Posted by:
Craig C
(
)
Date: June 09, 2013 01:28AM
According to both Sally McKune & Pomeroy Tucker, Lucy Harris secretly burned the lost pages.
Sally McKune's account is cited in Frederic G. Mather(1844-1925) "Early Days of Mormonism" Lippincott's Magazine 26:152 (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, Aug. 1880), p. 202.
http://www.olivercowdery.com/smithhome/1880Math.htmBut not everyone agrees that the lost pages were burned.
WR Hine (1885) reported that Lucy did not burn the lost 116 pages, but instead gave them to a Dr. Seymour, a local physician, who read them and shared them with his patients, Hine himself, and Hine’s daughter. This is reported in Arthur Deming Deming's “Naked Truths About Mormonism Oakland, California: Deming & Co., 1888 (printed on the Seventh Day Adventist Pacific Press)”:
“Soon I learned that Jo claimed to be translating the plates in Badger's Tavern, in Colesville, three miles from my house. I went there and saw Jo Smith sit by a table and put a handkerchief to his forehead and peek into his hat and call out a word to Cowdery, who sat at the same table and wrote it down. Several persons sat near the same table and there was no curtain between them. Martin Harris introduced himself to me, and said they were going to bring the world from darkness into light. Martin's wife cooked for them, and one day while they were at dinner she put one hundred and sixteen pages, the first part they had translated, in her dress bosom and went out. They soon missed the one hundred and sixteen pages and followed her into the road and demanded them of her. She refused, and said if it was the Lord's work you can translate them again, and I will follow you to the ends of the earth. Dr. Seymour came along and she gave them to him to read, and told him not to let them go. Dr. Seymour lived one and a half miles from me. He read most of it to me when my daughter Irene was born; he read them to his patients about the country. It was a description of the mounds about the country and similar to the "Book of Mormon." I doubt if the one hundred and sixteen pages were included in the "Book of Mormon." After I came to Kirtland, in conversation with Martin Harris, he has many times admitted to me that this statement about his wife and the one hundred and sixteen pages, as above stated, is true.”
http://www.sidneyrigdon.com/dbroadhu/CA/natruths.htm#010088-2e3In “Who Really Wrote the Book of Mormon” (2005), page 487, Cowdrey et al (2005 reported that Dr. Ezra Semour lived in Broome Country.
For a detailed analysis of the lost pages incident and its effect on the structure of the Book of Mormon. check out Episode 5 at MormonLeaks.com:
http://mormonleaks.com/library/episode-05/