A revelatory descriptor of the men who plotted and altered the 116 pages is telling: “Satan has great hold upon their hearts; he stirreth them up to iniquity against that which is good.And their hearts are corrupt, and full of wickedness and abominations; and they love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil; therefore they will not ask of me” (D&C 10:20-21).
If we are looking for wicked men that “Satan has great hold upon their hearts,” it is hard to call the Presbyterians, Quakers, Militia, or Masons genuinely rotten to the core. But if we examine those in this plausible conspiracy, the scale to wickedness tips. What is interesting about this theory is that we have hints left by them of their involvement.
In this plausible conspiracy—
Flanders Dyke is handed the 116 pages or takes the pages in early July 1828. He passes them off to Abner Cole, his neighbor. Cole, who had earlier been recognized as a man in high standing, has been discredited due to defaulting on a $10,000 federal government loan. Cole sees a way to regain his status and return to his former greatness by possessing the 116 pages. Cole alters the pages. When Fayette Lapham of Perinton, the man who purchased the defunct iron works of Cole, comes to Palmyra on July 25, 1828, Lapham is given the 116 pages to hold for safe keeping. In the meanwhile, Cole waits for the opportunity to become the hero of the town by exposing Joseph Smith as a fraud for not producing the same manuscript. Cole accepts employment with E. B. Grandin as a compositor of the Book of Mormon, leaving his law practice on Main Street. One month later, he prints The Reflector under the penname Obediah Dogberry from the Shakespeare play Much Ado about Nothing. Dogberry in the play becomes the unlikely hero of the town. Unfortunately for Cole, he realizes all too soon that what he is typesetting of the Book of Mormon text does not match the 116 page manuscript. In anger, he writes his own scripture “Puke-i.”
In 1830 Fayette Lapham, who has been working on iron works on the Erie Canal, has developed a great interest in ancient Indian culture because of artifacts found in the digging process. At a time when townsfolk in Palmyra are being told not to purchase the Book of Mormon printed at the E. B. Grandin bookstore, he comes to town curious about the 116 pages. This alone is curious for the pages are no longer a topic of discussion in Palmyra. Lapham meets with Joseph Smith Sr. He then meets with George Crane, a well-to-do Quaker relative, who tells him of Luther Bradish, a brother to his neighbor Charles Bradish, who has been a student of ancient languages and was shown the Egyptian characters by Martin Harris.
Lapham is very interested in the pages in his possession. Abner Cole has lost interest in the pages. At age seventy-six, Lapham meets Henry Dawson, a publisher who recently purchased the Historical Magazine. Dawson’s “term as editor was marked by his desire to debunk fondly-held myths about local history.” Dawson comes to Western New York to gather information on the Smiths and the early days of Mormonism. Fayette, who has never written for a magazine, digs out the altered 116 page manuscript and submits an article. Convenient for Lapham, the people he mentions—Joseph Smith Sr., Jacob Ramsdell, George Crane, and Luther Bradish are deceased. At the time of the article publication, Lapham has in his possession the 116 page manuscript.
Now to prove this plausible conspiracy theory—
In 1828 when Flanders Dyke wanted permission to court Lucy Harris’s oldest daughter and namesake, Martin Harris was amenable and quite liked Dyke, as did his daughter but Lucy Harris, Martin’s wife, was “decidedly upon the negative.”
However, “a scheme entered the brain [of Lucy Harris] that materially changed her deportment to Mr. Dikes.” The scheme was deceptive and unscrupulous, a “cloak and dagger” agreement in which Dyke would take “the Egyptian characters from Mr. Harris’s possession, and procure a room in Palmyra for the purpose of transcribing them, and then bring her the transcript.” His reward for such devious plagiarism was her “consent to his marriage with her daughter.”
It does not speak well of her future son-in-law that Flanders Dyke “cheerfully consented” or that he would so willingly betray the confidence placed in him by his soon-to-be father-in-law Martin Harris.
Dyke procured a room for a night’s stay at the Eagle Hotel in Palmyra. He “copied the characters with expert precision.” As a reward for his deception, Dyke married the eldest daughter of Martin and Lucy Harris and moved into a rental house that Martin Harris owned on Main Street. A near neighbor of Flanders Dyke was Abner Cole.
Cole served the village of Palmyra as a justice of the peace for one year (April 1814 to April 1815) with no legal training. In 1816 he moved to a house on Main Street.
Acquiring land was important to Cole, paying off mortgages was not. His mortgage purchases lined up like dominos. In 1820 Cole became involved in the Great Embankment, one of the most ambitious undertakings on the Erie Canal. On April 5, 1820 a bill authorizing a $10,000 loan to Abner Cole “to be employed in the manufacture of Iron” passed both houses of the New York legislature. From the beginning, Cole struggled to make the iron works in Perinton a success. In 1823 he defaulted on his $10,000 loan to the state of New York. This was followed by the seizure and auction of most of his properties.
By the year 1828 Cole was financially broke. He opened a law practice in his house on Main Street. His neighbor Flanders Dyke tells him that he has the 116 pages. Abner Cole takes the pages and alters them. Because the issue is such a hot button topic in the summer of 1828, when Fayette Lapham comes to Palmyra on July 25, 1828 Cole passes the pages to him.
Cole then waits for the right opportunity to rise up and become a town hero. It comes to him a year later. In August 1829 Cole closes his law practice and accepts employment at the E. B. Grandin print shop as a compositor of the Book of Mormon. The print shop was noisy, crowded, and overall not a good work environment. Yet it provided Cole with the opportunity to learn the business of printing and gain access to the presses to print the 116 pages.
The sequence of the next events are not coincidental. Hyrum Smith begins bringing pages of the Book of Mormon manuscript to the E. B. Grandin office in August 1829. In the first edition of The Reflector on September 2, 1829, Cole wrote the first public criticism of the Book of Mormon—“The Golden Bible, by Joseph Smith Junior, author and proprietor, is now in press and will shortly appear. Priestcraft is short lived!”
Cole paid E. B. Grandin to use the presses of the Wayne Sentinel to print The Reflector on Sundays and evenings. He signed his articles in The Reflector with the penname O. Dogberry lifted from Shakespeare’s comic constable in Much Ado about Nothing. This is a big clue for us. Dogberry in this Shakespeare play is a rather eccentric man, and is among the lower class of people in the town. He is very filthy and talks in a sort of gibberish so that no one can understand him. The other townspeople do not respect him, but use him for his information and then dismiss him. Dogberry gets no thanks or appreciation even though he is the true hero of the play.
In The Reflector, Cole presents exaggerated, sarcastic views of Joe Smith’s Gold Bible, showing himself the hero. He prints part of the Book of Mormon in late December 1829 – 1 Nephi 1:1-3, 1 Nephi 2:4-15, and in January 1830, Alma 43:22-40. He changes paragraphing, spelling, capitalization and punctuation, but the wording is the same with minor exceptions—“in the borders” compared with The Reflector’s “on the borders,” and “Sariah,” compared with The Reflector’s “Sarah.”
From the start, Abner Cole printed tart comments about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. Of great interest are Cole’s commentaries on the content of the Book of Mormon. He demonstrates in his commentaries that he has greater understanding of the Book of Mormon than access to the already printed pages. For example, as early as September 23, 1829 Cole mentions a place called the “New Jerusalem” and describes it as “a gathering place in the last days.” That particular account from the Book of Mormon was not printed on Grandin’s press until months later.
Although Cole ceased publishing Book of Mormon excerpts in January 1830, he didn’t leave Joseph Smith or the Book of Mormon alone. Being profoundly blocked from printing the Book of Mormon, he turned to satire using biblical and Book of Mormon language. On June 12, 1830 and July 7, 1830, Cole published a satire on the Book of Mormon under the heading “Book of Pukei,” printed in two installments. Notice the title of the book with the “i” added at the end—Puke-i. Also, notice how the Puke-i matches the titles of books in the Book of Mormon – Book of Lehi, Book of Nephi, Book of Omni, Book of Moroni—and now Book of Puke-i.
In Chapter One of the Book of Puke-i, the treasure-digging activities of the Smiths and conjuror Luman Walter are presented. In Chapter Two, Abner Cole shows his knowledge of Joseph Smith’s First Vision in verse two. In this chapter an old man appears to Joseph Smith in an Egyptian raiment, except for his Indian blanket and moccasins. The old man announces that he has been sent by Mormon, the great apostle to the Nephites. Cole writes of bark canoes, smallpox, and Nephites descending from the Lost Tribes of Israel.
Lapham resided in the boom town of Perinton along the Erie Canal known for its mills, blacksmith shops, taverns, and inns. Approximately1,600 people were in town, most lured to the town because of the canal port. One man lured to the area was Abner Cole of Palmyra. He built his iron works in Perinton. By this point, Lapham was known for having designed and built mills and maintained mill machinery in the area. Lapham and his brother Alexander built the arches of the first aqueduct in Rochester and constructed the woodwork of the combined and double locks at Lockport, New York.
When the iron works of Abner Cole failed in 1823, Lapham purchased the foundry. Under the management of Fayette Lapham, the iron forge was successful. In the 1820s Fayette Lapham was a man of high standing as the owner and operator of an iron foundry, a land developer, a member of the masonic lodge, and on the first board of trustees of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Perinton.
Lapham was in Palmyra on July 25, 1828. In his account book, Gain Robinson wrote of Fayette Lapham purchasing items from his drugstore on Main Street. At that time, Abner Cole had just finished altering the manuscript pages. He passed the pages for safekeeping to Lapham to get them out of Palmyra. Lapham, who had donated the southeast corner of Lot #22 in Perinton to the First Methodist Episcopal Church, sees himself as willing to hold the pages for Cole.
Time passes. Abner Cole does not ask for the pages back.
At a time when townsfolk in Palmyra are being told not to purchase the Book of Mormon, Fayette Lapham and his relative Jacob Ramsdell, a Quaker and a schoolteacher, come to town curious about the 116 pages. Why? The pages are no longer a topic of discussion in Palmyra. Abner Cole has lost interest in the pages, but Lapham is very interested in the pages in his possession. He wants to talk to Joseph Smith about the 116 pages. He goes to the one-and-a-half story log cabin and finds Joseph Smith Sr. at home and interviews him about the pages not about the Book of Mormon.
Lapham next meets with George Crane, a well-to-do Quaker relative, who tells him of Luther Bradish, a brother to his neighbor Charles Bradish, who has been a student of ancient languages and was shown the Egyptian characters by Martin Harris. At the time, Crane was considering forming a bank. Within a year, Crane was serving as a director of the Wayne County Bank with Thomas Rogers II, Nathaniel H. Beckwith, George Beckwith, and Pliny Sexton. As for Luther Bradish, by 1830 he had married a sister of Gain Robinson, and was serving in the New York State Legislature.
Two years before his death at age seventy-six, Lapham meets Henry Dawson, who had recently purchased the Historical Magazine. Dawson’s “term as editor was marked by his desire to debunk fondly-held myths about local history.” Dawson has come to Western New York to gather information on the Smiths and the early days of Mormonism. Lapham, who had never written any article for a newspaper or a magazine, digs out the altered 116 page manuscript and submits an article and/or is interviewed by Henry Dawson who then writes the article in his behalf.
What are the chances seventy-six-year-old Fayette Lapham could write a lengthy article of a forty year recollection without access to the 116 page manuscript? None! In this conspiracy Lapham dies having in his possession the 116 page manuscript. The one remaining loophole is that the Lord in Doctrine and Covenants, Section 10 tells of “men” altering the pages.