“When we arrived at Mr. Hale’s, in Harmony, Pa. from which place he [Joseph Smith, Jr.] had taken his wife [Emma], a scene presented itself, truly affecting. His father-in-law (Mr. Hale) addressed Joseph, in a flood of tears: ‘You have stolen my daughter and married her. I had much rather have followed her to her grave. You spend your time in digging for money – pretend to see in a stone, and thus try to deceive people.’ Joseph wept, and acknowledged he could not see in a stone now, nor never could; and that his former pretensions in that respect, were all false. He then promised to give up his old habits of digging for money and looking into stones.”
Peter Ingersoll, affidavit – 2 December 1833, as quoted in E.D. Howe’s Mormonism Unvailed (Painesville, OH: Self-published, 1834), 234-235.
