormonism and the Magic World View. Signature Books. ISBN 1560850892. 

Vogel, Dan (2004). Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet. Signature Books. ISBN 1560851791.