Response to Jockers, Criddle, et al., Now Available

[_Roger]

UD:

Recall that Winchester was Joseph Smith's brother-in-law, and spent time close to Smith in private situations.

I probably knew that at some point, but needed the reminder.

I was wondering if maybe in all of Winchester's digging into the Spalding question he stumbled onto some tidbit about Cowdery, but it sounds like he just concluded the two of them produced it together.

What still gets me is that Howe's wife was a Mormon and, I think I remember reading they had Smith over for dinner a time or two!

[_Roger]

UD:

That is to say -- I'm mapping the occurrences of some of the yellow
colored word-strings throughout the Book of Mormon text, to try and
determine their distribution patterns.

I want to study whether or not page 282 has a unique assembly of
Cowdery-shared language, or if the phraseology is relatively uniform
throughout the Book of Mormon.

I chose this particular page for my current studies, because of the
juxtapositioning of "every whit" with "a pointing." That textual oddity
caught my attention -- and I was left wondering whether page 282
more resembled the language of Rigdon (who used a-prefixed verbs)
or Cowdery (whose preserved writings include "a whit").

Have you mapped out "it is expedient"? That phrase is all over that page.

[_Roger]

Glenn:

Agreed, but it certainly is evidence that someone was under the impression he would be. Beyond that, it supports Rebecca Eichbaum's testimony.

But what is that evidence of in and of itself as regards the any Rigdon to Spalding connection? This was 1816, the year that Spalding died. He had been living in Amity the past two years, yet someone still though he might be getting his mail in Pittsburg. The reason we know about those letters is because they had not been picked up and the fact was being reported in the newspaper.

The significance is that Rigdon's name appears on the notice and that Rigdon was picking up mail at the Pittsburgh post office as early as 1816, as Eichbaum claimed. That Spalding's name also appears is icing on the cake. If I remember correctly Rigdon denied being in Pittsburgh before a certain date (can't remember now what date). In any event, His name on the mail waiting notice supports Rebecca Eichbaum's claim that Rigdon and Lambdin would come in to the post office together on Sundays to collect mail. Prior to the discovery, her testimony was simply dismissed by S/R critics.

Rebecca Eichbaum's testimony was refuted by the wife of Lambdin.

No it wasn't. Rigdon and Lambdin had been friends before she married Lambdin and Rigdon had moved on before then as well. Lambdin was dead at the time of the interview. She could not testify to what she didn't know. Lucky break for Rigdon.

[_MCB]

Have you mapped out "it is expedient"? That phrase is all over that page.

I have 363 pages for my electronic copy. It occurs 62 times throughout. Expectation is .17. Reality is .11 in the books before Jarom. I don't know if this is significant or not. I'm busy doing other things right now.

[_Uncle Dale]

...
The significance is that Rigdon's name appears on the notice and that Rigdon was picking up mail at the Pittsburgh post office as early as 1816, as Eichbaum claimed.
...

Three supporting facts:

1. Rigdon's son said that Sidney had preached in Pittsburgh
before the family's 1822 relocation to that (then) small city.

2. Rigdon's relatives said that Sidney "returned" to Pittsburgh
when he moved there in 1822 -- showing that he had been
in Pittsburgh prior to 1822.

3. When Apostle John E. Page interviewed Robert Patterson, Sr.
in 1842, Patterson mentioned that Rigdon was not connected
with the bookselling business until after 1816. In other words,
Rigdon's connection evidently came after the firm was split
up in 1818 and J.H. Lambdin was running the business, apart
from Patterson's control.

No it wasn't. Rigdon and Lambdin had been friends before she married Lambdin and Rigdon had moved on before then as well. Lambdin was dead at the time of the interview. She could not testify to what she didn't know. Lucky break for Rigdon.

Lambdin's wife would have had an opportunity to meet Sidney
during the period that he was a preacher in Pittsburgh --
before he moved out of town near the end of 1825. However,
if Mr. Lambdin never brought Sidney home for Sunday dinner,
or some other social occasion, there was no particular reason
that Mrs. Lambdin SHOULD have ever met Sidney Rigdon.

Rigdon's connection with the Pittsburgh bookselling business
would have been after its break-up in 1818 and before Sidney
moved out of Pittsburgh in 1825. We have two bits of testimony
showing that Sidney was selling leather book-bindings to the
printing firm run by Silas Engles during this period. Lambdin and
Engles had been associated before the publishing firm broke up
and Lambdin had been a partner in his own printing business
with Mr. Butler prior to 1825.

It is therefore possible that the "journeyman tanner," Sidney
Rigdon, was also selling leather book-bindings to Mr. Lambdin,
in 1823-25. By then Lambdin was out of the publishing business,
but was operating a book and stationery store. He may have
needed leather sheets to bind up some unbound volumes left
over from his defunct printing business -- or to make blank
page journals -- or, perhaps to do custom binding of sets
of pamphlets, almanacs, etc.

If "journeyman tanner" Sidney Rigdon was occasionally
supplying leather book-bindings to BOTH Silas Engles AND
J.H. Lambdin in 1823-25, that fact would explain why
Rev. Patterson had reported Sidney's connection with the
Pittsburgh book-selling business occurred after 1816.

If J.H. Lambdin's wife (who had moved to Pittsburgh from
out-of-town) was a Presbyterian (like her husband), she
would have had no occasion to hear the fallen Baptist
Elder (and journeyman tanner) Sidney Rigdon preaching
his Campbellite doctrines in 1823-25. Mrs. Lambdin may have
been vaguely aware that the local Baptists were all stirred
up and broken into factions -- but it is entirely possible
that she was uninterested in such religious news and
never bothered to find out the details. She may never had
any reason to ask her husband, "is the leader of these
troublesome Campbellites somebody you know?"

My guess is that Rigdon's "connection" with what was left
of the old Patterson book and stationery business during
1823-25 may have been marginal and occasional, and that
he was not an intimate friend of J.H. Lambdin by then.

My question is ----> Was young Sidney Rigdon bringing
leather book-bindings into Pittsburgh BEFORE 1816, when
he had not yet advanced from an apprentice to journeyman?

Unfortunately we know nothing about Sidney's apprenticeship
in the leather tanning and finishing trade. It probably was
accomplished part-time, while he was still a farmboy on his
father's farm outside of Pittsburgh.

UD

[_GlennThigpen]

Interesting, isn't it, that Josiah had such a great memory of what was actually in the Roman story after forty years! It's odd that no one accuses him of suffering from false memory syndrome given that his memories are more than twenty years later than those of the Conneaut witnesses who, virtually every S/R critic agrees could simply not remember what they claim to remember after 20 years! Apparently Josiah's memory was superhuman. That's all I can figure. (Because we all know that unanimous S/R critics can't be wrong!)

What is interesting is that his description is very different from that of the Hurlbut coached witnesses. Josiah had very little Book of Mormon exposure. No Book of Morman names.
The Amity witnesses also mentioned no Book of Mormon names. The two Matilda's did not mention any Book of Mormon names in their first interviews. The daughter did exhibit a remarkable memory gain later on in life though, and did "remember" some Book of Moron names.
But in all reality, only the Hurlbut coached witnesses initially mentioned the Book of Mormon names.

Glenn

[_GlennThigpen]

But what is that evidence of in and of itself as regards the any Rigdon to Spalding connection? This was 1816, the year that Spalding died. He had been living in Amity the past two years, yet someone still thought he might be getting his mail in Pittsburg. The reason we know about those letters is because they had not been picked up and the fact was being reported in the newspaper.

The significance is that Rigdon's name appears on the notice and that Rigdon was picking up mail at the Pittsburgh post office as early as 1816, as Eichbaum claimed. That Spalding's name also appears is icing on the cake. If I remember correctly Rigdon denied being in Pittsburgh before a certain date (can't remember now what date). In any event, His name on the mail waiting notice supports Rebecca Eichbaum's claim that Rigdon and Lambdin would come in to the post office together on Sundays to collect mail. Prior to the discovery, her testimony was simply dismissed by S/R critics.

Rigdon denied living in Pittsburg. He did not deny ever being in Pittsburg. The latters had not been picked up. That is why we know about them. That letter was on the dead letter list for almost a month. Letters were held for thirty days prior to their publication in the Dead Letter List. So we have six to eight weeks at the least that the letter intended for Rigdon was picked up, if it ever was. What would happen to a letter after it had been advertised for several weeks and never picked up? It would be disposed of. This according to The Spalding Enigma.

In any event, it shows that Rigdon was at best an infrequent show at the post office and not a regular, consistent with a person living some distance away from the town and inconsistent with Eichbaum's statement.
Also, unless evidence can be shown that Spalding's widow took the manuscript again to the printer's office, the question is moot, because it appears that it was returned to Solomon prior to his move to Amity in 1814. We know that he had it there because of the Amity witnesses.
Spalding's widow said that she put all of the Solomon's writings that she had preserved in the trunk that Hurlbut retrieved it from.

Glenn

[_Uncle Dale]

...
it appears that it was returned to Solomon prior to his move to Amity in 1814
...

And, according to the report on Apostle John E. Page's 1842 interview of
Rev. Robert Patterson, Sr., Spalding's widow brought his manuscript back
to Patterson for reconsideration, late in 1816 or early in 1817.

Are we to suppose that the widow was so stupid as to re-submit the
previously refused manuscript, without even attempting to add a paragraph
or two, indicating a proper ending?

Are we to suppose that the widow was so stupid as to re-submit the
prior story, for publication and sales, without bothering to remove the
extraneous draft letter addressed to somebody's parents?

Are we to suppose that Rev. Patterson was so stupid as to accept a
ridiculous, ill-written, unfinished, and unfinishable story for further
consideration -- a manuscript he and his printer had already refused
once before?

Are we to suppose that Rev. Patterson needed more than a ten second
glance at something so messy and useless as the Oberlin Roman story,
before handing it straight back to the widow, refusing to keep it in his
office for the lengthy period of reconsideration mentioned to Apostle Page?

I say no --- that it was not the draft of the Roman story now preserved
at Oberlin College that the hopeful widow brought to the Patterson publishing
office after her husband's death in 1816.

The story described by Josiah Spalding differs somewhat from the actual
contents of the document now at Oberlin -- and LDS expert Matt Roper
agrees that the Roman story went through more than one draft writing.

So -- WHAT story did the widow submit to Patterson? Was it the lost
"Frogs of Wyndham?" ---- No, say the Mormons -- because Spalding never
wrote any other piece of fiction than the Roman story.

Then again, the "Deseret News" published a statement saying that Spalding
wrote a story about the Ten Lost Tribes crossing the Behring Straits --
and the "Millennial Star" used reports of this same Lost Tribes Spalding story
to refute claims that he had contributed anything to the Book of Mormon.

Why would the LDS in 2011 argue that it is impossible that the widow submitted
any document other than the unfinished, ridiculous Oberlin manuscript?

Uncle Dale

[_GlennThigpen]

...
it appears that it was returned to Solomon prior to his move to Amity in 1814
...

And, according to the report on Apostle John E. Page's 1842 interview of
Rev. Robert Patterson, Sr., Spalding's widow brought his manuscript back
to Patterson for reconsideration, late in 1816 or early in 1817.

Are we to suppose that the widow was so stupid as to re-submit the
previously refused manuscript, without even attempting to add a paragraph
or two, indicating a proper ending?

Uncle Dale

Not stupid. Just not knowledgeable. She admits to never having read the manuscript herself. One of the reports said that the manuscript was not published the first time because Solomon could not afford the surety. Note that the report says that she offered to give Patterson half of the profits if he would publish it.
The report also says that Patterson returned the manuscript to the Solomon's widow, and back into the trunk it goes to lie next to Solomon's short story, "The Frogs of Wyndham".

Glenn

[_Uncle Dale]

...she offered to give Patterson half of the profits if he would publish it.
...

Proposed additional new scene for the Broadway "Book of Mormon" musical:

Scene: Patterson's Pittsburgh publishing office, January, 1817.
Enter Matilda Spalding, from stage left....

"Oh Mr. Patterson..."
"Uh -- that's 'Reverend,' -- my good lady!"

"Yes, yes! Of course. I've brought you this wonderful story..."
"Looks familiar. You must be Mrs. Spalding. Silas told me of your loss."

"Well, Solomon has at last departed -- yes -- but he left this behind."
"I think I've seen the story before. We looked it over. Utter trash!"

"Oh, do you really think so? I've never bothered to read it myself."
"Well, we did. Romans running about in some ridiculous farce..."

"Really?"
"And I thought your husband graduated from Dartmouth. Hurumph!"

"But, if you'll publish it, you can have half of the sales proceeds!"
"Take it back, Mrs. Spalding. Clean it up -- a title page -- an ending..."

"And then you'll publish it?"
"Not at all. But at least you'll not look so foolish when you submit it!"

"Can't you just take it for a few weeks. I'll be back in March."
"Leave it on my trash heap if you must. -- Romans in Pittsburgh! Pshaw!"

Scene breaks into musical number with dancers dressed as printers
and book-sellers --- singing "When in Rome, do as the Romans do!"

Fade to black at end of musical number....

UD