“I did not see them [the plates] uncovered, but I handled them and hefted them while wrapped in a tow frock and judged them to have weighed about sixty pounds …

“Father and my brother Samuel saw them as I did while in the frock. So did Hyrum and others of the family …

“Didn’t you want to remove the cloth and see the bare plates?” said Bro. B[riggs].

“No,” he replied; “For father had just asked if he might not be permitted to do so, and Joseph, putting his hand on them said: ‘No: I am instructed not to show them to anyone. If I do, I will transgress and lose them again.’ Besides, we did not care to have him break the commandment and suffer as he did before.”

William Smith (Joseph Smith, Jr’s. Brother) Last Statement – Interviewed by Brother E. C. Briggs, Zion’s Ensign – Volume 5, Number 3 (Independence, MO: Zion’s Ensign Magazine, 13 January 1894), 6.