Martin Harris
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Martin Harris (May 18, 1783–July 10, 1875) was the first financier of The Book of Mormon. He was also one of Three Witnesses of The Book of Mormon who testified they were shown the Golden Plates in a vision.
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Early Life
Martin Harris was born in Eastown, New York on May 17, 1783. He married his first cousin, Lucy, on March 27, 1808. From that time through 1831, he lived in Palmyra, New York, where he became a respected and prosperous farmer. He was a religious seeker; a neighbor later noted that Martin "was first an [orthodox] Quaker, then a Universalist, next a Restorationist, then a Baptist, next a Presbyterian, and then a Mormon."
Book of Mormon Witness
Harris became an associate of Joseph Smith, Jr. in Palmyra. Smith claimed to have obtained a record of the ancient inhabitants of the Americas, engraved upon Golden Plates, and he also said that he had been directed by an angel to translate the work. Harris assisted Smith both financially and by serving for a time as a scribe. With the use of a seer stone, Smith would see the translation of the writing upon the plates and dictate it aloud to Harris, who would write the words.
Harris wanted assurances of the authenticity of the work and so Smith copied some of the characters from the plates on to a sheet of paper, now known as the Anthon transcript. Harris took the transcript to New York City, where he met with Charles Anthon, a professor of linguistics. Although Harris and Anthon later told conflicting versions of the encounter, the episode apparently satisfied Martin's doubts. Harris' wife, Lucy, however, remained resistant to his collaboration with Smith. After translating the first 116 pages of the manuscript, Harris asked Smith for permission to take the manuscript home to convince his wife of its authenticity. Smith agreed only reluctantly and Harris took the pages back to Palmyra. Instead of being convinced, Lucy apparently destroyed the manuscript in an attempt to put an end to the work. The loss temporarily halted translation and when Smith began again he made use of other scribes, including Oliver Cowdery. In part due to their disagreement over the plates, Harris and his wife later separated.
Despite his loss of the original manuscript, Harris continued to support the work and as the translation neared completion, it was revealed that three men would be called as "special witnesses" to the Golden Plates. Along with Cowdery and David Whitmer, Harris became one of these Three Witnesses. When work on the translation was completed, Martin undertook to finance its publication as The Book of Mormon. His signed testimony was printed with the book, and has been included in nearly every subsequent edition.
Mormon Elder
Harris became one of the early members of the Church of Christ, which Smith organized on April 6, 1830. On June 3, 1831, at a conference at the new church's headquarters in Kirtland, Ohio, Martin was ordained to the newly restored Latter Day Saint "High Priesthood". Harris became a frequent missionary for the Latter Day Saint movement and preached the restored gospel in the Midwest, Pennsylvania and New York.
On February 17, 1834, Harris was ordained a member of Kirtland High Council, which was then the chief judicial and legislative council of the church. In response to the conflicts between church members and their neighbors in Missouri, Harris joined what is known as Zion's Camp and marched from Kirtland to Clay County, Missouri. Afterwards, Harris — along with Oliver Cowdery and David Whitmer — ordained a "traveling High Council" of twelve men. This council eventually became known as Mormonism's Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
Lucy Harris, from whom Martin Harris had separated, died in the summer of 1836 and that fall on November 1, 1836, Harris married his second wife, Caroline Young. (Caroline was the 22 year old daughter of Brigham Young's brother, John Young.) Twenty-one years Caroline's elder, Harris and his second wife eventually had seven children together.
In 1837, dissention arose in Kirtland over the failure of the church's Kirtland Safety Society bank. Harris was among the dissenters who broke with Smith and attempted to reform the church. Led by Warren Parrish, the reformed movement excommunicated Smith and Sidney Rigdon who relocated to Far West, Missouri. Parrish's reformed church in Kirtand took control of the temple and became known as The Church of Christ. In its 1838 articles of incorporation, Harris was named one of the church's three trustees. By 1839, Parrish and other church leaders rejected the Book of Mormon and consequently broke with Harris, who continued to testify of its truth. By 1840, Harris returned to communion with Smith's church, which had subsequently relocated to a new headquaters in Nauvoo, Illinois.
Strangite, Whitmerite, Bishopite and Williamite
Harris remained in Kirtland and after Smith's assassination in 1844, Harris accepted James J. Strang as Mormonism's new prophet. In August 1846, Harris travelled on a mission to England for the Strangite church, where he unsuccessfully debated missionaries from Brigham Young's rival organization.
By 1847, Harris had broken with Strang and accepted the leadership claims of fellow Book of Mormon witness, David Whitmer. Mormon apostle William E. McLellin organized a Whitmerite congregation in Kirtland, and Harris became a member. By 1851, Harris accepted another Latter Day Saint factional leader, Gladden Bishop, as prophet and joined Bishop's Kirtland-based organization. In 1855, Harris joined with the last surviving brother of Joseph Smith Jr., William Smith and affirmed that William was Joseph's true successor.
By the 1860s, all of these organizations had either dissolved or dissipated and Harris was left a destitute old man in Kirtland without a congregation. He continued to reject the leadership claims of Brigham Young, but in his poverty, Harris accepted the charity of members of Young's church, who raised $200 to help him move to the Utah Territory. Harris left Kirtland in 1870 and lived the last four and a half years of his life with relatives in Cache Valley. He died in Clarkston, Utah on June 10, 1875.
Testimony of the Book of Mormon
Although he broke with Joseph Smith Jr. for a time, Martin Harris was a committed believer in Mormonism and he remained true to his testimony of the Book of Mormon. He consistently explained that his vision of the plates themselves was by "spiritual eyes" in "open vision", that he saw them as plainly and "surely as the sun is shining on us", and that he handled them only through a cloth or when they were in a box. He died in full fellowship with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, making it a point to tell all those who saw and visited him in his later years of his testimony of Joseph Smith and as a witness to the Book of Mormon plates. Harris signed two or three affidavits that he never recanted his testimony of The Book of Mormon. On his deathbead he called in LDS friends who held legal status - doctor and lawyer - to witness that he was of sound mind when affirming the book's truthfulness with his dying words. At his adjurement, these individuals told others that he had affirmed his testimony.
References
- H. Michael Marquardt, "Martin Harris: The Kirtland Years, 1831-1870," Dialogue 35:3, Fall 2002.
- Susan Easton Black, "Who's Who in the Doctrine & Covenants"