Why are people interested in Solomon Spalding?
In 1832 Mormon elders Samuel Smith and Orson Hyde visited Conneaut, OH, the place where Spalding had written his one surviving manuscript. When Hyde preached from the Book of Mormon, Nehemiah King, an old associate of Spalding’s, felt that the Mormon text resembled that of his old friend’s novel. From subsequent developments in the region the claim emerged that Solomon Spalding had written a substantial portion of the Book of Mormon. His name was later mentioned in this connection in numerous articles and books, (beginning in 1834 and continuing down until today). Besides this alleged notoriety, Spalding is of interest as being a very early American author who lived in the same region of the country and wrote during the same general time period as did James Fennimore Cooper.
