WINCHESTER, Benjamin.
The origin of the Spaulding story, concerning the Manuscript Found; with a short biography of Dr. P. Hulbert, the originator of the same; and some testimony adduced, showing it to be a sheer fabrication, so far as in connection with the Book of Mormon is concerned. By B. Winchester, minister of the gospel. Philadelphia: Brown, Bicking & Guilbert, Printers, 1840.24 pp. 20 cm.
View Document
The Spaulding Rigdon theory of the origin of the Book of Mormon was the offspring of Eber D. Howe and Doctor Philastus Hurlbut (or Hulbert or Hurlburt). Not a physician, Doctor was Hurlbut's Christian name, bestowed in consequence of his being a seventh son. In June 1833 he was excommunicated from the Church, and immediately he set out to lecture against the Latter day Saints. A few months later he was touring Pennsylvania when he heard of an unpublished historical novel written by Solomon Spaulding, a graduate of Dartmouth College and an ex preacher, which seemed to bear some resemblance to the Book of Mormon. Spaulding had written his novel during 1809-12, and after his death in 1816 it had remained in the possession of his family. Hurlbut quickly grasped its potential for an anti Mormon expose and went to Kirtland and advertised what he had learned.
Some of the local anti Mormons contributed funds toward his effort, and Hurlbut traveled to Conneaut, Ohio, where he gathered a series of affidavits from Spaulding's acquaintances attesting to certain similarities between the novel and the Book of Mormon. Next he approached Spaulding's widow, Matilda Davison, in Massachusetts and offered her half the profits for the rights to publish Spaulding's manuscript. Mrs. Davison could only recall that Spaulding had a "great variety" of papers stored in a farmhouse in New York, but she gave him permission to examine them and take whatever might be of use to him. To his dismay, Hurlbut found a single manuscript, a turgid romance obviously unrelated to the Book of Mormon. Returning to Ohio, he sold the Spaulding manuscript, the affidavits of Spaulding's friends, and a group of uncomplimentary affidavits from Joseph Smith's Palmyra neighbors, to Eber D. Howe, editor of the
Painesville Telegraph. Howe used the affidavits in his book
Mormonism Unveiled [sic] (Painesville, 1834). As the Spaulding manuscript was useless to him, it lay in his files unprinted. In its place,
Mormonism Unveiled advanced the theory that there was a second Spaulding manuscript which Sidney Rigdon transformed into the Book of Mormon while he was living in Pittsburgh during the period 1822B26.
When it first appeared,
Mormonism Unveiled seems to have had little impact, and the Mormons all but ignored it. La Roy Sunderland's serial article in
Zion's Watchman mentions the Spaulding Rigdon theory, and this brought a passing response from Parley Pratt in his
Mormonism Unveiled: Zion's Watchman Unmasked. What popularized the theory was a letter purportedly written by Matilda Davison, first published in the
Boston Recorder of April 19, 1839, and reprinted in numerous newspapers and magazines throughout the United States and Great Britain. This letter drew Winchester into the fray.
Parley Pratt seems to have been unaware of
Origin of the Spaulding Story when he wrote his
Reply to C. S. Bush in July 1840, and Winchester apparently was unaware of Pratt's tract when he wrote his pamphlet. Most likely, therefore, Winchester published
Origin of the Spaulding Story before he left for England in July and after Parley Pratt sailed for England in March 1840.
The Spaulding Rigdon theory had two fundamental weaknesses: there was little evidence a second manuscript existed and no evidence that Rigdon had had contact with any Spaulding work. Drawing on both the Davison letter and
Mormonism Unveiled, Winchester attacks the theory at these two points. His biographical sketch of Hurlbut-much of whose recent history he seems to have known firsthand-adds a patina of unsavoriness to the whole affair. As a final stroke, he reprints a letter from John Haven reporting his son Jesse's interview with Matilda Davison which revealed that her letter was actually composed by a clergyman D. R. Austin from notes he took during a conversation with her. Haven's letter first appeared in the
Quincy Whig of November 16, 1839, and was reprinted in the
Times and Seasons of January 1840. Winchester adds Parley Pratt's account of his introducing Sidney Rigdon to Mormonism, taken from
Mormonism Unveiled: Zion's Watchman Unmasked.
The Spaulding manuscript remained in the files of the
Painesville Telegraph until it was brought to light in 1855 by L. L. Rice, who, in the winter of 1839-40, had purchased the Telegraph along with its files. In 1855 the RLDS Church published the manuscript under the title
The "Manuscript Found" or "Manuscript Story," and the LDS Church published it a year later. The original manuscript is now at Oberlin College. George J. Adams published a second edition in Bedford, England in June 1841 under the title
Plain Facts, Shewing the Origin of the Spaulding Story.
Excerpted and edited from Peter Crawley,
A Descriptive Bibliography of the Mormon Church. Volume One, 1830-1847. (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University, Religious Studies Center, [1997]). Item 77, p. 118-21
Used by permission of the author and the Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University.
BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY