Lost 116 pages
[2] Joseph Smith said that on September 22, 1827, he had recovered a set of buried golden plates in a prominent hill near his parents' farm in Manchester, New York.
Martin Harris, a respectable but superstitious[3] farmer from nearby Palmyra, became an early believer and gave Smith $50 (equivalent to $1,346 in 2023) to finance the translation of the plates.
[4] Lucy Harris, Martin's wife, also donated some of her own money and offered to give more, even though Smith denied her request to see the plates and told her that "in relation to assistance, I always prefer dealing with men rather than their wives.
"[5][failed verification] Smith and his wife, Emma, moved to her hometown of Harmony, Pennsylvania, in late October 1827, where he began dictating the Book of Mormon.
[12] Harris continued to have doubts about the authenticity of the manuscript,[13] and he "could not forget his wife's skepticism or the hostile queries of Palmyra's tavern crowd."
Smith's mother, Lucy, "said that Harris asked Joseph for a look at the plates, for 'a further witness of their actual existence and that he might be better able to give a reason for the hope that was within him.'
"[14] After denying his request twice, Smith, with a great deal of uneasiness, said that the Lord had given permission, and he allowed Harris to take the manuscript pages back to Palmyra on condition that he show them to only five named family members.
[25] In 1838, Smith said, "Immediately after my return home [to Harmony, Pennsylvania, in about July,] I was walking out a little distance, when Behold the former heavenly messenger appeared and handed to me the Urim and Thummin.
[31] Between the loss of the pages during the summer of 1828 and the rapid completion of the Book of Mormon in the spring of 1829, there was a period of quiescence as if Smith were waiting "for help or direction.
"[37] Nevertheless, the loss of the manuscript provided opponents of Mormonism, such as the 19th-century clergyman M. T. Lamb, with additional reasons to dismiss the religion as a fraud.
[38] Fawn Brodie has written that Smith "realized that it was impossible for him to reproduce the story exactly, and that to redictate it would be to invite devastating comparisons.
