“Manchester, New York, resident Wallace Miner recalled a boyhood incident with Harris echoing this magic world view. ‘Martin Harris stayed at this home when I was about 13 yrs of age,’ Miner reminisced, ‘I used to go over to the diggings [—remains from Joseph Smith’s treasure seeking—] about 100 rods or a little less S. E. of this house. It is near a clump of bushes. Martin Harris regarded it as fully as sacred as the Mormon Hill diggings.’”
Brent Lee Metcalfe, Dialogue Magazine – Volume 26, No. 3, “Apologetic and Critical Assumptions about Book of Mormon Historicity” (Salt Lake City, UT: Dialogue Magazine, Fall 1993), 178, fn 82.
In M. Wilford Poulson, “Notebook Containing Statements Made by Residents of Palmyra, N.Y., Manchester, N.Y., and Other Areas, and Notes and Excerpts from Periodicals, Books, and Other Sources Pertaining to Joseph Smith, Other Mormon Church Leaders or Mormon Church History and Doctrine,” ca. 1932. M. Wilford Poulson Collection, Archives and Manuscripts, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah.