Joshua Stafford was born on June 28, 1799 in Sakonnet, Newport County, Rhode Island. He resided on Stafford Road in Manchester, New York, about two miles south of the Joseph Smith Sr. farm. He owned land on Manchester Lots 5 (until 1821 or 1822), then Lots 7 and 9.
He was a Quaker. He married Lucretia Stafford and later Esther F. Reeder.
Joshua possessed a peep stone that looked like white marble and had a hole in the center. He dug for money in his orchard and elsewhere. He recalled that young Joseph Smith was preoccupied with treasure digging. His affidavit appeared in Mormonism Unvailed.[1]
In the 1830s, Joshua moved with his family to Auburn, Geauga County, Ohio. In that community, he purchased a farm a mile north of Brown’s Corners in the Root Tract. He later had a farm on the diagonal road leading to Chagrin Falls. He died on January 28, 1876 of gastric fever in Auburn at age sixty-seven. He was buried in the Maple Shade Cemetery.
[1] Quinn, Early Mormonism and the Magic Worldview, pp. 6, 41, 136; Howe, Mormonism Unvailed, p. 362; Porter, “A Study of the Origins of the LDS Church in New York and Pennsylvania,” p. 97; Tucker, Origin, Rise, and Progress of Mormonism, p. 24; Vogel, Early Mormon Documents, 2:27.