The first I ever heard of [Joseph] Smith [Jr.], & which caused me, in part, to make the remarks about him, which I did, in a his<t[ory?]> I wrote & delivered at a 4th of July celebration here in 1876, was in the Spring (April) 1829–I was travelling in the Stage between this place & Geneva [,] Ontario Co. which is within a few miles of Palmira, & a man whose name, to the best of my recollection, was Richards,[8] got into the Stage house when on <the? rout & Said he resided at Palmira, & had been to Quages, which was in the town of Colesville a few miles from South Bainbridge village to See Jos[eph] Smith, who had resided in Palmira, &had found a gold bible & stone in which he looked & was thereby enabled to translate the very ancient chara[c]ters which <he> found in the bible. He Said Smith was poor & was living in a house which had only one room <in which he could keep [for?]> & Smith had a sheet put up in one corner & went behind it from observation when he was writing the bible. He Said Smith kept the bible hid or covered up & put it in a hat & had the Stone which <he> found in Pal=mira & look[e]d through it & then wrote what he read in the bible. He Said <he> would not let him see the bible but let him feel of it when it was covered up. Smith read to him a good deal of the bible & he repeated to those in the Stage verse after verse of what Smith had read to him; & I afterwards remem^bered Some of the names <& language> when I read the Mormon bible. An other gentleman in <the> Stage who knew Richards, Said he [Richards] was a man of Some property & had lent Smith money, & [that he[ had found [that] the books history [was] on the lost tribes of Israel. This gentleman said he did not believe that Jos[eph] was capable of composing any thing, but that Jo's father was a man of some education & cunning & shr[ewd], & he thought he was at the bottom of the matter, & had made the bible & was duping others through Joe, & that there were cheating Richards out of his money.

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I am sure it was in <April> 1829 when I saw <&> had the conversation with Richards, & I always supposed that it was before that he [Joseph Smith] was arrested & driven out of town. But perhaps it was af=ter he wrote the bible or a part of it. . . .

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I am not certain the man's name was Richards but I think so. It was the man who assisted him to means to print his bible. There might have been others. He believed in Smith.

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8. This "Richards" was likely the same man mentioned in [Martin] Harris's 1870 statement as a Mr. "Rogers," whom Harris said was opposed to Smith (III.F.15, MARTIN HARRIS TESTIMONY, 4 SEP 1870). Later in the paragraph it becomes clear that Sayre has reversed the identities of Rogers/Richards and Harris himself.