Background
Joseph Smith, Jr. said that on September 22, 1827, he had recovered a set of buried golden plates in a prominent hill near his parents' farm in Manchester, New York. Martin Harris, a respectable but superstitious farmer from nearby Palmyra, became an early believer and gave Smith $50 to finance the translation of the plates. Harris's wife Lucy also donated some of her own money and offered to give more, even though Smith denied her request to see the plates and told her that "in relation to assistance, I always prefer dealing with men rather than their wives."
Smith moved with his wife to her hometown of Harmony, Pennsylvania, in late October 1827, where he began transcribing the writing on the plates. When Martin Harris left Palmyra to visit Smith without taking his wife along, she became suspicious that Smith intended to defraud her and her husband.
On Harris's return, Lucy refused to share his bed, and she had a suitor of her daughter surreptitiously copy the characters on the Anthon transcript that Smith had given to Harris. Lucy then accompanied her husband back to Harmony in April 1828, when Martin agreed to serve as Smith's scribe. Before returning home after two weeks, Lucy searched the Smith house and grounds for the plates, but because Smith said he did not need their physical presence to create the transcription—Smith said they were hidden in a nearby woods—she was unable to locate them.
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