The Sally Chase Seer Stone
In the early 1800s, “Palmyra’s most notable seer” was Sally Chase, who claimed the ability to see visions and find lost objects using a seer stone. In 1819 or possibly as late as 1822 Joseph Smith Jr. arranged to meet Sally. She demonstrated her supernatural ability by placing her small green stone in a hat and describing the visions that she saw through the stone. Joseph then looked in her stone and was excited that he, too, could see visions. Practitioners of folk magic, such as Joseph and his family, believed that “that there is a [seer] stone of this quality, somewhere, for every one.” Accordingly, using Sally’s stone, Joseph proclaimed that he could see his own seer stone and that it was “a hundred and fifty miles away buried under a tree.” In 1827, presumably using her stone, Sally and her brother Willard successfully located the box containing the gold plates, but a divine warning had allowed Joseph Jr to be a step ahead having already moved the plates to another location.
Although the location of Sally’s stone is lost to history, contemporary witnesses described it as a small greenish stone, or glass. Sally reportedly mounted her “thumb sized stone” in a paddle.
Learn More:
- Wikipedia – Willard Chase
- Fair Mormon – Joseph’s Use of the Seer Stone as a Youth
- Wikipedia – Seer Stone
- Wikipedia – Scrying
Image Copyright- LostMormonism.com