"[2] Oliver Cowdery temporarily became a member of the Methodist Church, while Martin Harris adopted some Shaker beliefs.
In 1838, the surviving Whitmers became estranged from Joseph Smith during a leadership struggle in Far West, Missouri, and all three were excommunicated with other dissenters,[7] never to rejoin The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Mary Musselman Whitmer (1778–1856), the mother of five of the witnesses, who took care of the household in Fayette, New York where much of the translation occurred, said that an angel showed her the plates and thus made her more content to continue her daily labors.
Several other people close to Smith, often family members or neighbors, claimed to have handled the plates without seeing them, usually lifting or feeling them while they were wrapped in a cloth covering or pillowcase.
[10] Critics of the Latter Day Saint movement—from late nineteenth-century clergymen to Mark Twain to modern agnostics, evangelical Christians, and even some unorthodox ("Big Tent") Mormons—argue that the testimonies of the witnesses cannot be taken at face value.