KACK - Can you give me some references of whatever happened to the original stone box on Hill Cumorah that housed the gold plates?

JOEL - I only know of two references that mention the stone box after the plates were removed. After speaking of the gold plates Martin Harris described a money digging incident that took place after Joseph found the plates. Harris is quoted as saying:

"Three of us took some tools to go to the hill and hunt for more boxes of gold or something, and indeed we found a stone box. We got quite excited about it and dug carefully around it, and by some unseen power it slipped back into the hill. We stood there and looked at it and one of us took a crow-bar and tried to drive it through the lid and hold it, but the bar glanced off and broke off one of the corners of the box. Sometime that box will be found and you will see the corner broken off, and then you will know I have told you the truth" ("The Last Testimony of Martin Harris," by E. Cecil McGavin in The Instructor, October, 1930, Vol. 65, No. 10, pp. 587-589).

In a series of interviews a Mormon writer named Edward Stevenson, who was aquainted with Joseph Smith relates what he was told by an old man living near the Hill Cumorah:

"Questioning him closely he stated that he had seen some good-sized flat stones that had rolled down and lay near the bottom of the hill. This had occurred after the contents of the box had been removed and these stones were doubtless the ones that formerly composed the box. I felt a strong desire to see these ancient relics and told him I would be much pleased to have him inform me where they were to be found. He stated that they had long since been taken away."
(REMINISCENCES OF JOSEPH THE PROPHET, And the Coming Forth of the Book of Mormon by Elder Edward Stevenson, 1893 Salt Lake City, Utah)

This is all I have found on the subject and I question the reliability of both reports.

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