Tom made a very interesting post (on Lemmie's OP) that deserves its own thread:
Tom wrote:Quoting from another recent blog post of his:Plagarizing Peterson wrote:From yet another of my manuscripts-in-progress, a few lines on one of the lesser-known and unofficial witnesses to the Book of Mormon plates:
Illinois state senator Orville F. Berry wrote a tribute to Katharine Smith Salisbury not long after her death, in her late eighties, on 2 February 1900: “There resided in this county, until her death, Catherine Smith Salisbury, sister of the prophet. The writer knew her personally, has been in her house many times and has grown up from boyhood days with her sons and grandsons, and the world would be wonderfully well off if all women were as good as Catherine Smith Salisbury.”[1]
Mary Salisbury Hancock, the granddaughter of Joseph’s sister Katharine, remembered Katharine relating an episode when Joseph, with the plates in his possession, had been chased by a mob:
Hearing an unusual commotion outside Catherine flew to the door and threw it open just as Joseph came rushing up, panting for breath. He thrust a bundle into her arms, and in a gasping voice whispered hoarsely, “Take these quickly and hide them,” then he disappeared into the darkness. Closing the door Catherine ran hurriedly to the bedroom where she and Sophronia slept. Sophronia threw back the bedding and Catherine put the bundle on the bed, quickly replacing the bedding. Both of them lay down on the bed and pretended sleep. The mob, failing to find Joseph outside, returned to the house to search, but they did not disturb the girls since they appeared to be sleeping.[2]
Herbert S. Salisbury, grandson of Joseph’s sister Katharine, said that she
told me that while dusting up the room where the Prophet had his study she saw a package on the table containing the gold plates on which was engraved the story of the Book of Mormon. She said she hefted those plates and found them very heavy like gold and also rippled her fingers up the edge of the plates and felt that they were separate metal plates and heard the tinkle of sound that they made.[3]
Thus, including the night on which the plates were first brought to the Smith home from Cumorah, Katharine was able to heft the plates on at least three distinct occasions.
[1] Orville F. Berry, “The Mormon Settlement in Illinois,” Transactions of the Illinois State Historical Society for the year 1906 11 (1906): 93. [See original.] See also Kyle R. Walker, “Katharine Smith Salisbury: Sister to the Prophet,” Mormon Historical Studies 3/1 (2002): 5-34.
[2] Mary Salisbury Hancock, “The Three Sisters of the Prophet Joseph Smith,” The Saints’ Herald 101/2 (11 January 1954): 36. [See original]
[3] “The Prophet’s Sister Testifies She Lifted the B. of M. Plates,” The Messenger (October 1954): I, 6 [typescript copy in LDS Church Archives; see original].
Did Professor Peterson locate these three quotations based on his own original research or did he mine the quotations and sources from Kyle Walker's article? Notice that Walker's article features the same quotations cited by Peterson in footnotes 2 and 3 above (see page 8 of Walker's article), although Peterson does not cite Walker in those footnotes. Notice also that although Peterson gives some credit to Walker's article in the first footnote with a "[s]ee also," both Peterson and Walker misquote Berry's article in the exact same way, which suggests that Peterson is directly relying on Walker. Berry's article reads (text in the original article that is missing in both Walker's article and Peterson's manuscript is shown in bold):There resided in this county from the death of Joseph Smith, until her death a few years ago, Catherine Smith Salisbury, sister of the prophet. The writer knew her personally, has been in her house many times, and has grown up from boyhood days with her sons and grandsons, and the world would be wonderfully well off if all women were as good as Catherine Smith Salisbury.
Peterson concludes: "Thus, including the night on which the plates were first brought to the Smith home from Cumorah, Katharine was able to heft the plates on at least three distinct occasions."
Referring to Katharine Smith, Walker writes: "Although she would be disappointed in not being allowed to view the uncovered plates as anticipated, her convictions were strengthened by being able to heft them on at least three different occasions" (8). The accompanying footnote reads: "The first two instances are mentioned earlier in the article—at the time Joseph first returned home with the plates and when the two sisters hid the plates from the mob."
I hope Professor Peterson will take the time to vet the various paraphrases, notes, quotations, etc., in his numerous manuscripts to separate his own thoughts and research from the thoughts and research of others and give proper attribution.