The Myth Makers* Part 2

Digging in the Dark

ii. What is behind it

Scene: The same, after a brief recess.

Enter the real diggers

Chairman: During these hearings it has occurred to me, as it has no doubt occurred to many of you, that no matter how wild and contradictory these stories may be, there must be something behind them. Can anyone doubt that there was some sort of digging and some sort of peepstone from which the stories took their rise? We can't accept any of these stories as they stand—there are too many objections to each one: but can we get back to the primordial cell from which they are all derived? The only way to do it is to interview the earliest witnesses we can find. So let us begin with Mr. Obadiah Dogberry. According to you, Mr. Dogberry, the idea of hidden treasures guarded by the spirits was a familiar one in Joseph Smith's part of the world before he ever took to digging. Is that correct?

Obadiah Dogberry: It is. "This opinion . . . did not originate by any means with Smith." There was "the MANIA of money-digging . . . through many parts of this country" at the time. "Men and women without distinction of age or sex . . . dreamed, and . . . saw visions disclosing to them deep in the bowels of the earth, rich and shining treasures, . . . and although the SPIRIT was always able to retain his precious charge, these discomfited as well as deluded beings, would on a succeeding night return to their toil."¹

Chairman: All this was well before Smith's story of the gold plates. And did these people use peepstones?

Dogberry: They did indeed. "Peep-stones or pebbles, taken promiscuously from brook or field" would show these people "all the wonders of nature, including of course, ample stores of silver and gold."²

Chairman: And how did these multitudes of people "in many parts of this country" operate these wonderful peepstones?

Dogberry: The "peep-stones . . . were placed in a hat or other situation excluded from the light, when some wizard or witch . . . applied their eyes."³

Chairman: But Mr. Pomeroy Tucker, the learned editor and Mr. Smith's very intimate personal friend, assures us that the practice with the hat was peculiar to Smith, who resorted to it not to make his peepstone look brighter, but to make it look dimmer. The very oddity of Smith and his peepstone techniques has been exploited as a prime explanation of the Book of Mormon. Mr. Lu B. Cake calls his invaluable collection of affidavits, Peepstone Joe, as if Smith was the only man who ever peeped; and the most devastating blow dealt to Smith's pretensions has always been the claim that he was known as a money digger. Now we learn that peeping and money digging were everybody's business. Mr. Howe, you said these stories must have a foundation in fact, and now it is apparent that you were right. According to the first mention of the business, the peeping and digging stories do not begin with Smith at all, yet his critics, especially in the twentieth century, labor mightily to prove to the world that he and his family were absolutely unique and peculiar in peeping and digging, which queer practices made their doings well known "to vast numbers of people." But I think we can be more specific than this. With everyone around him digging like mad, so to speak, how did young Smith get into the business?

Walters

Dogberry: I can tell you that. It was a man called [Luman] Walters, a sort of conjurer, who "was paid three dollars per day for his services by money diggers in this neighborhood."⁴

Chairman: As a conjurer, he would find the treasures for them, and they would dig, I take it? That is exactly the business in which Smith was so long engaged, we have been told.

Dogberry: Yes, it was Walters who "first suggested to Smith the idea of finding a book."⁵

Chairman: How did he do that?

Dogberry: He "had procured an old copy of Cicero's Orations, in the Latin language, out of which he read long and loud to his credulous hearers, uttering at the same time an unintelligible jargon, which he would afterwards pretend to interpret, and explain, as a record of the former inhabitants of America."⁶

Chairman: Just like Solomon Spaulding, eh? But what proof have you that Smith was ever among his hearers?

Dogberry: I wasn't there, of course, but it stands to reason.

Chairman: How do you know it was Walters who suggested the idea of the Book of Mormon to Joseph Smith?

Dogberry: "There remains but little doubt, in the minds of those at all acquainted with these transactions."⁷

Chairman: It is clear from the way you put it that these people were not witnesses to anything significant: witnesses do not testify to things which are in their minds or matters on which they have "but little doubt"; they either know or they don't know, because they have seen and heard, not because they are "at all acquainted with these transactions." Now tell us, can you name any of these people, or tell how they might have overheard the secret and private conversations between Walters and Smith—whom you earlier describe as Walters' intimate disciple? Can you even give evidence that Smith and Walters ever met?

Dogberry: There are significant coincidences. "Not long previous to the pretended discovery of the 'Book of Mormon,' Walters assembled his nightly band of money diggers in the town of Manchester, at a point designated with his magical book, and . . . absolutely sacrificed a fowl, 'Rooster,' in the presence of his awe-stricken companions, to the foul spirit."⁸

Chairman: And here we have been told all along that it was Smith's very own idea to organize a digging gang. What has all this to do with Joseph Smith?

Dogberry: I told you this happened "not long previous to the pretended discovery of the 'Book of Mormon.' "⁹

Chairman: But according to our most reliable witnesses, Smith could not possibly have learned his art from Walters, since he had already been practicing peeping and digging with his own gang for years! Indeed, by the time he met Walters, according to nearly all our other "witnesses" he would have given up the business—he stopped, they tell us, in 1827, after he had discovered the plates and after seven or eight years of digging. You say repeatedly that the "mantle" of Walters "fell upon the Prophet Jo. Smith Jun.," but it should have been the other way around—Joseph was an old hand at all this stuff, according to all the others. He learned it from his father who, we have been assured on high authority, practiced it in Vermont.

Dogberry: "We are not able to determine whether the elder Smith was ever concerned in money-digging transactions previous to his emigration from Vermont."¹⁰

Chairman: Well then, others tell us it was his mother who taught him the black arts; that the peepstone had been in her family for generations: but others say it was a little old woman who lived down the road; others say Smith first learned divination from a young girl; still others say it was a man in Pennsylvania who introduced Smith to peeping. If Smith learned his art from Walters, who told people where to dig for treasure and, according to you, led "his motley crew of tatterdemalions" on ritual diggings in the woods around Manchester at night, then what happens to all the peepstone stories, which put Joseph Smith in the very same business in 1822 and earlier? He needed no mantle from you—he had it all down cold! Why did you say that Walters "absolutely sacrificed a fowl, 'Rooster' " in his digging ritual?

Dogberry: Because he actually did, shocking and incredible as it may seem.

Chairman: Shucks, man, that was nothing! Don't you know that the Smiths had been sacrificing black sheep all over the place for years? We have been told by more than one witness that whenever Smith wanted meat for his family he ordered the sacrifice of a black sheep, and from those claiming to have been his closest neighbors and observers we have heard how he would sometimes substitute a white sheep or a white dog or a black dog for his black sheep. And all this in the years before 1827 and long before the meeting with Walters which Mr. Dogberry says took place "not long previous to the pretended discovery of the 'Book of Mormon.' " Now, it has been admitted by the most hostile witnesses, and denied by none, that there is no evidence that Joseph Smith himself ever engaged in digging for treasure, but there must be something behind it all, they tell us. There was: the tales of Walters, not his "mantle" but the stories about him, were simply transferred whole to Smith. Professor Turner speaks of another mantle falling on Smith.

O. Turner: Yes, it was "the mantle of the prophet which Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Smith and one Oliver Cowdery had wove of themselves—every thread of it."¹¹

Chairman: That doesn't leave much for Walters, you see. But when you say as you do, Mr. Dogberry, that the mantle of Walters fell upon Joseph Smith, you are expressing a truth: the whole fabric of digging-stories about Walters, even down to small and peculiar details: the stone, the circle, the sword, the book, the rabble band, the midnight digs, the sacrifices, the ever-disappointing treasure, the clever explanations—all those things we have been taught were the peculiar stamp of Smith's genius, now seem to have belonged to another and much older man, and to have been transferred to Smith not by Walters but by you, Mr. Dogberry.

Dogberry: But the resemblance between the two impostors is much too full and perfect to be a coincidence.

Chairman: True. And therefore Smith must have got his stuff from Walters if the stories about Smith are true. But he denies that those stories are true, and what is worse, ninety percent of them rule Walters out of the picture. The striking resemblance on which you rest your case is not between Walters and Smith, but between Walters and Smith as you describe him.

Editor of the Rochester Gem: But Walters was not the only person that Smith resembled most remarkably. In fact his resemblance to Walters may have been just a coincidence after all.

Dogberry: Out of the question, sir!

The other Smith and Mr. Northrop

Gem: Not at all! Let me give you one. Smith's whole "story brings to our mind one of similar nature once played off upon the inhabitants of Rochester and its vicinity, near the close of the last war."¹²

Chairman: Let's get this straight. To what war do you refer?

Gem: The War of 1812, of course. "If we remember aright, it was in the year 1815, that a family of Smiths moved into these parts."

Chairman: By "these parts" you mean "Rochester and its vicinity," and since the final peace treaty was signed just one day after Joseph Smith turned eight, he would have been seven years old "near the close of the last war." I want to get this clear, that the Smiths you are talking about are not the family of Joseph Smith.

Gem: That is right. This is simply a case "of similar nature." Time and place alike make it impossible to confuse them.

Eber D. Howe: Then why all the fuss?

Chairman: Pay close attention, Mr. Howe, and you will see. Proceed, witness.

Gem:

They had a wonderful son, of about 18 years of age, who, on a certain day, as they said, while in the road, discovered a round stone of the size of a man's fist, the which when he first saw it, presented to him on the one side, all the dazzling splendor of the sun in full blaze—and on the other, the clearness of the moon. He fell down insensible at the sight, and while in the trance produced by the sudden and awful discovery, it was communicated to him that he was to become an oracle—and the keys of mystery were put into his hands, and he saw the unsealing of the book of fate. He told his tale for MONEY. Numbers flocked to him to test his skill, and the first question among a certain class was, if there was any of Kidd's money hid in these parts of the earth. The oracle, after adjusting the stone in his hat, and looking in upon it some time, pronounced that there was.¹³

Chairman: So here we have a young man by the name of Smith peeping for treasure—Captain Kidd's treasure—less than thirty miles from Palmyra. You say there must be something behind the peeping stories—there is, but it has nothing to do with Joseph Smith. I suppose next a band of diggers was organized?

Gem: Of course, how did you guess it? "The question of where, being decided upon, there forthwith emerged a set, armed with 'pick-axe, hoe and spade,' out into the mountains, to dislodge the treasure."¹⁴

Chairman: Did they ever find it?

Gem: Need you ask? "We shall mention but one man of the money diggers. His name was Northrop. . . . Northrop and his men sallied out upon the hills east of the river, and commenced digging—"

Chairman: By night, of course?

Gem: How did you know? Yes, "the night was chosen for operation—already had two nights been spent in digging, and the third commenced upon, when Northrop with his pick-axe struck the chest! The effect was powerful, and contrary to an explicit rule laid down by himself he exclaimed, 'd—m me, I've found it!' "¹⁵

Chairman: So he laid down strict rules for his phalanx, just like Joe. Of course this breaking of silence spoiled everything.

Gem: True. "The charm was broken!—the scream of demons,—the chattering of spirits—and hissing of serpents, rent the air, and the treasure moved!"¹⁶

Chairman: Of course.

Gem: What do you mean, "of course"?

Chairman: Didn't you know? Joseph Smith's treasures always moved away like that when somebody spoke.

Gem: Now you are being facetious.

Chairman: Not at all. I can give you a dozen reports on that. And I suppose the treasure kept moving that way and they never found it.

Gem: You happen to be right.

Chairman: And what happened to young Smith?

Gem: Well, a magistrate came to take his stone away, and the boy said that "he who should take away the inspired stone from him, would suffer immediate death!" But the magistrate "demanded the stone, and ground it to powder." So the Smiths moved away, "the money-diggers joined in the general execration . . . and all turned out to be a hoax!"¹⁷

Chairman: If all this has nothing to do with Joseph Smith, why do you tell it?

Gem: Because the stories are so much alike: "Now in reference to the two stories, 'put that to that, and they are a noble pair of brothers.' "¹⁸

The Belcher boy

Chairman: Exactly. They are twins, in fact, identical twins: nay, one is the mirror-image of the other. Here we have a parallel just as close as that between Smith and Walters, but in this case it cannot possibly be maintained that the younger Smith borrowed anything from the older Smith or his diggers or from the Northrop gang: yet the resemblance is too striking to be mere coincidence. How do we account for it, then? One of these Smiths was the real peeper, the other his borrowed reflection. We have seen how clumsily, persistently, and absurdly the experts have attempted to hang a lot of digging stories on Joseph Smith—they don't fit at all. But here we have other men to whom these stories do apply, and they come first, robbing Joseph Smith of all claims to originality. But he makes no such claims!—his friends and followers protest that the digging stories about him are not true. They never tell such tales. But those who do tell them disagree among themselves and make an awful botch of things. They are trying to dress Joseph Smith in other men's clothes. Here, for example, we have another peepstone story just as good as the others. Mr. Buck, you are credited with the earliest report of Joe's peeping. What was his stone like?

J. B. Buck: The stone he used after he took up peeping was the "green stone, with brown, irregular spots on it." It was somewhat larger than a goose-egg.¹⁹

Chairman: How did the stone work?

Buck: "When he brought it home and covered it with a hat, Belcher's little boy was one of the first to look into the hat, and as he did so he said he saw a candle." The second time he looked he found his hatchet. "The boy was soon beset by neighbors far and near" to find lost things for them, which he did with great success.²⁰

Chairman: And this was before Joseph Smith took to peeping?

Buck: Certainly. "Joe Smith was here lumbering soon after my marriage, which was in 1818, some years before he took to 'peeping'; . . . the stone which he afterwards used was then in the possession of Jack Belcher, of Gibson."²¹

Chairman: Of course you realize that Joe didn't turn thirteen until the last ten days of 1818—so that makes him a twelve-year-old lumberman, but let it pass. The point is that we have a youngster peeping at a stone in a hat to find lost objects for people before Joseph Smith ever did such a thing. And then later we find Smith using that very stone (though we are not told how he got it) to do the same. Here again a story told originally about one boy is transferred to another one—this time consciously so. Mr. Buck's unique data are in conflict with all other versions, he makes no claim ever to have witnessed Joseph Smith's peeping, and does not even suggest the time, place, or manner in which the valuable stone, which was kept and greatly prized in Pennsylvania, changed hands. That is to say, there is nothing firsthand about his testimony, and since he is the only witness for the story he tells (the cornerstone of Dr. Linn's learned thesis), there is only one thing we can say about it for sure: that the story of the peeping Belcher boy was transferred by him from the Belchers to Smith.

Dogberry: Can you prove such a transfer?

Chairman: By direct testimony, of course not—no one is going to admit it. But let us take your own case. One of the most intrinsically absurd aspects of many digging stories about the Smiths is that though they never found anything, their faithful band of lazy loafers continued to dig all over the countryside for years. The picture is preposterous, it cannot be true—but I can tell you where it comes from. What was it you said about the other diggers of the time? The clerk will please read it.

Clerk (reads): "And to facilitate those mighty mining operations (money was usually if not always sought after in the night time), divers devices and implements were invented, and although the SPIRIT was always able to retain his precious charge, these . . . deluded beings, would on a succeeding night return to their toil, not in the least doubting that success would eventually attend their labors."²²

Chairman: There you have the same picture with the Smiths left out, and this time it is plausible. In terms of vast numbers of diggers it is easy to picture the work going on night after night and year after year all over the country, regardless of innumerable disappointments. But that this should apply to but one small household, the lazy Smiths, is quite unthinkable. The earlier and more believable situation has plainly been transferred to a setting in which it simply does not fit. Now, Mr. Dogberry, the number of references you made to "the mantle of Walters the Magician falling upon Joseph, surnamed the prophet" are all found in a writing by you entitled the "Book of Pukei." Is that work to be regarded as a serious piece of historical writing or newspaper reporting?

Dogberry: Mrs. Brodie thinks it is serious—she swears by it.

Chairman: But do you?

Dogberry sows the seed

Dogberry: Of course not! That was only a joke. My serious writing on the subject was in a series of articles entitled "Golden Bible" in the Palmyra Reflector for the first three months of 1831.

Chairman: And in those articles you have but one sentence dealing with Smith's relationship to Walters. The clerk will please read it.

Clerk (reads): "There remains but little doubt, in the minds of those at all acquainted with these transactions, that Walters . . . first suggested to Smith the idea of finding a book."²³

Chairman: That is all you say on this crucial point and, as we have seen, your statement is cautiously noncommittal; you do not vouch for yourself and designate no witnesses, places, or dates. Yet half a year earlier you wrote a long rigmarole on Joseph Smith as Walters' disciple.

Dogberry: As I said, that was a joke. It was a parody.

Chairman: It did not pretend to be factual?

Dogberry: There's many a true word spoken in jest.

Chairman: But I am talking about the charges you did not repeat in your serious articles. You do not claim that any effort was made to be accurate in your "Book of Pukei"?

Dogberry: Read some of it, if you think I was serious!

Chairman: We shall do that. Will the clerk please read?

Clerk (reads): The Book of Pukei, chapter one:

And it came to pass in the latter days, that wickedness did much abound in the land, and the "idle and slothful said one to another, let us send for Walters the Magician, who has strange books, and deals with familiar spirits, peradventure he will inform us where the Nephites, hid their treasure. . . . And it came to pass, that when the Idle and Slothful became weary of their night labors, they said one to another, lo! This imp of the Devil, hath deceived us, let us no more of him, or peradventure, ourselves, our wives, and our little ones, will become chargeable on the town."²⁴

[So Walters the Magician] took his book, his rusty sword, and his magic stone, and his stuffed toad, and all his implements of witchcraft and returned to the mountains near Great Sodus Bay, where he holds communion with the Devil, even unto this day. Now the rest of the acts of the magician, how his mantle fell upon the Prophet Jo. Smith, Jun., and how Jo. made a league with the spirit, who afterwards turned out to be an angel, and how he obtained the "Gold Bible" . . . will they not be faithfully recorded in the Book of Pukei?²⁵

Later Joseph Smith says:

Behold! hath not the mantle of Walters the Magician fallen upon me . . . for lo! yesternight stood before me in the wilderness of Manchester, the spirit, who, from the beginning, has had in keeping all the treasures, hidden in the bowels of the earth. And he said unto me, . . . I am the spirit that walketh in darkness, and will shew thee great signs and wonders.²⁶

And I looked, and behold a little old man stood before me, clad, as I supposed, in Egyptian raiment, except his Indian blanket and moccasins—his beard of silver white, hung far below his knees. On his head was an old fashioned military half cocked hat such as was worn in the days of the patriarch Moses—his speech was sweeter than molasses, and his words were the reformed Egyptian.²⁷

Chairman: Thank you, that will do. You are quite playful, Mr. Dogberry.

Dogberry: It is jolly, isn't it. Let the clerk read what the angel says next.

Clerk (reads):

And again he said unto me, "Joseph, thou who has been surnamed the ignoramus, Knowest thou not . . . that I have been sent unto thee by Mormon, . . . who was chief among the last ten tribes of Israel? Knowest thou not that this same apostle to the Nephites conducted that pious people . . . to these happy shores in bark canoes, where . . . God sent the smallpox among them, which killed two-thirds of them, and turned the rest into Indians? Knowest thou not . . . that this same Mormon wrote a book on plates of gold . . . concerning the aforesaid Nephites and their brethren the Lamanites, and their treasures (including a box of gold watches on which thou shalt hereafter raise money)?²⁸

Chairman: Thank you again. That is enough to show the type of writing we are dealing with. It is the broadest satire, the typically heavy-handed Yankee humor of the nineteenth century—or am I wrong? Does anyone want to maintain that this is a serious paraphrase of the Book of Mormon, or that Joseph Smith himself would go around telling stories like this on himself? The description of the backwoods angel is obviously meant to be sidesplitting, but do you know, Mr. Dogberry, that some of the most eminent scholars have taken this document in dead earnest?

Dogberry: Impossible!

Chairman: Mrs. Brodie prefers it to your serious writing—she would be lost without it. You recall how your funny angel tells a funny story about the Nephites, including their treasure, a box of gold watches? Well, years later the little old man and the box of watches turn up as a serious part of the Mormon story. Mr. Stafford?

J. Stafford: Joseph Smith, Jr., "at a husking, called on me to become security for a horse, and said he would reward me handsomely, for he had found a box of watches, and they were as large as his fist, and he put one of them to his ear, and he could hear it 'tick forty rods.' . . . He wished to go east with them."²⁹

Chairman: If he could hear the thing tick at forty rods, why did he put it to his ear—how would he dare?

John C. Bennett: That would be just a manner of speaking.

Chairman: Still in the tradition of broad American humor. Since your work is the earliest on Smith, Mr. Dogberry, later investigations, honoring its high antiquity, have picked out of the extravaganza whatever suited their theories of Joseph Smith. Mrs. Brodie chooses to believe that Walter's mantle actually did fall on Smith, though you don't say so in your serious attack written later; others take the funny touch about the gold watches quite seriously; still others describe the original Moroni as a little old man in a cocked hat! So your fantasy has borne fruit. But let no one claim hereafter that because there "must be something behind all these stories" that that something is the true history of Joseph Smith. That is Brodian logic. Now, since all these full and close parallels between Joseph Smith and Walters and the Rochester Smith and the Belcher boy and Northrop cannot be accidental, either Smith's doings were transferred to those other people, or theirs to him. Which is it? The first alternative must be rejected out of hand, since Joseph Smith was much younger than all but one of the other people, and their stories all come first—which nobody will deny. Was he their zealous disciple, then? No, no one claims that Smith ever saw Northrop or the other Smith or the Belcher boy. For a hundred years the unanimous charge against Joe Smith was that he was the author of all this nonsense, a unique and original character. He didn't get it from them, and they didn't get it from him. And there is not a shred of proof that he got it from Walters.

Howe: So we are back where we started.

Chairman: Not at all. The solution is simple: Smith didn't get it, period. Here we have two bodies of literature containing the same strange, fantastic tales. We admit that this cannot be a mere coincidence: one corpus was inspired by the other. Which was the original? Of that there can be no doubt—the stories not about Smith are all the older, they are the original. How then did they all get attached to Joseph Smith? Did he borrow them? Did his followers insist on attributing them to him? Not a bit of it! He and they always deny any connection with the great Digging Cycle. Those who unload the stories on Smith are all his enemies, and what is more, they have an extremely difficult time connecting him with those tales in time and place, while they contradict each other at every step.

The time has come to sum up our little investigation. I will be brief. First, as to our witnesses—their quality and their quantity. The latter was excessive, the former defective. There were altogether too many witnesses; they were too eager; they all knew Smith so very, very well, though there is not the slightest indication that Smith ever knew them. All of which might be forgiven if their stories were not intrinsically absurd and thoroughly conflicting. Mr. Tucker, our prize witness, at no time gave any information that would indicate personal acquaintance with Joseph Smith or even firsthand observation of any act performed by him; whenever his testimony became specific it became absurd; whenever it became rational and confident it became also generalizing and editorial in nature. We were unable to discover any diggers or any victims, living or dead, of Smith's purported treasure-hunting promotions. We were told with the greatest assurance that Smith found treasure and that he found none; that he prospered in the business and that he starved; that he dug in a few places and that he dug everywhere; that he merely pretended to dig; that he first learned peeping from his father, his mother, an old neighbor lady, a man in Pennsylvania; that he learned it from infancy, as an adolescent, and as a disciple of Walters—half-a-dozen specific and conflicting dates being confidently assigned to his acquiring of the black art. We have been told that Smith regularly dug and that he never dug at all; that he had to dig in the full moon and that he preferred the dark of the moon; that his band broke up at the first failures and that they went on for years; that he killed only one sheep and that he slaughtered herds of them; that he had a stone box and a wooden box—at least five different peepstones have been described. And the constant and glaring contradictions between these damning and disgraceful tales have been blithely attributed to conflicting versions circulated by the Smith family themselves!

Finally, when challenged to explain the factual realities which usually hide behind even the wildest rumors, we have not had to part company with the witnesses themselves to discover ample evidence for the efflorescence of strange and exotic tales of treasure digging in early nineteenth-century America among which every weird detail of the stories later attached to Joseph Smith is found in full bloom before Smith can possibly have been involved. In some cases the actual transfer of a story from an earlier setting to the orbit of the Smith family can be clearly demonstrated. If Joseph Smith is to be condemned, I fear it must be on far better evidence than this. The meeting is dismissed.

Notes for Part 2, Scene ii

*The Myth Makers was originally published in Salt Lake City by Bookcraft in 1961.

^1. Francis Kirkham, A New Witness for Christ in America: The Book of Mormon, 2 vols. (Salt Lake City: Utah Printing, 1959), 2:69.

^2. Ibid.

^3. Ibid.

^4. Ibid., 2:74.

^5. Ibid.

^6. Ibid.

^7. Ibid.

^8. Ibid.

^9. Ibid.

^10. Ibid., 2:52.

^11. Orsamus Turner, History of the Pioneer Settlement of Phelps and Gorham's Purchase and Morris' Reserve (Rochester: Alling, 1851), 213.

^12. Kirkham, New Witness of Christ in America, 2:47.

^13. Ibid., 2:47-48.

^14. Ibid., 2:48.

^15. Ibid.

^16. Ibid.

^17. Ibid., 2:48-49.

^18. Ibid., 2:49.

^19. Emily C. Blackman, History of Susquehannah County, Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsen and Haffelfinger, 1873), 577.

^20. Ibid.

^21. Ibid.

^22. Kirkham, New Witness for Christ in America, 2:69.

^23. Ibid., 2:74.

^24. Ibid., 2:51-52.

^25. Ibid., 2:52.

^26. Ibid.

^27. Ibid.

^28. Ibid., 2:53-54.

^29. John C. Bennett, The History of the Saints; Or, An Exposé of Joe Smith and Mormonism (Boston: Leland and Whiting, 1842), 77-78.