Posted by:
Craig C
(
)
Date: January 08, 2014 10:34PM
This reminds me of Walter Sidney Rigdon, grandson of Sidney Rigdon.
Here are excerpts from the interview of Walter Sidney Rigdon, published in the the Salt Lake Tribune on April 7, 1888:
Sidney Rigdon's Grandson Says Their Family Understood it to be a Fraud.
-- EDITOR TRIBUNE: -- In the intervals of my literary labors here I have many talks with men who were in Utah at a very early day, and occasionally with original Mormons or their sons.... [M]y chance talks with one of these are so agreeable that I report him briefly for you. Mr. Walter Sidney Rigdon is a citizen of Carrolton, Cattaraugus County, N. Y., and a grandson of Sidney Rigdon, the partner of Joe Smith. He talked with old Sidney hundreds of times about the "scheme of the Golden Bible," and his father still has many of the old Sidney's documents. "Grandfather was a religious crank," says Mr. Rigdon, "till he lost money by it. He started in as a Baptist preacher, and had a very fine congregation for those days, in Pittsburgh. There was no reason at all for his leaving, except that he got 'cracked.' At that time he had no ideas of making money. Indeed, while he was with the Mormons, his chances to make money were good enough for most men; but he came out of it about as poor as he went in."
[Mr.] Beadle, the reporter: -- "But how did he change first?"
"Well, he tried to understand the prophecies, and the man who does that is sure to go crazy. He studied the prophets and baptism, and of course he got 'rattled.' Daniel and Ezekiel and Revelations will 'rattle' any man who gives in his whole mind to 'em -- at any rate they did him, and he joined Alexander Campbell. Campbell then believed that the end of the world was nigh -- his Millennial Harbinger shows that they 'rattled' all who listened to him in Ohio and other places; then grandfather got disgusted and decided on a new deal. He 'found' Joe Smith and they had a great many talks together before they brought out the plates. None of us ever doubted that they got the whole thing up; but father always maintained that grandfather helped get up the original Spaulding book. At any rate he got a copy very early and schemed on some way to make it useful. Although the family knew these facts, they refused to talk on the subject while grandfather lived. In fact, he and they took on [a] huge disgust at the whole subject...."
I only report that part of Mr. Rigdon's talk which shows the history of the "Golden Bible," as accepted in the family. Of course, if Sidney Rigdon had wanted the world to believe the Smith story of the plates, he would have told them so. But, though the family do not care to ventilate it, he evidently taught them to treat the whole thing as a fraud.
J. H. Beadle. -- New York, April 7, 1888.
"The Golden Bible" (Salt Lake Tribune, 1888 -- full text on web)
See:
http://www.lavazone2.com/dbroadhu/UT/tribune2.htm#041588