The Captain Kidd connection

 
Does The Book of Mormon bear the mark of pirate lore popular among early American settlers? Some say yes, others say no. Mormonthink has looked into the pop culture element and had found some interesting quotes; FAIR's approach favors the narrative that Joseph Smith wasn't a cartographer who would have had access to obscure maps.

What I see is this: 

1. Captain William Kidd did in fact bury treasure off the coast of New England (Gardiners Island and Block Island).
2. Joseph Smith's parents and grandparents came from Connecticut and New Hampshire.
3. Searching for more of his treasure was a popular pastime that spread far beyond the coast of Connecticut.
4. The Smiths were very engaged with treasure digging.

So is it reasonable to believe that Joseph was keyed into Captain Kidd lore, or am I just trying to be a doubter?

Book of Mormon - the three Nephites

Though I believed in them, it did not escape my mind how silly it was to believe that there were three immortal Nephite apostles roaming the earth in efforts to prepare the gathering of Israel.

What was even sillier were all the stories circulating throughout the Church about encounters with these nearly 2000-year-old men.

How can you not doubt this kind of thing? How can you read this in a non-fiction book and not feel some kind of cognitive dissonance? How long can you maintain faith in the idea of three stealthy fellows moving around the globe preaching the good word for centuries on end? One would think that if they were imparting the Gospel of Jesus all over the place there might actually have been a few attempts at restorations of the Primitive Church before 1830? There would at least be some kind of series of journals out there somewhere where people in different parts of the world wrote about some kind of conversion to something that looks a hell of a lot like Mormonism, right?