Book of Mormon Evidence: Stone Box in New York

In his description of retrieving the metal plates from which the Book of Mormon was translated, Joseph Smith stated the following: 

Convenient to the village of Manchester, Ontario county, New York, stands a hill of considerable size, and the most elevated of any in the neighborhood. On the west side of this hill, not far from the top, under a stone of considerable size, lay the plates, deposited in a stone box. This stone was thick and rounding in the middle on the upper side, and thinner towards the edges, so that the middle part of it was visible above the ground, but the edge all around was covered with earth. … The box in which they lay was formed by laying stones together in some kind of cement. In the bottom of the box were laid two stones crossways of the box, and on these stones lay the plates and the other things with them. (Joseph Smith—History 1:51–52)

A similar account was given by Oliver Cowdery, who mentioned that the sides of the box were “cemented so firmly that the moisture from without was prevented from entering.” Cowdery also remarked on the smoothness of the stone upon which the box rested, as well as those which made up its sides.¹ As noted by Benjamin Jordan and Warren Aston, these descriptions lead to two important questions:²

1. Were the geological materials necessary to make a stone box, consisting of sizable stones and the ingredients for cement, present in close enough proximity to the Palmyra hill to have been available for Moroni to build such a box?

2. Are there rocks or stones locally available that match the description given by eyewitnesses or near-secondary sources?

Stones

The hill that Joseph Smith described—which will be designated in this article as the Palmyra hill³—is one of many drumlins in the surrounding area. These elongated mounds were formed by the melting of massive glacial ice sheets, which carried with them “large amounts of mixed and very poorly sorted sediments that included clays, silts, sands, gravels and boulders in various combinations.”⁴

According to Jordan and Aston, who conducted a thorough ground survey of this vicinity, “Large cobbles (naturally rounded rocks up to about 25 cm/10 inches across) and larger boulders of the size necessary to form the box remain widely distributed across the surface of the hill and throughout the surrounding landscape. In particular, cobble to boulder-size rocks of laminated sandstone and rounded granite and gneiss are fairly common.”⁵ While the sandstone specimens were of an appropriate size and flatness, those made of granite (although somewhat rounder) would have been smoother and less porous, making them better suited to keep out moisture.⁶

Cement in Ancient America

Concerning cement, it should be recalled that the Book of Mormon itself mentions that its peoples made use of this valuable adhesive: “the people who went forth became exceedingly expert in the working of cement; therefore they did build houses of cement, in the which they did dwell” (Helaman 3:7). They even built “many cities, both of wood and of cement” (v. 11).⁷

Remarkably, these first-century BC descriptions of cement in the Book of Mormon correspond to the rapid growth of cement-building activities in ancient Mesoamerica, which took place around 100 BC in the Northern Petén.⁸ In the Valley of Mexico, fully developed cement appeared at Teotihuacán from seemingly out of nowhere in the 1st century AD.⁹ And by AD 300, “most inhabitants [in this region] lived in substantial plaster-and-concrete compounds composed of multiple apartments.”¹⁰ Thus, it seems plausible that Moroni, who lived in the late fourth and early fifth centuries AD, may have had at least some native knowledge of how to manufacture cement.¹¹

Cement-Making Materials Near the Palmyra Hill

If the cement Moroni created was similar to modern cement, then he would have needed three main ingredients: limestone, sand, and clay. The process would have consisted of using a wood fire to melt the limestone down into “globules (‘clinkers’) of calcium silicate (Ca2SiO4); after cooling, water added to the material made it expand to a powder of around 5 or 6 times the volume of the limestone. This was the cement which, added to an aggregate and water, formed concrete.”¹²

Near the Palmyra hill where Moroni deposited the plates, cobble- and pebble-sized limestone was readily available, not to mention “sizeable bedrock outcrops of limestone” just a few miles away.¹³ Sand was also at hand, as revealed by the excavation of a nearby drumlin with a soil composition consisting of “alternating layers of medium to coarse-grained, cross-bedded sand and graded gravel.”¹⁴

According to Jordan and Aston, 

As clay is almost unknown in the Palmyra area, the clay that Moroni needed was the most challenging ingredient for us to locate. As noted earlier, however, some 3 km (~2 miles) due north of the Palmyra hill is a smaller drumlin called Miner’s Hill. Perhaps uniquely in the area, this hill consists almost entirely of fine clay. According to the current land owner, who allowed the New York Highway Department to mine it, it is the only location in the area that serves as a source of clay.¹⁵

What Happened to the Stone Box?

“There are no reliable first-hand accounts of what happened to the stone box,” write Jordan and Aston. “However, the most credible reports agree that the stone box, its capstone having been opened several times by Joseph Smith in his meetings with the resurrected Moroni over the years, and seemingly left open after he removed its contents, was now exposed to the elements and eventually washed in pieces down the hill.”¹⁶

In 1875, David Whitmer reportedly told the Chicago Times that he had personally “been at the Hill Cumorah and seen the casket that contained the tablets and seerstone. Eventually the casket has been washed down to the foot of the hill, but it was to be seen when he last visited the historic place.”¹⁷ This account has been somewhat by Edward Stevenson, who in 1893 published an interview he had with a man who lived near the Palmyra hill. Presumably describing the stone box which held the plates, the man reported that “he had seen some good-sized flat stones that had rolled down and lay near the bottom of the hill,” but he further explained “that they had long since been taken away.”¹⁸

Conclusion

Whatever happened to the slabs of stones and cement that made up the original box, the account of its existence is entirely plausible. Based on the available data, the key ingredients to make such a box would all have been available within a short distance of where it was reportedly discovered by Joseph Smith. While this concentration of needed materials isn’t especially unlikely to have occurred by chance, it also wasn’t a foregone conclusion. As assessed by Jordan and Aston,

Considered individually, sandstone, granite, and limestone are all, of course, very common rocks on the surface of the Earth, as are sediments such as clays and sand. This is also true of the formation of flat-sided sandstones and granite as they weather. However, finding all these rocks and sediments together in close proximity is more unusual. While such a grouping may not be accurately described as rare on Earth, given the needs of Moroni it was highly advantageous to his purposes to have all these occur in the vicinity of the hill in which he buried the plates.¹⁹