Evidence from Joseph Smith’s sister

From yet another of my manuscripts-in-progress, a few lines on one of the lesser-known and unofficial witnesses to the Book of Mormon plates:

Illinois state senator Orville F. Berry wrote a tribute to Katharine Smith Salisbury not long after her death, in her late eighties, on 2 February 1900: “There resided in this county, until her death, Catherine Smith Salisbury, sister of the prophet.  The writer knew her personally, has been in her house many times and has grown up from boyhood days with her sons and grandsons, and the world would be wonderfully well off if all women were as good as Catherine Smith Salisbury.”[1]

Mary Salisbury Hancock, the granddaughter of Joseph’s sister Katharine, remembered Katharine relating an episode when Joseph, with the plates in his possession, had been chased by a mob:

Hearing an unusual commotion outside Catherine flew to the door and threw it open just as Joseph came rushing up, panting for breath.  He thrust a bundle into her arms, and in a gasping voice whispered hoarsely, “Take these quickly and hide them,” then he disappeared into the darkness.  Closing the door Catherine ran hurriedly to the bedroom where she and Sophronia slept.  Sophronia threw back the bedding and Catherine put the bundle on the bed, quickly replacing the bedding.  Both of them lay down on the bed and pretended sleep.  The mob, failing to find Joseph outside, returned to the house to search, but they did not disturb the girls since they appeared to be sleeping.[2]

Herbert S. Salisbury, grandson of Joseph’s sister Katharine, said that she

told me that while dusting up the room where the Prophet had his study she saw a package on the table containing the gold plates on which was engraved the story of the Book of Mormon.  She said she hefted those plates and found them very heavy like gold and also rippled her fingers up the edge of the plates and felt that they were separate metal plates and heard the tinkle of sound that they made.[3]

Thus, including the night on which the plates were first brought to the Smith home from Cumorah, Katharine was able to heft the plates on at least three distinct occasions.

[1] Orville F. Berry, “The Mormon Settlement in Illinois,” Transactions of the Illinois State Historical Society for the year 1906 11 (1906): 93.  [See original.]  See also Kyle R. Walker, “Katharine Smith Salisbury: Sister to the Prophet,” Mormon Historical Studies 3/1 (2002): 5-34.

[2] Mary Salisbury Hancock, “The Three Sisters of the Prophet Joseph Smith,” The Saints’ Herald 101/2 (11 January 1954): 36.  [See original]

[3] “The Prophet’s Sister Testifies She Lifted the B. of M. Plates,” The Messenger (October 1954): I, 6 [typescript copy in LDS Church Archives; see original].

These notes are based on a reading of Kyle R. Walker, “Katharine Smith Salisbury: Sister to the Prophet,” in Mormon Historical Studies  3/1 (2002): 5-34.  Mormon Historical Studies is the journal of the invaluable Mormon Historic Sites Foundation.

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Book of Mormon Central has just posted a very good new 7.5-minute video — featuring the exiled and desperately cold Stephen Smoot — that I hope many will both watch and share:

“Evidences of the Book of Mormon: Translation”

For links that will help you to understand the sad but instructive and cautionary tale of Brother Smoot, see here:

“A new ‘Introduction to the Book of Abraham'”

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Dan Vogel, a formerly-Mormon writer with whom I’m actually on entirely polite terms (or, anyway, so I think; we don’t see each other very often), has been acting up again.  Ireland’s Robert Boylan has begun to respond:

“Psalm 110:1 and the two Lords in the 1832 First Vision Account”

“Another Anti-Mormon Double Standard”

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After incredulously reading several hagiographic obituaries for the late Hugh Hefner, I was relieved, finally, to see some appropriately critical evaluations appear.  You can find the links that I’ve posted to them here.

Ross Douthat, though, a conservative who (astonishingly) writes for the New York Times, has now told the unvarnished truth:

“Speaking Ill of Hugh Hefner”

Posted from Park City, Utah