Background
Lucy Harris was born on May 1, 1792 at Swift’s Landing (later Palmyra), Ontario County, New New York She was the daughter of Rufus Harris and Lucy Hill, who were affiliated with the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).
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Lucy Harris
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Lucy married Martin Harris on March 27, 1808, in Palmyra, New New York She had become partially deaf by the year 1827. At Harris" insistence (and despite Smith saying he was warned not to by the Lord) Smith reluctantly loaned the pages to Harris.
The manuscript was subsequently lost, and a variety of theories as to its disappearance have arisen.
When Harris approached Smith and told him what happened, Smith became angry with himself for not heeding "the Lord"s admonition" not to loan the manuscript to Harris and left to go and pray. Subsequently Joseph lost the ability to translate "for a season" while he went through "the repentance process." Ultimately he claimed to receive a revelation wherein he was instructed not to retranslate the portion of the Golden Plates the 116 pages were taken from "because wicked men had stolen the pages and altered them, hoping to discr Joseph when he translated them again and the two manuscripts didn’t match because of their alterations." Instead, the material would be replaced with Nephi"s Abridgment of his father"s record.
Lucy Harris was described by her detractors Lucy Mack Smith as a woman of "irascible temper," but Harris may also have abused her. She is shown as a skeptic of Joseph Smith, eliciting the only break from the chorus"s "Joseph Smith was called a prophet, dum dum dum dum dum." theme with "Lucy Harris smart smart smart, Martin Harris dumb."
Author Christopher Hitchens uses the Lucy Harris story as proof that Joseph Smith was a fraud in his book God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.
Both the Hitchens and South Park references were based on Fawn Brodie"s biography Number Manitoba Knows My History: The of Joseph Smith, which first asserted the claim that Lucy Harris stole the manuscript.
