Malline:JohnStaffordOnRigdon

[Q]If young [Joseph] Smith [, Jr.] was as illiterate as you say, Doctor, how do you account for the Book of Mormon?

[A]"Well, I can't; except that Sidney Rigdon was connected with them."

[Q]Was Rigdon ever around there before the Book of Mormon was published?

[A]"No; not as we could ever find out. Sidney Rigdon was never there, that Hurlbut, or Howe, or Tucker could find out."

[Q]Well; you have been looking out for the facts a long time, have you not, Doctor?

[A]"Yes; I have been thinking and hearing about it for the last fifty years, and lived right among all their old neighbors there more of the time."

[Q]And no one has ever been able to trace the acquaintance of Rigdon and Smith, until after the Book of Mormon was published, and Rigdon proselyted by [Parley P.] Pratt, in Ohio?

[A]"Not that I know of.""

— John Stafford, cited in William H. Kelly, "The Hill Cumorah, and the Book of Mormon," Saints' Herald 28 (1 June 1881): 167; cited in Dan Vogel (editor), Early Mormon Documents (Salt Lake City, Signature Books, 1996–2003), 5 vols, 2:123–124.)