| 17 father's family met with a great affliction by the death of my eldest brother Alvin. In the month of October, eighteen hundred and twenty five, I hired with an old gentleman, by the name of Josiah Stoal, who lived in Chenango County, State of New York. He had heard something of a silver mine having been opened by the Spaniards in Harmony, Susquehanna County, State of Pennsylvania, and had previous to my hiring with him been digging in order if possible to discover the mine. After I went to live with him he took me among the rest of his hands to dig for the silver mine, at which I continued to work for nearly a month without success in our undertaking, and finally I prevailed with the old gentleman to cease digging after it. Hence arose the very prevalent story of my having been a money digger.
"During the time that I was thus employed I was put to board with a Mr. Isaac Hale of that place; it was there that I first saw my wife (his daughter) Emma Hale On the eighteenth of January, eighteen hundred and twenty-seven, we were married while yet I was employed in the service of Mr. Stoal.
"Owing to my still continuing to assert that I had seen a vision persecution still followed me, and my wife's father's family were very much opposed to our being married. I was therefore under the necessity of taking her elsewhere, so we went and were married at the house of Squire Tarbill, in South Bainbridge, Chenango County, New York. Immediately after my marriage I left Mr. Stoal's and went to my father's and farmed with him that season.
"At length the time arrived for obtaining the plates, the Urim and Thummin, and the Breastplate. On the twenty-second day of September, one thousand eight hundred and twenty-seven, having went as usual at the end of another year to the place where they were deposited, the same heavenly messenger delivered them up to me, with this charge that I should be responsible for them; that if I should let them go carelessly or through any neglect of mine, I should be cut off; but if I would use all my endeavors to preserve them, until he the
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