Chapter 04: Kinderhook Plates | Episode 02

In 1843, six metal plates covered with strange characters were reportedly discovered in an ancient burial mound near Kinderhook, Illinois. The plates eventually made their way to Nauvoo, where they were examined by Joseph Smith.

More than a century later, scientific testing confirmed that the plates were a nineteenth-century forgery.

Critics of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints frequently cite the Kinderhook Plates as evidence that Joseph Smith was a fraudulent translator. Their argument is that Joseph claimed to translate ancient writing from plates that were actually manufactured by men attempting to fool the Latter-day Saints.

But what does the historical record actually establish?

The most frequently quoted statement does not come directly from Joseph Smith. It comes from an entry in William Clayton’s personal journal, which was later rewritten into a first-person narrative in History of the Church.

Even more interesting is the connection between Clayton’s reported translation and an Egyptian-language study document that had existed since 1835.

We examine the forgery, the historical accounts, the Egyptian papers, and the assumptions required to turn a brief encounter with fraudulent plates into an accusation against Joseph Smith’s prophetic calling.

For an additional examination of the historical evidence, read: The Kinderhook Plates Hoax on AntiAntiMormon.com.

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Podcast: Letter To My Wife: Examining the Evidence

Host: Alma the Defender

Chapter: 04. Kinderhook Plates

Episode: 02

The Historical Claim

Letter For My Wife presents the Kinderhook incident as evidence that Joseph Smith claimed to translate fraudulent ancient records.

The basic argument is:

Six plates were manufactured in 1843, disguised as ancient artifacts, and deliberately buried in a mound. After their supposed discovery, they were brought to Joseph Smith. A later published history represented Joseph as having translated part of the plates, describing a person descended from Ham through Pharaoh.

Since the plates were fake, critics conclude that Joseph Smith must have invented the translation.

The argument appears straightforward until we examine where the translation claim originated, what Joseph actually did with the plates, and why the reported wording closely resembles an earlier document.

Examining the Evidence

The Kinderhook Plates Were a Hoax

On April 23, 1843, a group of men excavated a mound near Kinderhook, Illinois, and reportedly discovered six small, bell-shaped metal plates alongside human remains.

The plates contained characters that looked like an ancient writing system.

The discovery attracted considerable attention because Joseph Smith had previously claimed to translate the Book of Mormon from metal plates.

But the Kinderhook discovery was staged.

Wilbur Fugate later identified himself, Robert Wiley, and a blacksmith named Bridge Whitton as participants in manufacturing the plates. Their account described the creation of the characters using acid and the deliberate burial of the plates.

In 1980, scientific examination of a surviving plate confirmed that it was a nineteenth-century production.

The forged nature of the plates is not seriously disputed today. But assumptions of what Joseph Smith actually did when he encountered them is.

What Joseph Smith’s Own Journal Records

Joseph Smith’s official journal, maintained by Willard Richards, provides surprisingly little information about the Kinderhook Plates.

The entry for May 1, 1843, records that Joseph spent the morning and afternoon riding out.

On May 7, the journal mentions visitors discussing the plates discovered near Quincy. Joseph sent for his Hebrew Bible and lexicon.

That is the only direct reference to the plates in this portion of Joseph’s official journal.

There is no recorded revelation explaining their contents, no dictated translation, and no subsequent manuscript. The surviving official journal does not document the kind of translation process associated with Joseph’s scriptural projects.

Read the original entries in the Joseph Smith Papers, May 1, 1843 and May 7, 1843.

William Clayton’s Journal and the Supposed Translation

The primary source behind the accusation is William Clayton’s personal journal.

On May 1, 1843, Clayton reported that Joseph had translated part of the plates and associated their contents with a descendant of Ham, the Egyptian pharaohs, and a kingdom granted by the ruler of heaven and earth.

Clayton was a fairly recent convert to the church and had recently immigrated to Nauvoo from England. He was an important clerk and associate of Joseph Smith during this time. 

But his journal entry does not describe witnessing Joseph dictate a translation. It does not identify a manuscript, a scribe, or a revelation. It reports his personal conclusion about what he assumed Joseph had supposedly translated.

When Clayton’s account was incorporated into the historical narrative later published as History of the Church, his third-person statement was rewritten into a first-person account attributed to Joseph Smith. This history was compiled and published in stages during the nineteenth century, with B. H. Roberts preparing the later multivolume edition.

The edited wording began:

“I have translated a portion of them.”

That sentence is frequently quoted as though it were Joseph Smith’s own recorded statement. However, the underlying source was Clayton’s journal, not a surviving statement written or dictated by Joseph himself.

Yet, that sentence is still commonly quoted as though it were Joseph Smith’s own statement.

But the underlying historical source was Clayton’s report, not a surviving statement written or dictated by Joseph.

The difference between those two sources is significant.

The Connection Between the GAEL Egyptian Papers and Clayton’s Journal Entry

In 1835, eight years before the Kinderhook discovery, Joseph Smith and his associates worked with documents now commonly called the Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language, or GAEL.

The surviving document is available through the Joseph Smith Papers.

Its unusual system organizes characters and expands definitions into different degrees.

On page four, the 5th degree of meaning for a character called Ho e oop says,

A prince of the royal blood a true desendant from Ham, the son of Noah, and inheritor of the Kingly blessings

Then, at the bottom of the page, another character called Ho e oop hah is described as:

Honor by birth, kingly power by the line of Pharoah. possession by birth one who riegns upon his throne universally— possessor of heaven and earth and of the blessings of Earth.

These passages use many of the same words and phrases found in Clayton’s description of what he believed was Joseph Smith’s Kinderhook Plates translation. Clayton’s journal entry states:

“Prest J. has translated a portion and says they contain the history of the person with whom they were found & he was a descendant of Ham through the loins of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and that he received his kingdom from the ruler of heaven & earth.”

Clearly, there is a connection between this page of the GAEL and Clayton’s reported translation. Clayton’s description almost reads like a summary of the information on that page.

What we don’t know is how that connection came about.

There are several ways this misunderstanding could have occurred. Clayton may have seen the GAEL notebook during the examination, heard a discussion of similar characters, or received information from someone else who misunderstood the comparison.

Contemporary reporting indicates that Joseph compared the Kinderhook characters with his Egyptian-language study materials. Some (but not most) of the characters used in the GAEL are Egytian characters that were copied from the Egytian Papyrus acquired in 1835. Joseph likely could have looked at what he knew to be authentic ancient characters and compared them to the characters he saw on the kinderhook plates using the GAEL notebook.

It’s possible that Clayton may have mistaken the contents from the 1835 GAEL notbook, seeing them beside the plates that he traced that day, and assumed it to be Joseph Smith’s translation of the Kinderhook Plates.

All we know from Joseph Smith’s official journal about his activities that day is that he “rode out” and was away for much of May 1, when Clayton wrote his journal entry. One possibility is that Clayton encountered the plates and an open Egyptian notebook when Joseph wasn’t even there. He may have assumed the notebook contained a translation Joseph was working on of the Kinderhook Plates, rather than recognizing it as an older document from 1835.

The Contemporary Newspaper Did Not Report a Completed Translation

An article in the May 1, 1843, issue of Times and Seasons, the same day as Clayton’s Journal Entry, reported that the plates had been shown to Joseph Smith and that Joseph’s opinion about them was not yet known.

The newspaper expressed interest in the possibility of a future translation but did not present a completed text.

The publication date needs some care because the issue reproduced material from the Quincy Whig dated May 3. The exact sequence of reporting and publication is not completely straightforward.

Nevertheless, the article is important evidence of public interest and speculation without an accompanying published translation.

Read the contemporary Times and Seasons account.

Parley P. Pratt Repeated Similar Information

In a letter dated May 7, 1843, Parley P. Pratt reported information about the Kinderhook discovery and connected it with Ham and the ancient Jaredites.

His account also connected the Kinderhook plates to Ham, but differs from Clayton’s description in that it attributes the person of whose bones were found with the Jaredites.

Pratt does not identify a translation session he personally witnessed. His remarks also refer to people comparing the plate characters with Egyptian papyri already available in Nauvoo.

His letter demonstrates how quickly interpretations about the plates circulated among the Saints.

Whether those interpretations came from Joseph Smith, earlier Egyptian materials, or discussion among interested observers cannot be established with certainty.

What the Hoaxers Actually Said

Wilbur Fugate’s statements provide valuable evidence about how the plates were manufactured and what happened afterward. However, his accounts also reveal why we need to distinguish what he personally knew in 1843 from what he reported remembering thirty-five years later.

In his surviving April 8, 1878, letter to James T. Cobb, Fugate explained that a man using the name Savage borrowed the plates from Robert Wiley and took them to Joseph Smith in Nauvoo. Afterward, the plates were returned to Wiley, who eventually transferred them to Professor McDowell for his museum. 

Fugate also reported hearing that Joseph Smith would not agree to translate the plates until they had been examined by antiquarian authorities in Philadelphia, France, and England. According to Fugate, those authorities reported that the characters were unrecognized, after which Joseph supposedly began translating? That completely contradicts his previous statment.

This account raises several questions. Fugate was writing in 1878, thirty-five years after the incident. By then, stories about Joseph translating the plates had circulated among Latter-day Saints for decades, including William Clayton’s account and Parley P. Pratt’s description of their supposed contents. Fugate’s reference to Joseph beginning a translation may have been influenced by these later reports rather than firsthand knowledge.

There is also a problem with the timeline. Clayton’s journal entry claiming Joseph had translated a portion of the plates was dated May 1, 1843, just days after the plates reached Nauvoo. Yet Fugate’s later account places the beginning of a translation after the plates had supposedly been sent to antiquarian authorities in America and Europe.

Sending artifacts overseas, obtaining examinations, and waiting for responses would have taken a very long time. Joseph Smith was killed on June 27, 1844, only fourteen months after the Kinderhook “discovery.” Depending on when the supposed examinations took place, Joseph might not even have been alive when the reports returned. More importantly, there is no known evidence establishing that these examinations actually occurred.

The plates appear to have left Nauvoo in early May, although they may have returned briefly in June when illustrations were prepared for publication. There is no known record establishing that the plates returned to Joseph following the supposed international examination or that he subsequently resumed translating them.

This makes Fugate’s statement about Joseph beginning a translation particularly questionable. His account introduces an undocumented series of examinations and describes events that he did not personally witness. It is possible that his recollection was influenced by stories that developed over the intervening decades, or that he misunderstood the timing of events.

Fugate’s later 1879 statement further explained how the plates were manufactured and circulated. His firsthand knowledge of the forgery is valuable evidence that the Kinderhook Plates were fake, but his much later account does not establish that Joseph Smith produced an actual translation.

Read Fugate’s 1878 letter and his 1879 statement.

Where Is the Translation?

Despite the references to possible translation efforts, no completed Kinderhook Plates translation survives.

There is no known dictated manuscript, no publication endorsed by Joseph Smith, and no attempt to introduce the plates as scripture. No scribe ever described participating in a translation process, and no witness left an account of watching Joseph dictate a translation. There are also no surviving copies of any translated text, something that interested Church members would likely have been eager to preserve and share, especially given the excitement surrounding the discovery of another set of ancient metal plates.

In contrast, consider the Book of Abraham. We have three surviving manuscript versions dating to 1835, nearly seven years before the Book of Abraham was first published in 1842. These manuscripts were written by different scribes, including Frederick G. Williams, Warren Parrish, and William W. Phelps. We also have an additional copy of part of the Book of Abraham made by William Appleby in May 1841, almost a year before publication.

The Book of Abraham left a clear documentary record of its existence long before it was published. Multiple people were involved in recording or copying its contents, and substantial portions of the text survive in their handwriting.

Yet with the Kinderhook Plates, despite the excitement surrounding their discovery and reports that Joseph had translated a portion, we have absolutely no surviving translation. Not a single paragraph, sentence, or even a copied fragment of text attributed to an actual Kinderhook translation.

If Joseph Smith had genuinely begun translating the plates, as later accounts suggest, why is there no comparable documentary evidence? 

The original hoaxers also failed to produce a fraudulent translation that could be directly compared with their manufactured characters. And wasn’t that their goal to begin with, to make Joseph Smith look foolish? What better way than to immediately discredit the Prophet by proving him a liar for translating a record that was made up? So why wait until 1878 to “set the record straight?”

The episode attracted attention, but Joseph Smith did not turn the plates into another Book of Mormon, nor did he establish a new religious record from them.

That is an important distinction between examining a proposed ancient artifact and producing scripture through revelation.

Summary and Conclusions

The historical evidence supports several conclusions:

1. The Kinderhook Plates were nineteenth-century forgeries, confirmed through scientific testing in 1980.
2. Joseph Smith examined the plates, and contemporary sources indicate that their characters were compared with existing linguistic materials which included the GAEL notebook.
3. William Clayton reported that Joseph had translated part of the plates, but Clayton did not describe a witnessed dictation or preserve a translation manuscript.
4. The later first-person quotation attributed to Joseph Smith came from an editorial rewriting of Clayton’s account.
5. The wording attributed to the plates strongly resembles language already found in the 1835 Egyptian papers.
6. Clayton may have mistaken this earlier material for a translation of the Kinderhook Plates. 
7. No completed, Joseph-endorsed translation survives, and the plates were never presented as revealed scripture.

The strongest conclusion supported by the surviving evidence is that Joseph Smith examined the Kinderhook Plates and may have compared their characters with those found in his earlier GAEL notebook. Reports of a partial translation may have originated from this comparison, particularly given the striking similarities between William Clayton’s description and the fifth-degree definitions found on page 4. in the GAEL.

From my research, the GAEL was not a conventional Egyptian translation guide. It contained an unusual system of characters with expanding meanings organized into different degrees. Treating a comparison with this exploratory system as an actual translation of the Kinderhook Plates makes little sense, especially when the supposed translation so closely resembles definitions written eight years earlier.

There is no historical evidence whatsoever that Joseph Smith produced a revelatory translation of the Kinderhook Plates comparable to what he claimed for the Book of Mormon. No dictated manuscript, no translation witnessed by a scribe, and not even a surviving fragment of translated text.

The accusation that Joseph Smith knowingly fabricated scripture from the Kinderhook forgery goes far beyond what the historical evidence demonstrates.

For more background, see Kinderhook Plates investigation.

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Podcast Episode Script

Letter To My Wife: Examining the Evidence

Episode: Did Joseph Smith Translate the Fake Kinderhook Plates?

Alma the Defender

What Happened in Nauvoo?

The plates appear to have arrived in Nauvoo around April 29th or 30th, 1843.

There was interest in what they might contain, and Joseph Smith examined them.

But let’s look at Joseph’s own journal.

His official journal was being maintained by Willard Richards.

For May 1, 1843, the journal gives a very brief account of Joseph’s activities. He rode out during the morning and afternoon.

There is no entry about receiving a revelation from the Kinderhook Plates.

There is no account of a translation session.

On May 7, several gentlemen came to discuss the plates discovered near Quincy, and Joseph sent for his Hebrew Bible and lexicon.

And that’s about it.

Now, a missing journal entry doesn’t prove something never happened.

Joseph was extremely busy, and not every conversation or activity was recorded.

But compare this with the records surrounding Joseph’s other scriptural projects.

When Joseph translated the Book of Mormon, he dictated text to scribes.

When the Book of Abraham was prepared, written manuscripts and published material resulted.

There were actual records that people could read.

With the Kinderhook Plates, where is that translation?

What did Joseph supposedly dictate?

Who wrote it down?

Where did it go?

There is no surviving answer to those questions.

And the contemporary evidence suggests that whatever Joseph did with the plates was not important to him. It was brief and ultimately went nowhere.

The Famous Translation Quote

Now let’s examine the most important piece of evidence critics use.

In the 1908 History of the Church, a statement attributed to Joseph Smith begins with the claim that he “had translated a portion of the plates.”

It then describes a person descended from Ham through Pharaoh who received a kingdom from the ruler of heaven and earth.

That sounds pretty conclusive, doesn’t it?

Joseph Smith translated the fake plates and told everyone what they said.

Except there’s a problem.

This statement didn’t come from Joseph Smith, it came from William Clayton’s personal journal.

Clayton wrote on May 1 that President Joseph had translated a portion of the plates.

Notice the difference.

Clayton was reporting something he had assumed about Joseph.

He wasn’t recording an actual translation manuscript or describing a revelation he had watched Joseph dictate.

When the historical material was later incorporated into the published History of the Church, the account was converted into a first-person narrative where the sentence was made to sound as though Joseph Smith himself was speaking.

And in this instance, it created an especially misleading impression.

Today, critics can reproduce the first-person quotation and tell readers that Joseph Smith personally claimed to have translated fraudulent plates.

But the original evidence was a report in another man’s journal.

That doesn’t automatically make Clayton’s report false.

William Clayton was an important associate of Joseph Smith, and his records are valuable historical sources.

But we should investigate how he reached his conclusion before treating it as proof of a fabricated revelation.

Joseph Smith’s Egyptian Papers

This is where the story gets especially interesting.

Eight years before anyone had heard of the Kinderhook Plates, Joseph Smith and several associates had been exploring ancient languages and the idea of a pure language in which symbols could carry multiple layers of meaning. Some of the characters they studied came from the Egyptian papyri acquired in Kirtland in 1835, the same papyri associated with the Book of Abraham.

One result of their work was a document called the Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language, commonly abbreviated as GAEL. It contains characters, transliterations, and elaborate definitions organized into five different degrees of meaning. The definitions often expand as they progress through the degrees, and the precise purpose of this unusual system remains a subject of historical debate.

But something on page four of this document is particularly interesting when we consider the Kinderhook Plates.

In the fifth degree, there’s a character identified as Ho-e-oop. Its definition begins:

A prince of the royal blood a true desendant from Ham, the son of Noah, and inheritor of the Kingly blessings

The definition continues by discussing the blessings given by Noah to his descendants.

Just a few lines below, on that exact same page, we find another character called Ho e oop hah. Its fifth-degree definition reads:

honor by birth, kingly power by the line of Pharoah. possession by birth one who riegns upon his throne universally— possessor of heaven and earth, and of the blessings of the earth.

Now, remember that these definitions were written in 1835, eight years before the Kinderhook Plates were discovered.

With those two descriptions in mind, let’s go back to William Clayton’s journal entry from May 1, 1843. This is the original entry that later became the first-person translation claim attributed to Joseph Smith in History of the Church.

Clayton wrote:

Prest J. has translated a portion and says they contain the history of the person with whom they were found & he was a descendant of Ham through the loins of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and that he received his kingdom from the ruler of heaven & earth.

Compare those statements.

The GAEL describes a royal descendant of Ham. Clayton describes a descendant of Ham.

The GAEL describes kingly power through the line of Pharaoh. Clayton describes someone descended through the loins of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.

And the GAEL describes someone possessing heaven and earth. Clayton describes someone receiving a kingdom from the ruler of heaven and earth.

These aren’t identical sentences, but the similarities are striking. We have the same names, the same royal lineage, and closely related descriptions of kingship and authority over heaven and earth. All of that information appears in two entries located just a few lines apart on the same page of a document written eight years earlier.

To me, Clayton’s supposed Kinderhook translation reads almost like someone summarizing what they had read on page four of the GAEL.

And there’s another reason to suspect these documents are connected.

We have contemporary evidence that Joseph Smith actually compared the Kinderhook Plates with his Egyptian alphabet. An anonymous eyewitness, writing in May 1843, specifically reported that Joseph compared the characters with his Egyptian alphabet in the witness’s presence. Parley P. Pratt also wrote that people in Nauvoo had compared the Kinderhook characters with those on the Egyptian papyri.

Neither account specifically identifies the GAEL as the document being examined. However, the Joseph Smith Papers editors identify it as an apparent reference to the Grammar and Alphabet, which was still in the Church’s possession at the time.

Think about what this means for William Clayton’s report.

The documents that Joseph reportedly used when examining the Kinderhook Plates already contained descriptions remarkably similar to what Clayton later recorded as a translation. The wording about Ham, Pharaoh, and heaven and earth did not have to originate from the fake plates because it already existed in the Egyptian papers.

There’s also an important distinction between this material and Joseph Smith’s claimed translation of the Book of Mormon. The GAEL was an unusual and incomplete linguistic study, with expanding definitions and multiple degrees of meaning. Whatever its intended purpose, it was not a conventional Egyptian dictionary capable of reliably translating an unfamiliar ancient inscription.

My interpretation is that Clayton may have mistaken information from these earlier Egyptian-language materials for a new translation of the Kinderhook Plates.

Perhaps he saw the GAEL during

Did William Clayton Misunderstand What He Saw?

Here’s my explanation of what may have happened.

William Clayton was not involved in creating the Egyptian grammar project in 1835. He joined the Church in England and didn’t arrive in Nauvoo until 1840, several years after the Egyptian papers had been produced. Although he eventually became one of Joseph Smith’s trusted clerks, he wasn’t one of the original participants in developing these documents.

We know from the contemporary accounts that Joseph Smith examined the Kinderhook Plates and reportedly compared their characters with his Egyptian alphabet. We also know that William Clayton had seen the plates because he included a tracing of one of them in his May 1 journal entry. What we don’t know is whether Clayton personally witnessed Joseph examining the plates, what conversations he heard, or whether he actually looked through the Egyptian notebook.

But suppose Clayton encountered a discussion in which a Kinderhook character was being compared with one of the characters in Joseph’s earlier Egyptian papers. Or perhaps he saw the plates alongside the notebook, with the descriptions about Ham and Pharaoh already written out. If Clayton assumed the notebook was a translation of the Kinderhook characters, that could explain why he reported that Joseph had translated a portion of the plates.

Consider what Clayton’s journal actually says. He doesn’t provide a translated manuscript or describe watching Joseph dictate a revelation. Instead, he gives a brief description of a descendant of Ham who received a kingdom from the ruler of heaven and earth. That description closely resembles information already contained in two character definitions on the same page of a notebook written eight years earlier.

There’s another interesting detail. Joseph Smith’s official journal for May 1 records that he rode out during the morning and afternoon. We don’t know exactly when Clayton wrote his entry or whether Joseph was present when Clayton examined the plates. But it’s possible that Clayton encountered the Egyptian notebook while Joseph was away and mistakenly assumed it contained a translation Joseph had been working on.

I want to be clear that this particular scenario is an interpretation, not a documented event. We don’t have a statement from Clayton saying he found the GAEL open on Joseph’s desk. We don’t know whether someone explained the entries to him or whether he understood their original purpose.

What we do have is a remarkable similarity between the 1835 Egyptian papers and Clayton’s description, along with contemporary evidence that Joseph was comparing the Kinderhook characters with his Egyptian-language materials. Those facts provide a plausible explanation for Clayton’s statement without requiring us to conclude that Joseph Smith produced a new revelation from fraudulent plates.

And there is another reason I find that explanation more convincing. If Joseph was supposedly translating these plates, where is the actual translation?

We’ll come back to that question in a minute.

What Did the Newspaper Say?

Let’s first consider another contemporary source.

The Times and Seasons, the Church newspaper published in Nauvoo, reported the discovery of the Kinderhook Plates in its issue dated May 1, 1843. The article expressed considerable excitement about the possibility that another ancient metal record had been discovered in America. But when it discussed Joseph Smith’s involvement, the newspaper acknowledged that his opinion about the plates had not yet been established.

The article also explained that the person who owned the plates had taken them away, preventing the newspaper from reproducing their characters. It reported that the owner intended to return with the plates for translation, suggesting that readers might eventually learn what they contained.

That is an interesting statement. If Joseph Smith had already produced a meaningful translation, as Clayton’s journal seems to suggest, why was the Church newspaper still discussing a possible translation as something expected in the future?

The issue’s dating is a little complicated because it reproduced material from the Quincy Whig dated May 3. We shouldn’t assume every statement in the issue was written on May 1. Nevertheless, the article provides contemporary evidence of public interest in the plates without announcing any completed translation.

Even more interesting, on June 24, 1843, the Nauvoo Neighbor published a broadside containing illustrations of the plates. It again expressed the expectation that their contents would be published when the translation was completed.

By that point, almost two months had passed since Clayton’s journal entry. Yet the public announcement was still talking about a translation that had not been completed.

There was plenty of excitement about the Kinderhook Plates, but no actual translation was being presented to the public.

What About Parley P. Pratt?

Another important contemporary account comes from Parley P. Pratt, who wrote a letter to John Van Cott on May 7, 1843.

Pratt described the discovery of six plates near Kinderhook and said they contained the genealogy of an ancient Jaredite extending back to Ham, the son of Noah. He also mentioned that people in Nauvoo had compared the characters on the plates with those on the Egyptian papyri in Joseph Smith’s possession.

This is an important source because it independently confirms that the Kinderhook characters were being associated with the Egyptian materials already in Nauvoo.

But notice how Pratt’s account differs from Clayton’s.

Clayton described a descendant of Ham through Pharaoh who received a kingdom from the ruler of heaven and earth. Pratt described the genealogy of an ancient Jaredite going back to Ham. These are related ideas, but they’re not the same description.

The accounts also disagree about some basic details of the discovery. Clayton placed it in Adams County, while Pratt correctly identified Pike County. Clayton described the plates as having been found with a skeleton approximately nine feet tall, while Pratt described bones buried much farther underground and associated with a cement vessel.

If both men had access to a clear, completed translation dictated by Joseph Smith, why were their accounts so different?

One possibility is that they were repeating different versions of information circulating among the Saints. Another is that they had heard discussions about the plates and interpreted them differently. The descriptions could also have been influenced by what people believed the Egyptian papers contained.

Pratt never supplied an actual translation manuscript or described watching Joseph dictate a revelation from the Kinderhook Plates. His letter confirms that interpretations of the plates were circulating, but it does not establish that Joseph produced a revelatory translation.

What Did the Men Who Created the Hoax Say?

Now let’s look at the accounts from the men who actually manufactured the plates, because the timeline becomes particularly interesting.

Wilbur Fugate was one of the men responsible for the forgery. In a letter dated April 8, 1878, written to James T. Cobb, Fugate explained how he, Robert Wiley, and a blacksmith named Bridge Whitton created the plates, added artificial characters, and arranged for their discovery.

But there is an important distinction between what Fugate knew in 1843 and what he reported thirty-five years later.

According to Fugate’s 1878 letter, Joseph Smith reportedly wanted the plates examined by antiquarian authorities before agreeing to translate them. Fugate also claimed that Joseph had supposedly said the plates could produce a book of twelve hundred pages.

Think about what that suggests about the original encounter. The plates had been manufactured specifically to fool Joseph Smith into producing a fraudulent translation, yet the story Fugate recalled was that Joseph would not agree to translate them without having their authenticity examined first.

The plates were eventually returned to their owner, Robert Wiley. Fugate’s own account explains that a man using the name Savage had borrowed the plates from Wiley and taken them to Joseph Smith. After they were returned, Wiley eventually transferred them to a museum associated with Professor Joseph Nash McDowell.

In other words, Fugate was not describing a translation he personally watched Joseph produce. He was reporting information about what supposedly happened after the plates were taken to Nauvoo.

But his 1878 letter contains another statement that critics sometimes point to. Fugate said the plates had been sent to antiquarian authorities in Philadelphia, France, and England. According to his account, those authorities responded that the characters were not recognized, and Joseph then began translating the plates.

There are several problems with treating that statement as reliable evidence of an actual translation.

First, Fugate wrote it thirty-five years after the incident. By 1878, stories about Joseph Smith translating the Kinderhook Plates had circulated among Latter-day Saints for decades. William Clayton’s account had already appeared in published Church history, and other descriptions of the supposed contents had also circulated.

Fugate’s later statement may have been influenced by those reports. He could have been repeating what he had heard rather than describing something he knew had actually happened.

Second, there is no known documentary record establishing that the plates were sent to antiquarian societies in those locations, received an official examination, or were subsequently returned to Nauvoo for Joseph Smith to translate.

We know the plates were taken away from Nauvoo after their initial examination. They appear to have returned briefly, at least long enough for illustrations to be prepared for the June 24 broadside. But that does not establish the later international examination and return that Fugate described.

And then we have the timing.

The Kinderhook Plates were discovered in April 1843. Joseph Smith was killed on June 27, 1844, only fourteen months later.

If the plates had actually been shipped across the Atlantic to institutions in England and France, examined by scholars, and then returned to America with their findings, that process could have taken months. Depending on when the plates were sent, Joseph might not even have been alive by the time the supposed examination was completed.

We cannot establish that he had already died when a response might have arrived because we don’t know whether these overseas examinations happened at all. But the lack of documentation creates a serious problem for Fugate’s account.

There is also an obvious chronological inconsistency with the supposed translation.

William Clayton recorded his report on May 1, 1843, only days after the plates reached Nauvoo. This was apparently before the plates had even left for the proposed authentication process. Yet Fugate’s later account places Joseph’s decision to begin translating after authorities in Philadelphia, France, and England had supposedly examined the plates and reported back.

Those accounts cannot simply be treated as descriptions of the same sequence of events.

Perhaps Fugate confused stories he had heard over the intervening decades. Maybe he did not remember the timeline accurately or did not know precisely how events unfolded after the plates left Nauvoo. We cannot establish his thought process, but we can recognize that his 1878 account is not a firsthand record of Joseph translating anything.

His subsequent 1879 statement further explained how the plates were manufactured and how the forgery was carried out. That is valuable historical evidence because Fugate had firsthand knowledge of the hoax itself.

What he did not provide was a translation of the Kinderhook Plates, the name of anyone who witnessed Joseph dictate one, or a manuscript demonstrating that a translation had actually occurred.

Where Is the Actual Translation?

This brings us back to what I consider one of the biggest problems with the entire accusation.

Despite the references to possible translation efforts, no completed Kinderhook Plates translation survives. There is no known dictated manuscript, no publication endorsed by Joseph Smith, and no attempt to introduce the plates as scripture.

No scribe ever described participating in a Kinderhook translation process, and no witness left an account of watching Joseph dictate a translation. There are also no surviving copies of an actual translated text, something interested Church members would likely have been eager to preserve and share, especially considering the excitement surrounding another set of ancient metal plates.

Now, compare that with the Book of Abraham.

Joseph Smith began working with the Egyptian papyri in 1835, eight years before the Kinderhook incident and nearly seven years before the Book of Abraham was first published in 1842.

We have three surviving manuscript versions of the early Book of Abraham text dating to 1835. These were written by different scribes, including Frederick G. Williams, Warren Parrish, and William W. Phelps.

We also have another independent manuscript witness. On May 5, 1841, William Appleby copied a substantial portion of the Book of Abraham into his personal journal, almost a year before the first publication. Then, in early 1842, Willard Richards prepared another surviving manuscript containing the early chapters.

That’s five manuscript witnesses containing portions of the Book of Abraham that existed before its first publication.

And there are additional surviving documents associated with its publication, including manuscript explanations of the facsimiles.

Consider the difference.

The Book of Abraham left a substantial documentary record. We have manuscripts in multiple people’s handwriting, evidence of the text circulating before publication, and accounts from participants discussing Joseph’s work. Warren Parrish even described sitting beside Joseph and writing down the translation as Joseph claimed to receive it through inspiration.

With the Kinderhook Plates, we have none of that.

Not a single surviving paragraph of a Kinderhook translation. No sentence recorded by a translation scribe. No manuscript that can be compared against the characters on the plates.

And this was not a case where the Church lacked access to writing materials or where nobody had an interest in recording what Joseph said. His clerks were actively documenting his activities, and Church members were clearly excited about the possibility of another ancient record.

Of course, the absence of a manuscript doesn’t prove that Joseph never discussed the plates or attempted to interpret a character. Historical documents can be lost, and not every conversation was written down.

But if Joseph had genuinely begun producing a new revealed translation, as critics sometimes claim, why is there no comparable documentary evidence?

The contrast with the Book of Abraham is substantial.

A Perfect Opportunity to Expose a Fraud

Now consider the situation from the perspective of someone who believes Joseph Smith fabricated the Book of Mormon.

By 1843, Joseph had already published a book of more than five hundred pages, which believers accepted as an ancient record translated through the gift and power of God. Critics argue that he simply invented the entire story and passed it off as an ancient translation.

Well, here were six more metal plates, conveniently discovered in an American burial mound, covered with mysterious characters that nobody could read.

Unlike the Book of Mormon plates, these physical objects were available for inspection. They could be shown to Joseph, copied by his followers, and examined by people outside the Church.

If Joseph Smith was comfortable inventing ancient histories and presenting them as divine translations, this was an excellent opportunity to do it again.

Why not claim the plates contained another ancient American history? Why not produce a new account about the Nephites, Lamanites, or Jaredites and use the actual metal artifacts as physical evidence supporting the existence of ancient American records?

The men who made the plates would have known exactly what the characters meant.

Nothing.

They were manufactured symbols.

If Joseph had produced a lengthy translation claiming to reveal their contents, the hoaxers could have exposed the entire thing as an invention.

Instead, whatever examination Joseph conducted ended without an authoritative translation.

He didn’t publish a new book of scripture, establish new doctrine from the plates, or produce a lengthy ancient history. We have no manuscript the hoaxers could hold up beside their fabricated characters to demonstrate that Joseph had invented a revelation.

There could have been reasons the men behind the hoax did not expose it more aggressively. Robert Wiley also showed an interest in selling the plates, and publicly admitting they were fraudulent would have destroyed their commercial value. So the hoaxers’ failure to publicize a supposed translation is not conclusive proof by itself.

But the most important point remains. The translation that would have demonstrated Joseph Smith was inventing scripture was never produced.

The Problem with the Published History

There is another part of this accusation that deserves attention, and it involves how the historical account was eventually published.

Many critics quote a passage from History of the Church in which Joseph Smith supposedly says he translated a portion of the Kinderhook Plates. The passage is written in the first person, giving readers the impression that Joseph himself made the statement.

But that is not how the original document was written.

As we discussed earlier, William Clayton recorded in his personal journal that President Joseph had translated a portion of the plates. Years later, when the historical narrative was edited for publication, Clayton’s third-person report was converted into a first-person statement attributed to Joseph Smith.

This type of editorial reconstruction was used in compiling the historical narrative, but it creates a particularly important distinction in this case.

A statement by William Clayton about what he believed Joseph had done is not the same as a statement directly recorded from Joseph Smith himself. And neither is necessarily the same as a translation dictated by Joseph through revelation.

Yet when readers encounter the published passage without knowing its original source, they can easily assume they are reading Joseph’s own description of translating the plates.

That’s a serious problem when the argument being made is that Joseph Smith personally claimed to translate fraudulent characters.

If we’re going to evaluate whether Joseph Smith was honest, we should begin by accurately identifying what he actually said and what other people said about him.

Clayton’s journal is still an important historical source. He was closely associated with Joseph, and his account should not simply be dismissed because it raises questions.

But we also shouldn’t ignore the surrounding evidence, particularly the close relationship between his description and the earlier Egyptian papers.

What Clayton believed Joseph had done, what Joseph actually did, and what later editors attributed to Joseph are three separate historical questions.

The accusation becomes much less straightforward when those questions are considered individually.

The Scientific Evidence

Now let’s move forward more than a century.

For decades, the authenticity of the Kinderhook Plates remained controversial. Some Latter-day Saints believed they were genuine, while others questioned their origins. The statements from the men who created the hoax were known, but researchers did not have conclusive physical evidence establishing how the surviving plate had been manufactured.

In 1980, Stanley B. Kimball arranged for scientific testing of the surviving Kinderhook plate. Researchers used advanced analytical techniques to examine the characters and the composition of the metal.

The results showed that the characters had been produced through acid etching, consistent with the method described by the hoaxers. Examination of the metal also supported the conclusion that the plate was a nineteenth-century product rather than an ancient artifact.

In August 1981, the Church published Kimball’s findings in the Ensign, openly reporting the scientific evidence that the Kinderhook Plates were a hoax.

This is sometimes presented as though the Church had been caught hiding a fraudulent artifact. But the article acknowledged the forgery and explained the evidence supporting that conclusion.

There is no reason for Latter-day Saints to defend the authenticity of the Kinderhook Plates. The men who manufactured them eventually confessed, and scientific testing confirmed their claims.

The plates were fake.

But that still leaves a completely separate question about Joseph Smith.

The scientific evidence establishes that the plates were manufactured in the nineteenth century. It doesn’t establish that Joseph Smith produced a revelatory translation of them.

Those are two different historical claims, and evidence for one should not automatically be treated as evidence for the other.

What We Know and What We Assume

Let’s put the evidence together.

We know the Kinderhook Plates were manufactured as a hoax. We know they reached Nauvoo in late April 1843 and that Joseph Smith examined them. Contemporary accounts also indicate that Joseph compared their characters with his Egyptian alphabet, although the precise document being used is not identified beyond doubt.

William Clayton reported that Joseph translated a portion of the plates. Parley P. Pratt circulated a somewhat different account of their supposed contents, and an anonymous eyewitness reported seeing Joseph compare the characters with his Egyptian alphabet.

We also know that two definitions found together on page four of the 1835 GAEL closely resemble Clayton’s description of the supposed translation. The ideas of descent from Ham, royal authority through Pharaoh, and possession of heaven and earth were already present in the Egyptian materials eight years before the Kinderhook Plates were discovered.

And despite the excitement surrounding the plates, no completed translation survives. There is no known dictated manuscript, no scribe who described participating in a Kinderhook translation, and no subsequent publication of revealed scripture from these plates.

Now consider what someone needs to establish to use this incident as proof that Joseph Smith was a fraudulent prophet.

First, they need to establish that Joseph accepted the plates as genuine ancient artifacts rather than simply examining them.

Second, they need to establish that he claimed to translate the plates through divine revelation, rather than comparing unfamiliar characters with the existing Egyptian materials in his possession.

Third, they need to establish that Clayton’s description was an accurate report of newly translated text instead of a misunderstanding or summary of information already present in the GAEL.

And finally, they need to explain why a supposedly successful translation produced no manuscript, no dictated text, and no published record, despite the enthusiasm surrounding the discovery.

Those conclusions do not automatically follow from the historical evidence.

The accusation begins with a genuine nineteenth-century forgery and ends with the claim that Joseph Smith was exposed as a fraudulent translator of scripture. But between those two points are several assumptions that have not been established.

This is what I mean by assumption stacking. A real historical event becomes the foundation for a series of interpretations, and eventually those interpretations are presented as though they were proven facts.

When we examine the original documents, the situation is considerably less conclusive than critics often suggest.

My Conclusion

My conclusion is that Joseph Smith did not produce a revelatory translation of the Kinderhook Plates comparable to what he claimed for the Book of Mormon.

The surviving evidence supports an examination of the plates and a reported comparison of their characters with Joseph’s earlier Egyptian-language studies. William Clayton’s description of a partial translation is important, but it closely resembles two fifth-degree definitions found together on page four of the GAEL, written eight years before the Kinderhook discovery.

I believe Clayton may have misunderstood the significance of those earlier materials and treated a brief examination or character comparison as an actual translation.

That explanation makes particular sense when we consider the nature of the GAEL itself. It was not a conventional Egyptian dictionary capable of reliably translating an unfamiliar ancient inscription. It contained an unusual system of characters and expanding definitions organized into different degrees of meaning.

The idea that comparing a Kinderhook character with this exploratory system amounted to producing a genuine translation is difficult to justify. And the suggestion that Joseph used it to invent new scripture becomes even harder to support when the supposed translation so closely resembles descriptions written years earlier.

The lack of documentary evidence is equally significant.

Compare the Kinderhook Plates with the Book of Abraham. We have three surviving Book of Abraham manuscript versions from 1835, another independent copy from 1841, and an additional manuscript prepared in early 1842, all before the first publication. Different people copied portions of the text, and we have historical accounts describing the translation work.

With the Kinderhook Plates, we have no comparable evidence. No surviving manuscript, no account from a translation scribe, and not even a copied fragment of an actual translated text.

The later account from Wilbur Fugate doesn’t resolve those problems. His 1878 letter was written thirty-five years after the incident and contains a claim about overseas authentication that has no established documentary record. It also places the supposed beginning of a translation after that examination, even though Clayton’s report was already recorded on May 1, 1843.

Joseph Smith died just fourteen months after the plates were discovered. There is no known record establishing that the supposed international examination was completed and that the plates returned to him afterward for translation.

We cannot reconstruct every conversation that took place in Nauvoo in 1843. It’s possible that Joseph attempted a limited interpretation of a character using his Egyptian materials. We also cannot establish exactly what Clayton saw or heard when he recorded his journal entry.

But there is no historical evidence demonstrating that Joseph Smith produced a revelatory translation of the Kinderhook Plates comparable to the Book of Mormon. The accusation that he knowingly fabricated scripture from the Kinderhook forgery goes far beyond what the surviving records establish.

The plates were a hoax, and the men who manufactured them were attempting to deceive people.

But the supposedly fraudulent revelation that would have exposed Joseph Smith was never produced.

If someone wants to argue that Joseph Smith was a fraudulent prophet, they need evidence that actually supports that conclusion. The mere fact that somebody manufactured fraudulent plates, and Joseph briefly examined them, doesn’t establish it.

For a more detailed examination of the Kinderhook Plates, including the original historical sources and my comparison of William Clayton’s journal with the GAEL, visit AntiAntiMormon.com/kinderhook-plates.

You can also find the written version of this episode and its historical references at LetterToMyWife.com.

This is Alma the Defender. Thanks for listening to Letter To My Wife: Examining the Evidence.

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Historical Sources and References

The following references include primary documents, historical research, and related articles.

Primary Historical Documents

1. Joseph Smith Journal, May 1, 1843

Joseph Smith Papers. Records Joseph’s activities on the date William Clayton reported a partial translation.

2. Joseph Smith Journal, May 7, 1843

Joseph Smith Papers. Documents the visit concerning the Kinderhook Plates and Joseph’s request for his Hebrew Bible and lexicon. Includes historical editorial notes.

3. Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language, 1835

Joseph Smith Papers. Contains the Egyptian-language study materials relevant to the comparison of royal lineage, Ham, and Pharaoh.

4. William Clayton’s May 1, 1843 Report

The Joseph Smith Papers’ historical annotation preserves the reported content of Clayton’s journal and its relevance to the Kinderhook incident.

5. Times and Seasons, May 1843: Ancient Records

Contemporary newspaper discussion of the discovery, Joseph Smith’s encounter with the plates, and the possibility of translation.

6. Wilbur Fugate’s Letter to James T. Cobb, April 8, 1878

Fugate describes the creation of the hoax and reports secondhand information about Joseph Smith’s response.

7. Wilbur Fugate’s 1879 Statement

A later account explaining the manufacture of the plates and the staged discovery.

Historical Research and Church Publications

8. The Church’s Historical Overview: Kinderhook Plates

Official Church history topic explaining the forgery, contemporary reports, and the absence of a completed revelatory translation.

9. Did Joseph Smith Translate the Kinderhook Plates? Brian M. Hauglid

Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University. Reviews William Clayton’s report, Parley P. Pratt’s letter, other historical witnesses, and competing interpretations.

10. The Kinderhook Plates: FAIR

Additional historical documentation and discussion of the plates.

Related Research

11. The Kinderhook Plates Hoax: AntiAntiMormon.com

My extended examination of the Kinderhook Plates, including the 1835 Egyptian papers, William Clayton’s report, the alleged translation, and the assumptions behind modern criticisms.

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Related Episodes

Chapter 04: Kinderhook Plates

Explore the other Kinderhook Plates episodes to learn more about the forgery, the historical witnesses, and how the incident has been presented in modern criticisms of Joseph Smith.

Browse all chapters: Letter To My Wife: Examining the Evidence

Letter To My Wife: Examining the Evidence is an independent podcast and is not an official publication of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.