JOEL - First remember that Joseph Smith was called to be a prophet before he was even born:

"Now the Lord had shown unto me, Abraham, the intelligences that were organized before the world was; and among all these there were many of the noble and great ones;
And God saw these souls that they were good, and he stood in the midst of them, and he said: These I will make my rulers; for he stood among those that were spirits, and he saw that they were good;" (Abraham 3:22-23)

Joseph Smith was among these noble and great ones. Even if this alone does not qualify him as a prophet from birth, as soon as God the Father and Jesus appeared to him, he would be considered a prophet in the flesh, which happened in the spring of 1820 when he was about 14 years old. It wasn't until after this happened that he was able to find and recognize seer stones, the first one found while digging a well in 1822.
The Urim and Thummim are of course mentioned in the Bible as instruments that were used in conjunction with communications with God (Ex. 28:30; Lev. 8:8; Num. 27:21; Deut. 33:8; 1 Sam. 28:6; Ezra 2:63; Neh. 7:65).
The seer stone was no different than the Urim and Thumim Joseph Smith was given, which was constructed of two seer stones bound together in a silver bow. So there was no reason why Joseph could not use the single seer stone in the translation process the same as the Urim and Thummim.
We don't know exactly how the seer stone worked, nor do we know what makes it different from any other stone one might find. But we know that God has in the past either provided such things or instructed man to build or use existing things as tools in manifesting His power and communication with man. There was for example, the rod of Aaron(Ex 7:9-10); the burning bush(Ex 3:2); the pillar of fire(Ex 13:21); the tabernacle of Moses(Ex 33:9); the ark of the covenant(Judg. 20:27); and the Liahona(Alma 37:38).
Martin Harris said that "for convenience" the Prophet sometimes used the Seer Stone in the translation process(Harris' Statement. Millennial Star, vol. xliv, p. 87).

TWIGGY - Smith said that he was immediately persecuted by his community after the First Vision yet there is no evidence of this, as his family became Presbyterians in 1823 and no newspaper article, until a satire of the Fist Vision in 1829 (entitled the "Book of Pukei").

JOEL - Lack of separate written evidence is no proof that the persecution against Joseph Smith did not happen as he claimed(Joseph Smith History 1:22-25). Of course not everyone would have persecuted him. In the beginning most people probably either just ignored him or thought he was a little nuts with his stories about visions and gold plates. I doubt anyone would have thought it important enough to write about in the early years, especially considering that these were stories coming from a 14 year old boy.
Joseph Smith did not keep any journals or written records during those few years after his first vision, so his reports of persecution were general recolections of what he remembered.
Joseph's mother reported that from the time of the first vision he "suffered every kind of opposition and persecution from the different orders of religionists" (Lucy Mack Smith, History of Joseph Smith, p. 74). So if you can't believe his mother then we just have to have faith that it happened the way he said it did.