In 1795, Spalding married Matilda D Sabin (1805-1891) and opened a store with his younger brother Josiah Spaulding Jr (1765-1859) in Cherry Valley, New York.
[3] It is a historical romance "purporting to have been translated from the Latin, found on 24 rolls of parchment in a cave, on the banks of the Conneaut Creek".
[4][5] Around 1812, Spalding allegedly completed a historical romance distinct from the Oberlin Manuscript which "purported to have been a record found buried in the earth".
According to John Spalding, Solomon's brother, the plot of Manuscript, Found told "of the first settlers of America, endeavoring to show that the American Indians are the descendants of the Jews, or the lost tribes.
"Spaulding’s fiction is about a group of Romans blown off course on a journey to Britain who arrive instead in America.
Spalding gave this as an affidavit to be published in Eber D. Howe's anti-Mormon book Mormonism Unvailed.
In 1832, Latter Day Saint missionaries Samuel H. Smith and Orson Hyde visited Conneaut, Ohio, and preached from the Book of Mormon.
"[citation needed] In 1927, Professor Azariah S. Root, who had headed the library at Oberlin College, wrote a letter regarding the origins of the Spalding Manuscript and how it relates to the Book of Mormon.