They Found the Box that Held the Book of Mormon!

There was a stone box which held the ancient record of the inhabitants of the Americas and was buried away at the hand of a Prophet, only to be dug up years later by the husband of Emma Smith. After digging through the archives of the Church History Library, it has been discovered that they had photographic proof of it’s existence!

When Joseph Smith was led to the golden plates upon which was inscribed the Book of Mormon, he said that he found them in a stone box:

“Convenient to the village of Manchester, Ontario county, New York, stands a hill of considerable size, and the most elevated of any in the neighborhood.  On the west side of this hill, not far from the top, under a stone of considerable size, lay the plates, deposited in a stone box. This stone was thick and rounding in the middle on the upper side, and thinner towards the edges, so that the middle part of it was visible above the ground, but the edge all around was covered with earth.”
(History of the Church, Vol 1, page 15, byu.edu)

That is not the box I am writing about.

“In October 1841, Joseph Smith placed O[riginal manuscript] in the cornerstone of the Nauvoo House. Over forty years later, Lewis Bidamon, Emma Smith’s second husband, opened the cornerstone and found that water seepage had destroyed most of O[riginal manuscript]. The surviving pages were handed out to various individuals during the 1880s. Today approximately 25 percent of the text of O[riginal manuscript] survives: 1 Nephi 2 through 2 Nephi 1,with gaps; Alma 22 through Helaman 3,with gaps; and a few other fragments. All but one of the authentic pages and fragments of O are housed in the archives of the LDS Historical Department; one-half of a sheet (from 1 Nephi 14) is owned by the University of Utah.
(“Book of Mormon Manuscripts” Encyclopedia of Mormonism, byu.edu)

If you dig around in the Church History Library online catalog, you might stumble across this picture, taken by B. H. Roberts at the site of Nauvoo House in 1886:

With a bit of developing you can get the picture developed and zoom in on the box in question:

 

There is a note with the photograph which reads:

“Relic box stone from corner of “Nauvoo House” City of Nauvoo. Photographed by B.H. Roberts 1886. It was in this box that the original MS of the Book of Mormon was placed by Joseph Smith on 2nd October 1841 (see New Wit for God vol II pg 127)”

Turning to that entry in Robert’s book New Witnesses for God, Vol II shows this entry:

The original manuscript having been preserved by the Prophet Joseph, it was, on the 2nd of October, 1841, in the presence of a number of Elders, deposited by him in the northwest cornerstone of the Nauvoo House, with a number of coins, papers and books, in a cavity made in the corner stone for that purpose. Among those who were present at the time the original manuscript of the Book of Mormon was thus deposited in the corner stone of the Nauvoo House, was Elder Warren Foote, of Glendale, Kane county, Utah, who quotes from his journal as follows:

October 2, 1841. The semi-annual conference commenced today. After meeting was dismissed a deposit was made in the southeast corner of the Nauvoo house. A square hole had been chisseled in the large corner stone like a box. An invitation was given for any who wished to put in any little memento they desired to. I was standing very near the corner stone, when Joseph Smith came up with the manuscript of the Book of Mormon, and said he wanted to put that in there, as he had had trouble enough with it. It appeared to be written on fools’ cap paper, and was about three inches in thickness. There was also deposited a Book of Doctrine and Covenants, five cents, ten cents, twenty-five cents, fifty cents, and one dollar pieces of American coin, besides other articles. A close fitting stone cover was laid n cement, and the wall built over it. I was standing within three feet of the Prophet when he handed in the manuscript and saw it very plainly. He intimated in his remarks, that in after generations the walls might be thrown down, and these things discovered, from which the people could learn the doctrines and principles and faith of the Latter-day Saints.
(New Witnesses for God, BH Roberts, Vol II, pg. 127, archive.org)

The original manuscript of the Book of Mormon as dictated directly from the peepstones in the hat were contained in this box, which lay in the cornerstone of the Nauvoo House. One wonders what “trouble” Joseph referred to regarding the manuscript.

Unlike gold plates, the paper did not stand up well to the humidity and elements. You can see some remnants of the manuscript and other materials that were kept in the cornerstone box at the Church History Library online:

Interestingly, while we have photographic evidence of the box that was the Cornerstone of the Nauvoo House, there are no confirmed witnesses to the box that contained the original Gold Plates of the Book of Mormon. All available accounts are simply second hand retelling of Joseph’s description and guesses about stones seen washed up at the bottom of Hill Cumorah (see mormonthink for references). This is a curious thing because, unlike the plates, the stone box was not sacred. There is no reason Joseph couldn’t have shown interested people the box. Since he would go on to showcase other sacred things such as the Book of Abraham Scrolls and the accompanying mummies, it is fascinating that this box was left alone. Perhaps it was too mundane to be of interest.

Carl Sagan made popular the phrase “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” In the case of the Book of Mormon – just ordinary evidence would have gone a long way. The original manuscript had the ordinary evidence of this stone box confirming the story if it being buried away by a prophet. There is no reason that the extraordinary claim of buried gold plates couldn’t have been supported by the same form of ordinary evidence.