1816, he was a resident of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. These are important facts as we move through the case, alright?

Number one: Rigdon in Pittsburgh. The first evidence that places Rigdon in Pittsburgh, even at the print shop at the right time. Witnesses claim that Spalding believed that Rigdon took the manuscript. Now, a lot of this comes from Eber D. Howe's work, where he sends Hurlbut out to collect affidavits on the Smith family and on Joseph Smith in particular. Many scholars, both in and out of the church, including Dan Vogel, don't give a lot of credibility to these witnesses. So, I'm going to ask you to sort of see these statements with a grain of salt as we go through the slideshow tonight. But, I also would ask you to recognize that there is a decent number of them, and they seem to be very explicit of the experience they had, or the things they heard, or the conversations that took place.

Reverend Joseph Miller, who lived in Amity during Spalding's time there and who tended to him during his last illness. I'm going to—there's a lot of material tonight, you can pause the show at any moment if you're watching on your computer, you can make it full screen, pause the show, read these sources in full. In order to try to make as good a time as we can, while also giving each of these pieces of evidence the amount of time they need, we're going to focus on the things that have the red underlines to them because they're the parts that are pertinent to the conversation that we're having.

Joseph Miller says, "My recollection is that Spalding left a transcript of the manuscript with Patterson for publication. The print shop in Pittsburgh, the primary owner who's there throughout all the years is a man by the last name of Patterson. There are other folks who are invested with him at times. One of those is a man by the name of Lamden. His name will also come up tonight. But, when it says Patterson, just note that what they're talking about is the Pittsburgh print shop office, and Patterson is the guy there and the connection that he has with Rigdon, or that Lamden has with Rigdon.

So, my recollection is that Spalding left a transcript of the manuscript with Patterson for publication. Spalding told me that Sydney Rigdon had taken it. Spalding told me that Sydney Rigdon had taken it or was suspected of taking it. I recollect distinctly that Rigdon's name was mentioned in connection with it.

Then, Reverend R. McKe says, "There was a conversation with Spalding and he says—I think when he says 'he,' saying Spalding—he spoke of the man Rigdon as an employee in the printing or bookbinding establishment of Patterson and Lamden in Pittsburgh." And so, again, the claim by both of these folks is that Spalding himself communicated to them that there was an involvement with Rigdon in this escapade.

So, first thing I have to say is "Amity," that means friendship. The second thing I have to say is this. These are both from "Mormonism Unveiled," which was published in 1834, is that correct?

Say that again. Both of these affidavits are from "Mormonism Unveiled," which was published in 1834, is that correct?

I believe so, because they both reflect chapter 4, pages 66 to 74. I think this is "Mormonism Unveiled" by Eber D. Howe, yes?

Okay, so it's a situation where the story is that Solomon Spalding, and you covered this in your brief synopsis, had written up his manuscript called "Manuscript Found" and had taken it to the print shop with the hopes of getting it published, but he had to get money first. And, for some unknown reason, he leaves his manuscript at the print shop while he's scraping about to get the money, which he never gets. It's there for, I don't know, a while. Eventually, he gets it back. So, any allegation about Sydney Rigdon taking it, I think is tempered by the fact that it's not stolen in the sense of "What the heck happened to my manuscript?" Right? He says he got it back. It was returned to him.

Yeah, and I just want to note that Dan is pointing out that Miller contradicts himself. He gives a testimony ten years earlier in 1869 and suggests that Joseph Smith, by some means, had gotten possession of it, doesn't mention Rigdon at all. And so, that feels like a contradiction to that perspective of Miller in 1878 or 1879 when he gives it.

Okay, this one I thought was interesting. Interesting postmaster remembers Rigden in his connection to the print shop. So, a Mrs. William Eaom, and again, you can pause it and read all of it. But, what she says is that, "I was the daughter of a postmaster and I worked in the post office as a clerk. And then, when my father passed away, my husband became the head postmaster and I worked in the office." She mentioned specific years that she was there, from 1811 to 1816. She's the regular clerk in the office doing the sorting, making up post office in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. This is the post office in Pittsburgh, the Pittsburgh post office during the time that Rigdon and Spalding were there. She says, "I was married in 1815 and the next year, my connection with the office ceased except during the absence of my husband. I knew and distinctly remember Robert and Joseph Patterson, Harrison Lamden, Silas Angles, and Sydney Rigdon. I remember Reverend Mr. Spalding, but simply as one who occasionally called to inquire for letters. I remember there was an evident intimacy between Lamden and Rigdon. They very often came to the office together. I do not know what position, if any, Rigdon filled in Patterson's store or printing office, but I am well assured he was frequently, if not constantly, there for a large part of the time when I was clerk in the post office. I recall Mr. Angles saying that Rigdon was always hanging around the printing office."

Now, this one, there's a few pieces of evidence throughout this slideshow that seem to have a touch more weight than others. I don't know if Dan shared some thoughts on this, but let's see here. If I'm being charitable, I've got to get rid of Miller perhaps misremembered a story about Lamden. So, this is something different: Lamden taking the manuscript home to read. Widow Spalding said the manuscript was returned before they left Pittsburgh, but he may have simply lied. And that's Dan Vogel being charitable, by the way. And we should know, yeah, Dan, there is one witness who says that the manuscript was brought back home. I think it's like Dan said, it's either the wife or the daughter of Spalding that the manuscript was brought back home from the printer's office and put into a chest. And the manuscript "Story Kak Creek," which was discovered in the late 1800s, I believe, 1890-something, I think, was discovered in Hawaii in a chest in the belongings that connected to the print shop. So, there is room to see that the manuscript that was found, manuscript "Story," actually is the one that everybody remembered. But this piece of evidence about the postmaster's daughter and the postmaster's wife, the next postmaster, this one sort of stuck out to me a little bit as having a little bit of weight. She knows all the names of the players, first name and last name, even, I think in one instance, gives a middle name, Jay Harrison Lamden, Silas Angles. And I sort of want to believe or I want to believe there's a postal employee who is connected to the postmaster and says that she had direct interaction with Rigdon. Your thoughts on this? And maybe you've been reading Dan as he's posting. I have trouble sort of reading and talking at the same time, I can't do that. But any thoughts from you on this particular source, and then we'll move on to the next one?

Well, the deed is supposed to have gone down in Pittsburgh at the print shop. And there's a post office in Pittsburgh as well. And all this is doing right now is showing opportunity. It's not showing anything else except that, according to these allegations, Sidney Rigdon was present at the time the manuscript was allegedly stolen from the print shop.

Yeah, and that will become much more interesting when we hear what Sidney Rigdon has to say about this. Yeah, so that's the next thing, which is Rigdon's response. So, when "Mormonism Unveiled" by Eber D. Howe, there's an announcement of its publication in 1833. We'll show that later, and then the book is actually published in 1834. And as soon as this theory makes its way back to Sidney Rigdon, he addresses it. And I'll have to make this full screen, but here's what it says. Again, talking about this is Rigdon's writing. He's the one very at the very far right bottom. You can see, respectfully, S. Rigdon, he's writing to a Bartlett and Sullivan. He's essentially saying, "Hey, this theory's been brought to me. I'm going to address it." So, now he says at the top, it says, "Commerce, May 27th, 1839." Oh, I'm sorry, I thought it was right about the same year, but five years later, then, okay. So, addressing a certain Solomon Spalding, I had not the most distant knowledge of his existence. And again, I'm only reading the red underline because that, to me, is the most important parts. You're welcome to pause it and read it. This being the only information which I have or ever had of this said Reverend Solomon Spalding. In other words, hearing the theory was the first time Sidney Rigdon had ever had brought to his attention the name Solomon Spalding. He claims he did not know Solomon Spalding before this theory was brought to his attention. He says, "In relation to the whole story about Spalding's writings being in the hands of Mr. Patterson, who was in Pittsburgh and who is said to have kept a printing office, my saying that I was concerned in said office, etc., etc., is the most base of lies without even the shadow of truth. There was no man by the name of Patterson during my residence at Pittsburgh who had a printing office. What might have been before I lived there, I know not. Mr. Robert Patterson, I was told, had owned a printing office before I lived in that city, but had been unfortunate in business and had failed before my residence there. If I were to say that I had ever heard of the Reverend Solomon Spalding and his hopeful wife until Dr. P. Hurlbut wrote his lie about me, I should be a liar like unto themselves." And he doesn't say it as clearly as I wish he had, but he indicates that based on his understanding of how business was being done at that Patterson print shop, that it had gone out of business before he resided in the city of Pittsburgh. Again, they went bankrupt the first time in 1818, the second time is 1822 or 1823. And as Dan is pointing out in the show, the historical claim from the critics of the Spalding manuscript theory is that Rigdon didn't move to Pittsburgh until 1822. So, there's that. The thing here is that if Sydney Rigdon is really showing up in the printing office in the 18—T, if I can call it that, before 1822, the 1810s, if he really did show up there in that office, then it would be much more likely that he would have heard about Patterson and would have actually met him and known who he was. But here, in his 1839 statement, Sydney Rigdon is denying even that much. He says he never knew Patterson, period, and that he was only told about him after he had moved to Pittsburgh, which was 1822.

Yeah. So then, Mrs. Spalding herself, she ends up remarrying pretty quickly after Solomon Spalding dies, and then becomes Mrs. Davidson. But she stated, "Sydney Rigdon was at the time 1812 to 1814 connected with the printing office of Mr. Patterson, as is well known in that region and as Rigdon himself has frequently stated." Again, that's her claim. We don't see anywhere where Rigdon states that even once. Here, he had ample opportunity to become acquainted with Mr. Spalding's manuscript and to copy it if he chose. It was a matter of notoriety and interest to all who were concerned with the printing establishment. Solomon Spalding's daughter confirmed. She declared that her mother held a firm conviction that Sydney Rigdon had copied the manuscript. So, there's a little bit of the family chiming in about their experience. RFM, do you want to read this one?

Yes, I will. And, by the way, just so everybody understands, the reason that they are surmising that Sydney Rigdon helped himself to the manuscript in some way or other, even though there's apparently no evidence of it being stolen, okay, is alleged similarities between what many of the people who claim to have read "Manuscript Found" see between that manuscript and the Book of Mormon, yeah, fair to say?

Yep, yeah. Okay, so, this is Mrs. A. Treadwell Redfield remembered the early assertions of Spalding's widow and stated, "In the year 1818, I was principal of the Onand Daga Valley Academy." By the way, isn't Onand Daga a similar word to Onen Deas or something from the Book of Mormon?

Yeah, so I just want to note that. I don't know that I want to say anything more. I don't think there's a connection there, but I do think it's sort of strange that word stood out to me, yeah, absolutely. Those Indian names, those Native American names have a long pedigree. They go back to Book of Mormon times, yeah, totally, and some to the Book of Moses, even. Okay, Mrs. Spalding believed that Sydney Rigdon had copied the manuscript while it was in Patterson's printing office in Pittsburgh. She spoke of it with regret. I never saw her after her marriage. And then it says, "Mrs. Davidson was married in 1820 and therefore Mrs. Redfield." So she was married four years after Reverend Spalding passed away, and therefore Mrs. Redfield remembered a testimony from before that date and long before Rigdon became a Mormon, yeah.

Okay, yeah. So, she remembers it before Mrs. Spalding's remarriage. You know, remarried somebody, and she remembers Mrs. Spalding talking to her about Sydney Rigdon being the possible culprit for taking the manuscript. And I guess this last line stating rather the obvious, which I'm known to do from time to time as well, which is that if she were married in 1820, remarried in 1820, and if this Mrs. Redfield never spoke to her after she got married, then any reminiscence of what it was that Mrs. Spalding said to her would have had to have predated 1820, right? Otherwise, she'd be Mrs. Davidson, yep, okay.

On January 20th, 1884, James Jeffrey, an acquaintance of Rigdon, wrote, "I knew Sydney Rigdon. Rigdon told me several times in his conversations with me that there was in the printing office with which he was connected in Ohio," so they get the state wrong, "a manuscript of the Reverend Spalding tracing the origin of the Indians from the lost tribes of Israel. This manuscript was in the office several years. He was familiar with it. He, Rigdon, and Joe Smith used to look over the manuscript and read it on Sundays. Rigdon and Smith took the manuscript and said, 'I'll print it,' and went off to Palmyra, New York." So, there's that one. I thought he was going to say, "Can you go back to that?" Yeah, by all means, because I thought he was going to say, I knew Sydney Rigdon, I worked with Sydney Rigdon, and you, Senator, are no Sydney Rigdon. But he was Sydney Rigdon, yeah, apparently. Although, once again, we have all of these reports, or at least a few reports, that people are saying, "Hey, Sydney told me this stuff," so I'm recollecting what he told me. But there's nothing anywhere where Sydney actually says this himself, correct?

Yep. And to the audience, especially those who watch this not live, you should be keenly aware that Dan Vogel, a very respected scholar of Mormonism, is in our live chat, as we've already pointed out. It would be well of you to make sure that you turn that live chat on and watch it. Because we're not putting up every comment by Dan, and we would want you to have the full scope of information and not be presented with one side. We will, at the end of this slideshow, which again, may end tonight, it may end next week, but we will, at the end of this slideshow, put up Dan's responses to the evidence. We won't spend time on it, but you'll have a chance to pause it and read those so that you can also be familiar with the counterargument. We really are trying to focus in this episode or two on the evidence that's for the theory to sort of give people a feel for why this has some weight in the minds of some. By the way, it has to be noted, this is from a statement of 18—1984. So, this is 40 years after the fact. Yes, yeah. And most of these are late recollections, for what it's worth. Okay, here is a newspaper called the Cleveland Leader. This is March 14th, 1886. It's an article about Mormonism, and there's a conversation being had from a C. E. Henry who is sharing his personal experience in the Cleveland Leader. Some of these I could not find the original newspaper. I really try hard to find original sources so that you can see that we're not conflating something, that something wasn't transcribed incorrectly, or even made up entirely.