An 1831 Account of the Translation of the Book of Mormon

In late 1830, Oliver Cowdery and other missionaries departed to share the Book of Mormon with the Native Americans now living in what is now Kansas. On the way, they stopped in Ohio, which would ultimately lead to an influx of Saints in Kirtland.

Some of the people that Oliver Cowdery and others preached to were Shakers, living in the nearby Union Village. One member of this community, Richard McNemar, recorded in his journal a synopsis of the Book of Mormon as he understood it and recounted one such visit from the traveling elders. He writes:

The engraving being unintelligible to learned & unlearned. there is said to have been in the box with the plates two transparent stones in the form of spectacles thro which the translator looked on the engraving & afterwards put his face into a hat & the interpretation then flowed into his mind. which he uttered to the amanuensis who wrote it down, The said amanuensis by name Oliver Cowdery, was lately at the North lot & gave this account . . . there being no intelligible correspondence between the marks on the plates, & the dictates of the pretended interpreter. All his ideas were acquired by looking into a hat, where in all probability the translation appeared quite plainly in our english language. we must therefore conclude that the confabulation was cunningly devised, whether by visibles or invisibles & whether those bright & unsullied plates had been deposited in ancient or modern times.[1]

Here, McNemar  states that he is repeating an account given by Oliver Cowdery, in which Joseph Smith used a hat during the translation of the Book of Mormon. This is a detail consistent with other faithful accountants of the translation of the Book of Mormon, and can be reasonably linked to having been shared by yet another principal scribe of the Book of Mormon.

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[1] Richard McNemar, Diary entry for January 29, 1831, 45-46, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Shaker Collection, Item 253. Available online at mormonr.org.