“I heard Jo[s]e[ph Smith, Jr.] tell my Mother and Sister how he procured the plates. He said he was directed by an angel where it was. He went in the night to get the plates. When he took the plates there was something down near the box that looked some like a toad that rose up into a man which forbid him to take the plates … He told his story just as earnestly as any one could. He seemed to believe all he said.”
Benjamin Saunders – September 1884, in Hammond’s The Creation of Mormonism – Volume II (Bloomington, IN: Xlibris, Corp., 27 July 2011), 70.