A Bit of Original Evidence

In May 1900, Theodore A. Schroeder published an article titled A Bit of Original Evidence in issue no. 9 of Lucifer’s Lantern.[1]

The piece reproduces part of an 1887 letter apparently written by Mississippi attorney E. E. Baldwin to W. O. Norrell of Salt Lake City.[1][2] Baldwin attributed the story to his uncle by marriage, James G. Horton, who allegedly said that Joseph Smith and several companions staged the discovery of the Book of Mormon plates as a practical joke and used a Bible-shaped box packed with sand.[1]

Other accounts conflict with the claim that the box contained only sand. William Smith stated that members of the Smith family felt the plates through the cloth covering them and could distinguish their individual leaves. Martin Harris reported that Alvah Beman heard a metallic sound when the plates were placed inside the box. Those who said they lifted the covered object also estimated that it weighed between forty and sixty pounds, which would be difficult to reconcile with a small, Bible-shaped box filled only with sand.[2]

These accounts do not establish what the concealed object actually was, but they make the sand-filled-box explanation less persuasive. One possibility, suggested by Dan Vogel, is that Smith told Peter Ingersoll and others that the box contained sand to discourage them from trying to seize it. Horton, Baldwin, or others who repeated the story may later have transformed such a rumor into an account of a staged practical joke. [2]

The scan used for this transcription contains a handwritten annotation, presumably from A.T. Schroeder, describing how the letter came into his possession. Because the annotation is difficult to read, the transcription below should be treated as provisional.

This letter came to me from Mr. Morrell, a deputy US Marshal and brother of Judge A.S.N of Salt Lake [1]

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A Bit of Original Evidence

About six years ago there came into my possession a letter dated August 8rd, 1887, which has some additional evidence as to the fraud in the origin of the Book of Mormon. I then asked permission to make its contents public, but the author declined because it was his intention to set forth the facts in a more detailed manner as a magazine article. The author has since died without executing his expressed intention. The original recipient of the letter also declined to consent to its publicity because it might injure business relations. He now consents to its publication if his name shall not, for the present, be made known. The only reason given by the author for not desiring publication no longer existing, I feel at liberty to give this much of the letter to the public.

The writer of the letter evidently did not know that Mormons claim to have delivered all plates to the angel after the translation of that part of them which constitutes the Book of Mormon. There has been matter already published which contains corroboration of some of the statements contained in the following letter.[3][4]

A. T. SCHROEDER.

August 3rd, 1887.

Dear Sir:—

Now that you are where you are, I must tell you a piece of Mormon history which has never got into the books, or papers either. An old uncle of mine, the husband of my father’s oldest sister, Mr. James Horton, lived and died at Flint, dying there just after the war. He was a native of New York State and was raised in the same town with Joe Smith, and was one of the crowd of boys with whom Smith used to run, the most of whom became Mormons. Before the war, on several occasions, my uncle told me all about it, how the whole thing was at first gotten up by the crowd of young men under the leadership of Smith, as a practical joke to test the gullibility of the people. My uncle was in it as big as any of them, and helped dig the pit on the side of the hill near the town, and fixed the stones, etc., in it, where Smith claimed to have dug up the golden Book of Mormon under the direction of a revelation. 

As to the book itself, he told me how they made that. That among them was a young man who was a cabinet maker’s apprentice, and they got him to make a box exactly the shape of a very large bible, one end of which had a sliding door. That they filled this with sand, tightly packed in, and then sewed a cloth cover over it, and then Smith gave out that it could be felt and handled by common people without harm, but not looked upon by anyone except himself, the elect, except with instant death, such was its sacredness. And my uncle often laughed and told me that if they would undo the golden book in the Mormon Temple, that is what it will be found to be—a box of sand. He was in the way for some time, and at length Smith commenced to solicit money and material aid, when he and a couple of others went to him and told him that they had gone into it for a joke, and not for a swindle, and that it would not do to carry it any further. Smith told him that he had found there was some money in it, and he proposed to make some out of it, and that if they did not wish to remain, they could draw out and keep their mouths shut, which they did.

I did not know the historical value of this when it was told to me, as I was young, but during the war I grew to know it, and the first time I went North (1867), I intended to get a full written statement from him of the whole matter, signed and sworn to, but found he had been dead some time. He was one of the most truthful and reliable men I ever knew, and I put the fullest confidence in his statements about it. He and Smith were good friends until the death of the latter.”

Sources

[1] Schroeder, Theodore A. “A Bit of Original Evidence.” Lucifer’s Lantern, no. 9 (May 1900): 181–83. Original issue scan.

[2] Vogel, Dan, ed. Early Mormon Documents. Vol. 3. Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2000, 180–83.

[3] Howe, Eber D. Mormonism Unvailed: Or, A Faithful Account of That Singular Imposition and Delusion, from Its Rise to the Present Time. Painesville, OH: Printed and published by the author, 1834. Peter Ingersoll statement, 232–37; Willard Chase statement, 240–48; Isaac Hale statement, 262–66.

[4] Smith, Lucy Mack. Biographical Sketches of Joseph Smith the Prophet, and His Progenitors for Many Generations. Liverpool: S. W. Richards, 1853, 133–34.