Anthon Transcript - Anthon's Accounts of Meeting With Harris

Anthon's Accounts of Meeting With Harris

In 1834, Anthon stated that, "The whole story about my having pronounced the Mormonite inscription to be 'reformed Egyptian hieroglyphics' is perfectly false...I soon came to the conclusion that it was all a trick, perhaps a hoax... requested an opinion from me in writing, which of course I declined giving." Anthon gave a second account in 1841 that contradicted his 1834 account as to whether or not he gave Harris a written opinion about the document: " requested me to give him my opinion in writing about the paper which he had shown to me. I did so without hesitation, partly for the man's sake, and partly to let the individual 'behind the curtain' see that his trick was discovered. The import of what I wrote was, as far as I can now recollect, simply this, that the marks in the paper appeared to be merely an imitation of various alphabetical characters, and had, in my opinion, no meaning at all connected with them." However, in both accounts he maintained that he told Harris that he (Harris) was the victim of a fraud. Pomeroy Tucker, a contemporary of Harris and Joseph Smith, wrote in 1867 that all the scholars whom Harris visited "were understood to have scouted the whole pretense as too depraved for serious attention, while commiserating the applicant as the victim of fanaticism or insanity."