Library Quietly Disposes of Hoffman Collection
By Peter_Mary

SALT LAKE CITY, UT—The Church History Library quietly and unceremoniously disposed of the Mark Hoffman collection this week after Church leaders at long last agreed all its documents were in fact forgeries.  Many of the remaining articles in the collection had been considered potentially valuable, while others, such as the infamous “Salamander letter” were controversial.

Among the remaining documents were a scribbled note from Newell Knight to Joseph Smith, a set of meeting minutes in which Joseph Smith allegedly referred to Oliver Cowdery as a “sodomite and a festering bucket of puss from the pits of hell,” and a map of the Hill Cumorah in which the hidden chamber filled with all the Nephite records was ambiguously marked.

“Several of the Apostles had a special interest in the map, and wanted to be certain that it was a fake before they let it go,” said Associate Librarian Martin M. Cowerack.  “I believe more than one of them spent many a long weekend in upstate New York with that map personally researching its validity.” [emphasis Ed.]

The descendents of Oliver Cowdery are particularly grateful that the harmful and false minutes of an 1843 Nauvoo High Council meeting were dumped.  “They were slanderous,” fumed Parley Cowdery, great-great grandson of the Second Elder of the Church.  “Who could possibly have believed my noble ancestor would have pinched the Prophet on the hindquarters?  It’s nonsense, and though the two had a falling out, I never could believe that Joseph would have called him a ‘perverted syphilitic with the penis of a shrew.’”
 

Cowerack admits the library is grateful to have that one removed as well, as it had to be held in the censored section.  “The behavior intimated in that document was hardly becoming of a Prophet of the Lord.  It left you with the icky feeling Joseph was an egotistical sex maniac, of all things.” According to the minutes, after Smith berated Cowdery, he spoke at length of the sexual prowess of both men, comparing Cowdery to a sloth, and himself to a “raging bull in a veritable sea of yearning cows.”

Although not as well known as some pieces in the collection, the Newell Knight memo or “Knight Note” as it has come to be called, was highly disconcerting to those familiar with it.  Scribbled on a slip of foolscap, it simply said, “Joe!  Thet other nig[h]t at wich you tossed that old devil basterd out me was a randy good time & I am the opinnion we should do more.  Seems to keep them folks all amazed & I can do as often as you propos…” The memo was ripped and the rest was lost, though it has always been associated with a slip of scrip written in Smith’s handwriting to the order of $1 payable to Knight. 

Says Cowerack, “We don’t actually know where this document originated, but it’s so outlandish, we have assumed it had to be Hoffman.”