Dan Vogel wrote:SPALDING THEORY: HOW IT ALL GOT STARTED
One criticism I have of Cowdrey, Davis, and Vanick's Who Really Wrote the Book of Mormon?... is that it
ignores the dangers of interviewers leading the witnesses and witnesses contaminating one another. There is no
awareness that the Spalding theory had a life and history of its own that needs careful examination. The witnesses
were also caught up in the Spalding phenomenon and were blending memories with interpretations.
Actually, Dan, this is a "phenomenon" which I have considered. Every now and then somebody will point out to me
a previously unexamined old Spalding claims source, and I am left to wonder if the writer or reporter of the information
in that source was aware of all that had gone on before his/her day --- or if that source was even aware of
most of
what had gone on in Spalding-Rigdon reporting before his/her day.
My conclusions have generally been that such sources
were typically aware of the Spalding claims -- because
those claims were practically the
only non-Mormon explanation for the "Nephite Record" offered to the general
reading public from the late 1830s down to the early years of the 20th century.
The information in such sources was typically given at the solicitation of an investigator, or a book/article writer, or
in response to an ongoing discussion of the Mormons in the popular press. However, some peripheral source material
seems to have come directly from witnesses (or reports from witnesses, or from mundane records, etc.) in which the
source appears to have been unaware of the Spalding-Rigdon claims -- or at least unconcerned with them. These sources
have usually sparked my interest and attention in ways that testimony-givers knowing much about Spalding and
Rigdon have not. I know that a couple of people connected with the researching or compilation of Art's book share my
perceptions in this regard.
We have a parallel "phenomenon: in the case of testimony and supporting evidence elucidating the secret polygamy of
Joseph, Hyrum and William Smith at Nauvoo. My RLDS/CoC coreligionists tend to dismiss much of the pro-polygamy
evidence as examples of "interviewers leading the witnesses and witnesses contaminating one another;" as well as "the
witnesses" being "caught up in the [polygamy-exposing] phenomenon" so that they "were blending memories with
interpretations." The results of this super-cautionary stance by the RLDS, is that they generally disallow the examination
of ANY evidence put forward by, solicited by, or even cited by the "apostate Mormons" and the "persecuting Gentiles."
Obviously we can be
too accepting of cumulative evidence, just as we can be
too dismissive of such material.
I have had the opportunity of discussing either a little or a lot of the obscure sources I have uncovered, with LDS
scholars & apologists such as Matt Roper, Matthew J. Tandy, Ara Norwood, Rex C. Reeve, Wade Englund, Lester E. Bush,
etc. Allow me to present a sort of composite response I have derived from such people, in the case of George Wilber's
early eye-witness testimony concerning Sidney Rigdon:
(1) I have been told that the Wilber testimony about Sidney Rigdon working rather secretively on an extended bout of
manuscript writing, while he lived at Bainbridge twp., Geauga Co., Ohio, four miles east of Mr. Wilber's residence, must
be disallowed from consideration, because we do not have any authenticated, first-hand document from Mr. Wilber himself.
(2) I have been told that the Wilber testimony of Rigdon having met with Joseph Smith, in or near Bainbridge, during
the mid-1820s, must be disallowed from consideration, because Charles E. Henry, the friend of Wilber's who preserved
that information was obviously very anti-Mormon in his feelings and statements -- and, furthermore, that his father,
John Henry, who knew Rigdon at the time they both lived within a couple of miles of each other at Bainbridge, was
obviously very critical of Rigdon and of Rigdon's restorationist religion. Also, because Charles Henry's report of Wilber's
testimony was not published until 1886, we cannot rule out that it was simply a re-hash of the testimony given by Rigdon's
niece, Amarilla Brooks Dunlap, from when she visited Rigdon's Bainbridge cabin in 1826 or 1827. Since Rigdon's neice's
recollection of Rigdon and his manuscript had been published in 1879, her words must have contaminted Mr. Henry's
own 1886 reporting of what his father and his friend Mr. Wilber had once said. And, as one last matter, it is even possible
that Arthur B. Deming stopped to visit with the Henry family, during his collection of statements from old Auburn residents
like Isaac Butts and Emily Rockwell Stafford, who had known either Rigdon, Smith or both. In fact, Mr. Henry's report
may have been copied directly from Deming, and thus might be a sterling example of evidence "cross-contamination."
(3) I have been told that the Wilber testimony of Rigdon having lived within a few dozen yards of the schoolhouse where
Wilber purportedly taught school in 1825-26, is unreliable, because the only records of Wilber having been a teacher, or
having been associated with public education, comes from his own residence in adjacent Auburn, Ohio and not from
Bainbridge (four miles to the west).
(4) I have been told that the Wilber testimony of Rigdon having met, known, and cooperated with Joseph Smith, Jr. in
and around Bainbridge-Auburn is unreliable, because any such activities purportedly witnessed by or communicated to
George Wilber, would have been conducted under such a cover of secrecy, that Wilber could not possibly have known
of any such improbable collusion --- therefore, it stands to reason that Mr. Wilber was an anti-Mormon who made up
his account out of thin air and/or his friend Charles E. Henry embellished Wilber's testimony for anti-Mormon purposes:
that both men must have become aware of Rigdon's alleged participation with Smith in writing the Book of Mormon, and
that their memories (and those of Charles' father John and his cousin's wife Dencey Thompson Henry, both of whom
knew Rigdon personally) had become adversely tainted by the later developments of anti-Mormonism.
(5) That George Wilber was an unreliable witness, because he must have learned of his neighbor, Gad Stafford, having
been a very early follower of Joseph Smith, from Pomeroy Tucker's 1867 book, and therefore Wilber had let his
imagination run wild with him -- thinking that because Gadius Stafford had moved into Auburn before Joseph Smith
announced finding the "golden plates," that Stafford would have naturally provided a place for Smith and Rigdon to
get together, on his farm in "Kirtland" (as the hamlet at the center of Auburn was then called). Thus, just because
Tucker had called Mr. Stafford a money-digger and Smith-follower in 1867, George Wilber must have projected back
in time that picture of Stafford to a period 40 years beforehand.
(6) And, finally, that George Wilber's opinion of Joseph Smith had been totally corrupted by the arrival of his next-door
neighbor, Joshua Stafford the younger, who (like his uncle Gadius) had come from Manchester, NY to live in Auburn.
Since Joshua was identified, along with Gad, as money-digging followers of Smith on page 38 of Tucker's book, George
Wilber again let his imagination run away with him, believing all of Joshua's wild tales of being a Smith-follower back
in Manchester (along with re-tellings of his 1833 statement given to D. P. Hurlbut and published the next year by Howe).
Thus, Wilber having one of D. P. Hurlbut's star witnesses, in his campaign against the reputation of the Smith family,
living next door to his farm in Auburn, negatively influenced Wilber's testimony. Also, the fact that Wilber's
next
neighbor on the road north from his residence (after Stafford) was Henry Capron, the son of Joseph Capron (another
1833 Hurlbut witness from Manchester, NY), served to taint his testimony. Finally, the fact that Elias Fish, a cousin of
Abraham Fish of Manchester, bought his own father's farm (the Pardon Wilber homested in Auburn) from him, gave
Wilber access to the contaminating, second-hand input of yet another Smith associate (since Tucker had also pointed
out Abraham Fish as a Smith-follower, and because his cousin Elias Fish lived for many years in neighboring Macedon
and would have told George Wilber all the juicy tales of Palmyra area money-digging).
So -- the testimony of George Wilber must be stricken from the record, along with the early evidence uncovered by
Carl M. Brewster (a cousin of Charles Henry and a member of the Brewster family whose farms were the next ones
north of Stafford and Capron, on the road running from the Wilber farm up towards Mentor). Since Brewster found
articles in the old
Geauga Democrat of money-digging and seer-stone consultations going on in Auburn, dating to
a little before the arrival of Gad Stafford there, such reports must be disallowed, as the cumulative effects of hostile
recollections of the very money-diggers who had persecuted Joseph Smith, when he refused to share with them the
great value of the golden treasure he had at last uncovered, after so many night-time attempts in their company.
Since these Manchester money-diggers who congregated in Auburn during the 1820s and 1830s were obviously
anti-Mormons (John L. Brooke, in his
The Refiner's Fire pp. 369-370, identifies some of them as Smith-followers
who did not accept Mormonism), then
any information given by them, or about them, in old Geauga Co., Ohio
newspaper articles, must be stricken from the record. In the same way, so must the allegations of the Rev. Lawrence
Greatrake, in his 1826 pamphlet, (published at Mantua, Ohio and preserved by the Ohio Historical Society in Columbus).
If Rev. Greatrake says that Sidney Rigdon, while living in Bainbridge that year, was associating with a confidence man
and crystal gazer, then Greatrake's 1826 testimony must be disallowed as that of an objective witness, since he was
Rigdon's replacement in the Baptist Church at Pittsburgh, put in office by Rigdon's opponents, and was for years
afterward an avowed enemy of Sidney (and also of Alexander Campbell, Walter Scott and Sidney's brother-in-law,
Adamson Bentley) -- an enemy who had followed Rigdon all the way to Bainbridge, to dig up dirt on the poor fellow.
None of this stuff can be talked about -- because it is cumulative stuff and has obviously been contaminated by people
hostile to Smith and Rigdon. It is therefore impossible that Sidney Rigdon ever rode his horse five miles to the east to
visit with Gad Stafford in 1827, or four miles to the east to visit with the Antisdale family, or the Butts family, or half a
dozen other Palmyra/Manchester families who congregated in Auburn before 1829. In fact, Isaac Butts' statement in
the "Early Mormon Documents" compilation should also be suppressed, because Isaac knew Joseph Smith and was
related to Abraham Fish via the marriage of Isaac's cousin, Pardon Butts, to Fish's wife's sister. Or, if Butts' statement
is not fully removed from the EMD set, it should at least be edited, to remove the reference of any Auburn, Ohio man
of Manchester, NY extraction knowing Sidney Rigdon before the Book of Mormon was published. Just as all other material
supportive of any facet of the Spalding-Rigdon theory has been removed from the EMD set, so should parts of Butts'
testimony, and perhaps also that of Emily Rockwell Stafford of Manchster and Auburn (since her brother Porter Rockwell
could not possibly have visited her or her Stafford in-laws (along with his friend Smith) in Auburn before 1832).
It is also impossible that so young a man as Joseph Smith, Jr. would have traveled so far afield from his Manchester
home, to visit with the likes of the Stafford clan in far-off Kirtland hamlet, Auburn township, Geauga Co., Ohio. So,
we must also throw out Mr. Purple's account of Smith having traveled westward, out of NY, before 1826, seeking a new
seer-stone, (or we must at least edit its appearance in the EMD set to eliminate any reference to Smith which might
prove helpful to Spalding-Rigdon advocates) -- and, of course, we must totally reject Thurlow Weed's undocumented
allegations of a similar early westward journey by young Smith. Anybody who accused Smith of such distant youthful
rambles was no doubt biased in his speculative reporting, having doubtless heard of Smith's subsequent long-range
travels in company with Sidney Rigdon to Washington, D.C.; Salem, MA; Independence, MO; Upper Canada; Detroit, MI,
etc. Reports of these sorts of later Smith travels have cross-contaminated one another, giving some biased reporters
the plausibility of saying that Smith could have visited Auburn, Ohio (in company with Oliver Cowdery or Port Rockwell)
before Smith himself actually moved immediately south of Auburn, in later years, to temporarily reside in Hiram. And,
while we are editing old statements, so as not to provide any help to the Spalding advocates, let's also edit out Mr.
Saunders' mention of Oliver Cowdery having come to the Manchester area from "Kirtland" -- after all, that is where
Gad Stafford and his money-digging friends and relatives were then living, and we would not want to place a man so
innocent as rodsman Oliver Cowdery in the probable company of any crystal-gazers, now would we?
Brent is right -- all the Spalding evidence is worthless, because of the "wherefore/therefore" distribution in the Book of Mormon text --
and I ought to immediately burn my files and give up my useless researching this sort of "cross-contaminated"
hearsay.
Uncle Dale