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 the other hand, Mrs Davidson, Joseph Miller, Redick McKee, Rev. Cephas Dodd, and Mrs Eichbaum are quite positive that either Rigdon worked in the printing-office, or had access to the manuscript. ‘These witnesses,’ continues Patterson, ‘are all whom we can find, after inquiries extending through some three years, who can testify at all to Rigdon's residence in Pittsburgh before 1816, and to his possible employment in Patterson's printing-office or bindery. Of this employment none of them speak from personal knowledge. In making inquiries among two or three score of the oldest residents of Pittsburgh and vicinity, those who had any opinion on the subject invariably, so far as now remembered, repeated the story of Rigdon's employment in Patterson's office as if it were a well known and admitted fact; they could tell all about it, but when pressed as to their personal knowledge of it or their authority for the conviction, they had none.’ Nevertheless he concludes, ‘after an impartial consideration of the preceding testimony, that Rigdon as early as 1823 certainly had possession of Spaulding's manuscript; how he obtained it is unimportant for the present purpose; that during his career as a minister of the Disciples church in Ohio, he carefully preserved under lock and key this document, and devoted an absorbed attention to it; that he was aware of the forthcoming book of Mormon and of its contents long before its appearance; that the said contents were largely Spaulding's romance, and partly such mondifications as Rigdon had introduced; and that, during the preparation of the book of Mormon, Rigdon had repeated and long interviews with Smith, thus easily supplying him with fresh instalments of the pretended revelation.’  In a letter to the editors of the Boston Journal, dated May 27, 1839, Rigdon says: ‘There was no man by the name of Patterson during my residence at Pittsburgh who had a printing-office; what might have been before I lived there I know not. Mr Robert Patterson, I was told, had owned a printing-office before I lived in that city, but had been unfortunate in business, and failed before my residence there. This Mr Patterson, who was a presbyterian preacher, I had a very slight acquaintance with during my residence in Pittsurgh. He was then acting under an agency in the book and stationery business, and was the owner of no property of any kind, printing-office or anything else, during the time I resided in the city.’ Smucker's Mormons, 45–8.

In Philadelphia, in 1840, was published ''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 its connection with the Book of Mormon is concerned. By B. Winchester, minister of the Gospel.'' The author goes on to say that Hulbert, a methodist preacher at Jamestown, N. Y., joined the Mormons in 1833, and was expelled for immoral conduct, whereupon he swore vengeance and concocted the Spaulding story. Hearing of a work written by Solomon Spaulding entitled The Manuscript Found, he sought to prove to those about him that the book of Mormon was derived from it, ‘not that any of these persons had the most distant idea that this novel had ever been converted into the book of Mormon, or that there was any connection between them. Indeed, Mr Jackson, who had read both the book of Mormon and Spaulding's manuscript, told Mr H. when he came to get his signature to a writing testifying to the probability that Mr S.'s manuscript had been converted into the book of Mormon, that there was no agreement between them; for, said he, Mr S.'s manuscript was a very small work, in the form of a novel, saying not one word about the children of Israel, but professed to give an account of a race of people who originated from the Romans, which Mr S. said he had translated from a Latin parchment that he had found.’ Winchester states further that Hurlburt, or Hulbert, wrote Mormonism Unveiled and sold it to Howe for $500.

The Myth of the Manuscript Found; or the absurdities of the Spaulding story; By Elder George Reynolds, was published at Salt Lake City in 1883. It is a 12mo vol. of 104 pages, and gives first the history of the Spaulding manuscript, and names Hurlburt as the originator of the story. Chap. iii. is entitled ‘the bogus affidavit,’ referring to the alleged sworn statement of Mrs