Question: What was the size of each of the gold plates?

FAIR Answers—back to home page

Question: What was the size of each of the gold plates?

Each plate was approximately 6 to 7 inches wide and 7 to 8 inches long

  • "7 inches in length, 6 inches in breadth" [1] - Quoting Oliver Cowdery
  • "six inches wide by eight inches long"[2] —Joseph Smith Jr.
  • "seven inches wide by eight inches in length"[3] —Martin Harris
  • "seven by eight inches"[4] —Martin Harris
  • "about eight inches long, seven inches wide"[5] —David Whitmer
  • "about eight inches square" - quoting David Whitmer [6]
  • "six or eight inches square" - Critical newspaper[7]
  • "The plates were each about 7 by 8 inches in width and length." - Parley P. Pratt [8]
  • "about eight inches long, and six wide" - Lucy Mack Smith (allegedly)[9]
  • "Each plate was about six by eight inches"[10]


Notes

  1. A.S., “The Golden Bible, or, Campbellism Improved,” Observer and Telegraph. Religious, Political, and Literary, Hudson, Ohio (18 November 1830): 3, quoting Cowdery. off-site
  2. Joseph Smith Jr., "Church History [also known as the Wentworth Letter]," Times and Seasons (1 March 1842), 707. off-site GospeLink (requires subscrip.)
  3. Martin Harris interview, Tiffany's Monthly, May 1859, 165.
  4. Martin Harris interview, Iowa State Register, August 1870, as quoted in Backman, Eyewitness Accounts, 226.
  5. David Whitmer interview, Chicago Tribune, 24 January 1888, in David Whitmer Interviews, ed. Cook, 221.
  6. ED Howe, Mormonism Unvailed, 15; attributed to David Whitmer off-site
  7. “Mormonism,” Fredonia Censor (New York) (7 March 1832). Reprinted from the Franklin Democrat (Pennsylvania) circa March 1832. off-site
  8. Parley P. Pratt, "Discovery of an Ancient Record in America," Millennial Star 1 no. 2 (June 1840), 30–37. off-site
  9. Henry Caswall, The City of the Mormons; or, Three Days at Nauvoo, in 1842, 2nd ed. revised and enlarged, (London: J. G. F. & J. Rivington, 1843), 26. off-site
  10. W. I. Appleby, A Dissertation of Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream... (Philadelphia: Brown, Bicking & Guilbert, 1844), 1–24. Full title