twick, to which place the old
trunk containing her first husband's manuscript was sent.

In 1823 Joseph Smith gave out that he had been directed in a vision to a
hill near Palmyra, New York, where he discovered some gold plates
curiously inscribed, and containing a new revelation. This supposed
revelation he published in 1830 as the "Book of Mormon."

Mormonism flourished and moved westward. In the course of time a Mormon
meeting was held in Conneaut, Ohio, and out of curiosity was largely
attended by the townspeople. Some readings were given from the Book of
Mormon, and certain of the hearers were astonished at the similarity
between Joseph Smith's book and _The Manuscript Found_, which Solomon
Spaulding had read aloud to friends in the same town many years before.
They recognized the same peculiar names, unheard of elsewhere, such as
Mormon, Maroni, Lamenite, and Nephi. It was learned, it is said, that
Smith had closely followed Spaulding's story, adding only his own
peculiar tenets about marriage, and inventing the theory of the great
spectacles by means of which he professed to have deciphered the
mysterious characters.

Spaulding's friends raised a question which has never been cleared up
and was at last forgotten. It was pointed out that Sidney Rigdon, who
figured as a preacher and as an adviser of Smith among the first of the
"Latter Day Saints," happened to have been an employe in Patterson's
printing office in Pittsburgh during the very period when Spaulding's
manuscript was there awaiting approval or rejection. But the matter was
never brought to a definite issue, and nothing more came of it except a
rather curious episode. Mrs. Davison removed from Hartwick about 1828,
leaving the trunk in charge of Jerome Clark. In 1834 a man named
Hurlburt sought Mrs. Davison, and said that he had been sent by a
committee to procure _The Manuscript Found_, written by Solomon
Spaulding, so as to compare it with the Mormon Bible. He presented a
letter from her brother, William H. Sabine, of Onondaga Valley, upon
whose farm Joseph Smith had been an employe, requesting her to lend the
manuscript to Hurlburt, in order "to uproot this Mormon fraud." Hurlburt
represented that he himself had been a convert to Mormonism, but had
given it up, and wished to expose its wickedness. On Hurlburt's repeated
promise to return the work, Mrs. Davison gave him a note addressed to
Jerome Clark of Hartwick, requesting him to open the old trunk