A  DEPARTED  "SAINT."
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DEATH  OF  ONE  OF  THE  AUTHORS  OF  THE  MORMON  BIBLE.
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The Cincinnati Commercial says:

"Martin Harris, one of the 'Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints,' has just departed this life at Clarkston, Utah, at the advanced age of 92 years. Mr. Harris first appeared in print in 1830, at which time, in company with Oliver Cowdery and David Whitmer, he subscribed to the solemn affirmation which appears on the title page of the Mormon bible.

"Joseph Smith, the Palmyra impostor, having noticed Harris' relish for religious wonders, and his capacity for receiving and retaining all the bosh that folly and knavery could furnish, took it into his head to use Harris in the matter of getting up a new religion. Harris had seen the devil in a dug-way near Palmyra, and his contest with that distinguished personage had so improved his swallowing apparatus that Joe Smith's angels, revelations, Golden Bible, sword of Laban, etc., went down in a single gulp. He had been something of a Friend, then a Wesleyan, then a Baptist, afterward a Presbyterian; and if not halted by the Mormon fraud, he would, in all probability, have gone the round through all existing sectaries. Having advanced fifty dollars and accepted the position of scribe to Joseph, he found himself fully committed to the fulness of the gospel, and earnestly proclaimed whatever foolishness or blasphemy Joe might put into him. Mrs. Harris, knowing her husband's credulity and Smith's trickery, did all she could to stop the expenditure of money; but Smith not only plied Harris with 'revelations,' but explained the certainty of making a spec out of the publication of the manuscripts. An edition of five thousand would cost, say $3,000. Joseph had a revelation that the books would sell for $1.25 each, and he went on to assure his victim that there was a chance to clear $3,250. Mrs. Harris objected: Harris explained the gain to be derived from the investment: she railed at his folly, and, getting hold of the manuscript, burned 'the more history part' of Lehi. Harris quarreled with and beat her: they separated: and Smith got his Golden Bible printed at the expense of Harris. Any other knave than Joe Smith would have been backed out by the burning of Lehi by Mrs. Harris, but, as Joe told Ingersoll, 'he had the fools into it, and he proposed to put it through.' So, with promises of advancement to Harris, he had a revelation that his father (old man Smith) should help sell the bibles. But the old man was arrested with a basket full of bibles, and to pay costs he had 'to cut' on the Lord's price ($1.25) and sell the lot of eighty cents apiece! This interfered with the prior 'revelations' given in favor of Harris, and troubles increasing, Smith, Harris, Coudery and the Whitmers cleared out for Kirtland, Ohio. Here the 'Twelve Apostles' were appointed -- Harris being left out; but as he still had some money, a little honesty and increased capacity for credulous business, Smith smoothed him with new promises and daily revelations. In 1833 the Mormons in Jackson county, Missouri, having excited the wrath of the Jacksonians by their immoralities and fanatical insolence, were ordered out of the state. On learning this, Joe Smith, Harris, and perhaps 200 others, started for Missouri to 'redeem Zion.' On the way they ran into the cholera; and notwithstanding Harris was saved, in articulo mortis, by divine interposition, twenty of the saints turned their toes to the lilies, in spite of Joseph's 'laying on of hands.' In Missouri Bishop Partridge succeded in getting old Harris to advance $1,200 more to purchase land on which to establish Zion -- Zion never to be removed. Too many birds of a feather having got together, Joseph found he had his hands full in trying to settle the difficulties which beset the church without and within. Many of the saints were whipped, jailed and shot for bad conduct, and some of the chiefest among the apostles were turned against the prophet. Coudery and Whitmer, two of the witnesses, were 'cut off' for lying, thieving, counterfeiting, etc.; and the brethren mooted it openly that Joseph was bad -- real bad. Some of the sisters said so, and Coudery believed it. Coudery and Whitmer were turned over to Satan. Poor Harris, who had helped Joseph to get up the Mormon business, lost $3,000 in the bible investment, and had recently lent the Lord $1,200 to fix the foundations of the Zion, did not escape the trouble which excessive piety had brought upon the brethren. In company with Parish, who had been charged with swindling, Harris was kicked out of the camp of Israel. His earnestness and ignorance had served Joseph to their full extent; his money was gone, and he was named among the 'negroes with white skins,' and the prophet posted him publicly as a 'lackey,' one so far beneath contempt that to notice him would be a sacrifice too great for a gentleman like himself (Smith) to make!

"Packing his valise, he cut sticks for Kirtland, where he lived unto 1870, when he went to Utah and ended a miserable life, raving in his last delirium over the Book of Mormon -- witnesses, facts and fictions of the most deplorable fraud recorded in history. Never was credulity or avarice more useful in a bad way, or knavery more successful than in the lives of Joe Smith and Martin Harris."


Notes: (forthcoming)

ORIGIN  OF  A  GREAT  IMPOSTURE.
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The real author of the "Book of Mormon" has long been known to have been one Rev. Solomon Spaulding, a retired minister who, at the time the book was written, was a resident of Washington county, Pennsylvania not far from the city of Pittsburg. The book was in the form of a romance purporting to be a history of the peopling of America by the ten lost tyribes of Israel. Spaulding gave it the title of "Manuscript Found," and intended to publish with it by way of preface or advertisement a fictitious account of its discovery in Ohio, where he had at one time resided. Curiousity had led him to examine some of the numerous earth mounds of Ohio, in which he discovered portions of skeletons and other relics. Among them hieroglyphic characters were found, which though perfectly unintelligible, suggested the idea of a biblical romance. Prominent characters in the work were given peculiar names -- among them Mormon, Maroni, Lamenite and Nephi. The author who had already written several romances, read the work to his friends, and finally applied to a Pittsburg printer to have it published but it was declined, after having remained in the hands of the printer some time. At that time Sidney Rigdon, who figured as a preacher among the "saints" some twenty years later, was employed in the Pittsburg office, and very probably saw the iriginal work. How he got it into the hands of Joseph Smith is not certainly known. Rigdon may have copied it, but this is uncertain. It is certain, however, that the Spaulding romance is the "Book of Mormon," almost without alteration. The August number of Scribner contains an article on the subject by Mrs. Ellen E. Dickinson, who presents some additional facts in regard to the romance, which she has obtained from Mrs. M. S. McKinstry, daughter of Mr. Spaulding, now residing in Washington City, and about seventy-five years of age. Mr. Spaulding died in 1816. In 1823, one Joseph Smith, who is described as "a disreputable fellow wandering about the country professing to discover gold and silver and lost articles by means of a 'seer stone,'" claimed to have been directed in a vision to a hill near Palmyra, N. Y. where he had discovered gold plates, curiously inscribed. In 1825 Smith called upon Mr. Thurlow Weed, who was then publisher of the Rochester Telegraph, at Rochester, N. Y., and asked him to print a manuscript. Mr. Weed, in a letter under date of April 12, 1880, relates the circumstances of Smith's interview with him, and says Smith repeated the story of the vision, the golden plates, etc. and produced from his hat, a tablet from which he proceeded to read the first chapter of the "Book of Mormon." Mr. Weed says he "listened until wearied, with what seemed an incomprehensible jargon," and then referred Smith to a book publisher in Palmyra. Five years later, 1830, the "Mormon bible" was printed at Palmyra, and two years later the nucleus of a Mormon settlement was formed in Ohio. When the book was first given to the public and was read in Pennsylvaniam its strange similarity to the manuscript of Mr. Spaulding was remarked by several who had heard the latter read by its author. Smith, or whoever had copied the manuscript, had closely followed Mr. Spaulding's story, even to the professed finding of the plates in the earth mound, and the use of the same peculiar personal names, but he had added the marriage tenets to conform with the new religion to his own ideas and purposes. Smith did not have the original, for this is known to have been in possession of the Spaulding family down to the year 1834. In her statement Mrs. McKinstry refers to the death of her father and recalls the circumstance of a trunk containing his papers which her mother had taken with the family to New York, whither she had removed after her husband's death. Among the contents of this trunk Mrs. McKinstry distinctly remembers to have seen the manuscript of "Manuscript Found." In the year 1834 a man named Hurlburt requested the loan of the manuscript, representing that he had been a convert to Mormonism but had given it up and wished to expose the imposture. As he came with recommendations he was allowed to take it, and the family have never seen it since. There is no possible way of finding out what Hurlburt did with the production, but there was a report that he had sold it for $300 to the Mormons, and that they destroyed it. When Mrs. Spaulding removed to New York after the death of her husband she resided for a time with her brother, William H. Sabine, for whom Joseph Smith was working as a farm hand. It is possible and even probable that he may have obtained access to the trunk containing the manuscript and copied it. Or, as before suggested, Rigdon, who subsequently figured so prominently in Mormon affairs, might have copied it while in the hands of the printer at Pittsburg. It is certain that one of these men did it; or perhaps both may have taken copies, working at different times and before they knew each others, and that their common knowledge of the book afterwards brought them together and established a bond between them. At all events the facts are highly interesting, showing as Mrs. Dickinson says that "out of this curious old romance of Solomon Spaulding and the ridiculous seer-stone of Joseph Smith has grown this monstrous Mormon state, which presents a problem that the wisest politician has failed to solve, and whose outcome lies in the mystery of the future."


Note: Although this generic mention of Ellen E. Dickinson's 1880 Scribners article adds nothing new to Dickinson's original reporting, it did stir the memory of a reader in Astoria, Oregon, whose mother had once been a boader in the Rigdon home. Possibly the Oregonian reader first sent a letter to that paper's editor, Harvey Scott, and received no reply. If so, the reader's submission of correspondence to another Portland paper, The New Northwest, may have carried with it a touch of irony -- for that rival weekly was edited by Scott's own sister, Abigail Jane Scott Duniway. See her issue of Sept 9th for details.

THE  MORMON  BIBLE.
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We are in receipt of a letter from Mr. O. P. Henry, an Astoria subscriber, who says, in reference to an article in the Oregonian of recent date concerning the origin of the Mormon Bible, that his mother, who is yet alive, lived in the family of Sidney Rigdon for several years prior to her marriage in 1827; that there was in the family what is now called a "writing medium," also several others in adjacent places, and the Mormon Bible was written by two or three different persons by an automatic power which they believed was inspiration direct from God, the same as produced the original Jewish Bible and Christian New Testament. Mr. H. believes that Sidney Rigdon furnished Joseph Smith with these manuscripts, and that the story of the "hieroglyphics" was a fabrication to make the credulous take hold of the mystery; that Rigdon, having learned, beyond a doubt, that the so-called dead could communicate to the living, considered himself duly authorized by Jehovah to found a new church, under a divine guidance similar to that of Confucius, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Swedenborg, Calvin, Luther or Wesley, all of whom believed in and taught the ministration of spirits. The New Northwest gives place to Mr. Henry's idea as a matter of general interest. The public will, of course, make its own comments and draw its own conclusions.


Note 1: Abigail Jane Scott Duniway (1834-1914) published her The New Northwest in Portland, Oregon, from 1871 to 1887. This was a "suffragette paper," and Mrs. Duniway (who was also a sister to Harvey Scott, editor of the Portland Oregonian) eventually became the Vice President of Susan B. Anthony’s National Woman’s Suffrage Association.

Note 2: The woman who "lived in the family of Sidney Rigdon prior to her marriage in 1827," is not here identified by name. In 1879 the Rev. Robert Patterson, Jr. published a statement from Amarilla (or Amorilla) Brooks Dunlap (Mrs. Amos Dunlap), of Warren (or Howland), Trumbull Co., Ohio, who recalled visiting her uncle, Sidney Rigdon, at Bainbridge, Ohio, at an early date, and seeing there a certain manuscript. According to Mrs. Dunlap, "Whenever he [Rigdon] was reading this he was so completely occupied that he seemed entirely unconscious of anything passing around him." Since Amarilla Brooks was not married until 1832, she obviously was not the mother of O. P. Henry, Mrs. Duniway's 1880 Astoria correspondent.

Note 3: A search of Oregon Census lists shows that an "Orrin P. Henry" lived in Astoria in 1880, and that he was born in Ohio in 1828. This information corresponds with the Feb. 16, 1828 birth of Orrin Parsons Henry, Jr. at Bainbridge, Geauga Co., Ohio. Orrin was the first son of Orrin P. Henry, Sr. and Dencey Adeline Thompson, who were married at Chardon, in Geauga Co., on Mar. 16, 1827. Dencey Adeline Thompson is the only known child of John Thompson and Abigail Dayton, and was born on Apr. 2, 1805 at Longmeadow, Hampden Co., Massachusetts (see Frederick A. Henry's 1905 A Record of the Descendants of Simon Henry, p. 8). By concidence, a son of Solomon Spalding's adopted daughter lived at Longmeadow until 1900. As late as 1880 Dencey was living at Eden, Benton Co., Iowa, under the name of "Densy Henry," in the family of her youngest son, Hiram Russell Henry. In 1881 Hiram moved his family to Holt Co., Nebraska and his mother died there (in the hamlet of Mineola, near Star, in Scott Precinct), on Jan. 24, 1887.

Note 4: Rigdon probably moved his family from Bainbridge, Ohio to Mentor in the spring of 1827, so it appears that Dencey Adeline Thompson, then twenty years of age, was a boarder with Sidney Rigdon's family while they lived at Bainbridge, and no doubt, prior to 1826 when the Rigdons were yet at Pittsburgh. Her work within that family almost certainly entailed taking care of the Rigdon babies, one of whom were born each year between 1821 and 1824. The Rigdons were too poor to employ a nursemaid, even for mere board and room, and it is possible that Dencey's living costs were furnished by Sidney Rigdon's Brooks in-laws (Rigdon's father-in-law, Jeremiah Brooks, supplied the family's dwelling while they lived at Bainbridge). Rigdon paid off his debts at Bainbridge and moved his family in with the Orris Clapp family, at Mentor in Geauga Co., in mid-March, 1827. Dencey probably accompanied the family to Geauga Co. and married Mr. Henry almost immediately upon her arrival there -- perhaps so that the couple could return to Bainbridge as man and wife and begin to raise a family there. For more on Rigdon's stay at Bainbridge, see the account left by George Wilber, who knew him during that period, and whose recollection of the man, as paraphrased in 1886, was that Rigdon had "a strong religious ambition that was not tempered by Christian grace and humility. For a year or more before the advent of Smith they [neighbors in Ohio] saw that Rigdon was bent on devising some new dogma: in short, to start a new church or sect that he could call his own or whose leadership he could share with only a few." Also: "Rigdon did not preach that winter [1825-26?], but was almost constantly engaged upon a manuscript that he was writing or revising. Wilber noticed that towards the close of the term there was much more of it than there was the first time he saw it. Rigdon had before that time been free and communicative, especially upon religious topics; he now appeared reserved reserved and at times reticent. Whenever any reference about his manuscript he seemed disposed to parry inquiry by some general explanation that he was making notes or preparing some papers to throw light upon some portions of the gospel."

Note 5: Contemporary Mormons dismissed O. P. Henry, Jr.s' report of his mother's experiences with the Rigdons as "a new theory" for Book of Mormon origins, whose only redeeming factor, was that, "If this new theory should be caught up by preachers and editors, desperate for some plausible pretence to account for the Book of Mormon, they will have to drop forever the hackneyed and thoroughly riddled old fable called the Spaulding story." Evidently it did not occur to the LDS critics, that Sidney Rigdon's "automatic writing" might be accounted for by mental illness, more readily than by recourse to the spiritualist "medium business." See the Salt Lake City Deseret News of Sept. 22, 1880 for Mormon editorial comments on Mr. Henry's report of Sidney Rigdon's strange personal characteristics.

Joseph Smith, son [sic -nephew?] of the 'prophet,' and two others from Utah, are at Richmond, Mo., comparing the Mormon bible with the original manuscript from the plates alleged to have been given by an angel to Smith, Sr., but the reasons for the comparison have not been made public. Probably the young man, thinking that his father is now an angel with the others don't know where the libel would hurt worst. Naturally enough, old Joseph would go to flock with the angels who were kind enough to give him such a start down to this world, by giving him the exclusive scoop of such a big item, and he would feel very cheap to look down and see young Joseph trying to make a reputation by showing that there was a lie somewhere between the angelic shorthand and the Mormon transcript.


Notes: (forthcoming)