The Mormons or Latter Day Saints, are a religious sect founded in 1830 by Joseph Smith, of Vermont, who declared that he received his mission from an angel in 1823. This angel told him where to find certain plates containing the records of the ancient American prophets. These plates were about as thick as tin, and held together by three rings running through them all. The character employed was "Reformed Egyptian," and with the plates were deposited the "Urim and Thummim," or spectacles for deciphering them. The plates say that the Americans were a colony from the Tower of Babel at the confusion of tongues. The Mormonites receive their name from the prophet Mormon who wrote the plates called "The Book of Mormon." There are in the United States 856 organizations with 166,125 communicants in the Mormon Church. Polygamy so long practiced has given place to monogamy.

A notable publication was the "Book of Mormon" claiming to be the "revealed*' history of America from its first settlement by a colony dispersed at the confusion of tongues to the fifth century of the Christian Era. Joseph Smith professed that this information was Obtained by him in September, 1827, in a volume of metal plates engraved in reformed. Egyptian, and discovered by revelation "on the west side of a hill, not far from the top, about four miles from Palmyra, in the county of Ontario." As Smith could not decipher the writing, a pair of magic spectacles, which he called his Urim and Thummim, were given to him, and one Oliver Cowdery wrote down on paper what Smith professed to translate. It is said that the "Book" is a mere plagiary of a Ms. romance by the Rev. Solomon Spalding in 1816. Certainly the plates and spectacles have disappeared.