Joseph Smith Sr. was a part of Stephen Burrough's, "the King of Counterfeiters," gang in the early 1800s. Joseph Jr. carried around his Memoirs and often recited stories of Burroughs. This episode covers Stephen Burroughs beginnings, his early life of crime, his introduction into gang activities, his uncle being a "Colonel" despite being a real Colonel, and his first arrest. This arrest was a part of a gang crackdown in Massachusetts in 1784 that snagged the notorious engraver Glazier Wheeler, Burroughs, William Cook, and others. The Cook's were a family deep in gang life. In Pittsylvania, Virginia, engraver Benjamin Woodward was arrested numerous times in the 1770s along with Cook's. In 1773 his gang was cracked down on and testimony connected the Woodward Pittsylvania gang on the border of Virginia and North Carolina to the gang of Philip Alston (the "Godfather" of the blacklegs) at Deep River, North Carolina, where the Allred's were soon neighbors with Alston.
This episode connects the invisible web of crime life in the colonies to later gang members caught up in the 1806-1807 Vermont crackdown that snagged Joseph Smith Sr. and forced him to turn state's evidence against Benjamin Woodward's nephew Beniah in 1807.
