15. The circumstance of Oliver Cowdery, Parley P. Pratt and their associates presenting Sidney Rigdon with the Book of Mormon is thus related in the _Life of Sidney Rigdon_, by his son, John W. Rigdon (Ms. p. 18): "In the fall of 1830, Parley P. Pratt, Ziba Peterson, Oliver Cowdery, and Peter Whitmer called at the home of Sidney Rigdon, in the town of Mentor, Ohio, and Parley P. Pratt presented to him a bound volume of the Book of Mormon in the presence of his wife and his oldest child, Athalia Rigdon, now Athalia Robinson, who was then a girl ten years old, and now (1900) living in the town of Friendship, Allegheny county, state of New York; and who remembers the transaction as well as any incident of her life. Parley P. Pratt, at the time he handed the book to Sidney Rigdon, said it was a revelation from God." Again referring to this circumstance near the close of the sketch of his father's life, John W. Rigdon relates how, in the fall of 1863, he visited the territory of Utah, where he spent the winter among the "Mormon" people. He was not favorably impressed with their religious life, and came to the conclusion that the Book of Mormon itself was a fraud. He determined in his own heart that if ever he returned home and found his father, Sidney Rigdon, alive, he would try and find out what he knew of the origin of the Book of Mormon. "Although," he adds, "he had never told but one story about it, and that was that Parley P. Pratt and Oliver Cowdery presented him with a bound volume of that book in the year 1830, while he (Sidney Rigdon) was preaching Campbellism at Mentor, Ohio." What John W. Rigdon claims to have seen in Utah, however, together with the fact that Sidney Rigdon had been charged with writing the Book of Mormon, made him suspicious; "and," he remarks, "I concluded I would make an investigation for my own satisfaction and find out if I could if he had all these years been deceiving his family and the world, by telling that which was not true, and I was in earnest about it. If Sidney Rigdon, my father, had thrown his life away by telling a falsehood and bringing sorrow and disgrace upon his family, I wanted to know it and was determined to find out the facts, no matter what the consequences might be. I reached home in the fall of 1865, found my father in good health and [he] was very much pleased to see me. As he had not heard anything from me for some time, he was afraid that I had been killed by the Indians. Shortly after I had arrived home, I went to my father's room; he was there and alone, now was the time for me to commence my inquiries in regard to the origin of the Book of Mormon, and as to the truth of the 'Mormon' religion. I told him what I had seen at Salt Lake City, and I said to him that what I had seen at Salt Lake had not impressed me very favorably toward the 'Mormon' Church, and as to the origin of the Book of Mormon I had some doubts. You have been charged with writing that