1843 claim to another Book of Mormon

The Quincy Whig was probably jesting when they reported, under the heading "Material for another Book of Mormon" in 1843 that in the neighboring village of Kinderhook, in Pike County, a man had found six brass plates fixed together with wiring. The Nauvoo Times & Seasons carried the article, Vol IV, No 12, Wednesday May 1 1843, here p.187.

Since the finder, a Robert Wiley, was known to be a respectable merchant, the editors used the opportunity to show that treasure digging was not a disreputable activity that only Joseph Smith Jr pursued (p.186).

Whether Joseph Smith Jr ever got a chance to try his chops on the hieroglyphs as the editor hoped is unclear.

Updated March 2015: In January 1844, the Nauvoo Neighbor was selling facsimile [their word!] of the plates found at Kinderhook; cf. Nauvoo Neighbor, January 3, 1844, page 3, column 4.

Mormon 9:33 and Reformed Egyptian

In Mormon 9:33 it says

v34: But the Lord knoweth the things which we have written, and also that none other people knoweth our language; and because that none other people knoweth our language, therefore he hath prepared means for the interpretation thereof.

And as Joseph Smith Jr expanded the point in his note to the Times & Season (Vol IV, Nr.13, May 15, 1843, p.194) on the meaning of the word Mormon.

Here then the subject is put to silence, for "none other people knoweth our language", therefore the Lord and not man had to interpret, after the people were all dead.

However, the certainty of that translation was marred by an article in the same publication (p.190), an exposition on the influence of the principles of truth, where the writers admitted that the orthographic and grammatical correctness of the revelation was dependent on the vessel of transmission.

But a ridiculous notion is frequently expressed, that the dictates of the spirit, through whatsoever channel they may flow, must necessarily be correctly constructed and perfectly grammatical.

Acts 4:13 allows them to point out that lack of rhetorical training of Peter and John was obvious and commented upon, in spite of the power of their argument.
Here the argument takes the anti-learning turn that was prevalent in the Western Reserve and other frontier areas as a rejection of the types of learning the Eastern and European universities could provide, as (White 1947) points out.

But the truth is, ..., every instrument which the Lord employs will be at any rate gifted with simplicity and sincerity, and whatever the Lord shall be pleased to give unto his people, by them shall be given naturally and without hypocrisy. (p.190)

And almost in order to level the playing field for the wise and the less so, they note that

... the learned and the unlearned are strangely overcome (p.191)

by the principle of truth, and the "superior minds" still become "subject to the principles of truth", even if per se the gospel has nothing that "attracts the self-opinionated and the proud".

A British Influence on Nauvoo Industrialization?

In a tantalizing paper A Dam for Nauvoo from 1978, Donald L. Enders of Maid of Iowa fame reports that Joseph Smith Jr was pushing for a dam to power mechanization and industrialization in Nauvoo in 1841, when the Church leadership was worried about the influx of English poor, none of whom were farmers.

Enders quotes Joseph Smith Jr as writing:

There are great numbers of the Saints in England who are extremely poor and not accustomed to the farming business, who must have certain preparations made for them before they can support themselves in this country, therefore, to prevent confusion and disappointment when they arrive here, let those men who are accustomed to making machinery, and those who can command a capital, though it be small, come here as soon as convenient, and put up machinery and make other such preparations as may be necessary, so that when the poor come on they may have employment to come to. (Times and Seasons 2 (1 January 1841), p.259)

This might mean that the influx of British converts, who were coming from a country that had been playing the industrial revolution game for at least 50 years, and whose poor city proletariat provided a fertile field to harvest for the English missionaries,  might have contributed a decisive push in the direction of industrialization for Joseph Smith Jr's thinking.

Of course, the specifics are again the use of water power, just as had been the case in Palmyra. Donald L. Enders, who wrote his thesis on the Des Moines Rapids at BYU, fails to mention steam mills such as the one that the Law brothers built.

Even after Joseph Smith Jr's lynching, Saint publications like the Nauvoo Neighbor were thinking in terms of what had been doable as far back as 1800, not in terms of the manufacturing that had since arisen in Rochester and would soon overtake Nauvoo in Chicago.

Here is the proud and gallant Mississippi, with her rapid current, rumbling to the broad Atlantic, seeming to say (as she quickens her pace over the rugged rocks of the lower rapids, just opposite our beautiful Nauvoo), only improve my shores and banks, ye saints . . . and I will propel your mills, cottons and woolen manufactories, by which your laborers can find employ, and your poor can be adorned after the similitude of a palace.
(Nauvoo Neighbor, 12 March 1845, p. 2.)