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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 18th of January, 1827, 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 Thummim, and the Breast-plate. On the 22nd day of September, 1827, having gone, 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 that if I would use all my endeavours to preserve them, until he, the messenger, should call for them, they should be protected.
I soon found out the reason why I had received such strict charges to keep them safe, and why it was that the messenger had said, that when I had done what was required at my hand, he would call for them; for no sooner was it known that I had them, than the most strenuous exertions were used to get them from me; every stratagem that could be invented was resorted to for that purpose; the persecution became more bitter and severe than before, and multitudes were on the alert continually to get them from me if possible; but by the wisdom of God they remained safe in my hands, until I had accomplished by them what was required at my hand; when, according to arrangements, the messenger called for them, I delievered them up to him, and he has them in his charge until this day, being the 2nd day of May 1838.
The excitement, however, still continued, and rumour with her thousand tongues was all the time employed in circulating tales about my father's family, and about myself. If I were to relate a thousandth part of them, it would fill up volumes. The persecution, however, became so intolerable that I was under the necessity of leaving Manchester, and going with my wife to Susquehannah county, in the state of Pennsylvania; while preparing to start (being very poor, and the persecution so heavy upon us, that there was no probability that we would ever be otherwise), in the midst of our afflictions we found a friend in a gentleman, by the name of Martin Harris, who came to us and gave me fifty dollars to assist us in our afflictions, Mr. Harris was a resident of Palmyra township, Wayne county, in the state of New York, and a farmer of respectability. By this timely aid was I enabled to reach the
