Mormonism Explained
Joseph Smith’s Seer Stones: The Hat, the Plates, and How the Book of Mormon Was Actually Translated
For more than a century, the strangest object in American religion sat in a vault. In 2015 the Church photographed it. Here is the whole story from the record — the stones, the hat, the treasure years, and what the eyewitnesses actually said.
The Short Answer
What are Joseph Smith’s seer stones, and how was the Book of Mormon translated?
For most of the work, the instrument was a small brown stone in the bottom of a hat — not the gold plates, and not ancient spectacles. Two kinds of object are involved. The plates came with their own instrument: two clear stones set in silver bows, which the Book of Mormon calls interpreters and which Smith said went back with the plates in 1829. The seer stones were his own — he owned at least two before the plates entered the story, the brown one reportedly found around 1822 while digging a well. A seer stone, in the folk belief of that time and place, was a stone used to see what ordinary sight cannot: lost objects, buried treasure, and in Smith’s case the words of a translation. Witnesses to the 1829 dictation — his wife Emma, Oliver Cowdery, Martin Harris, David Whitmer — describe both instruments in use, and for most of the work the method Emma recalled: the stone in a hat, his face buried in it to block the light, dictation running hour after hour, the plates often covered on the table or not in the room at all. From 1832 on, church members called all of these objects “the Urim and Thummim,” which is the source of nearly every modern confusion about the topic. None of it is a recent discovery: the Church’s own essay describes the hat method, and it published the first photographs of the brown stone in 2015.
Key Takeaways
- Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon with physical instruments: the “Nephite interpreters” he said were found with the plates, and at least one seer stone he already owned.
- Eyewitnesses — including his wife and first scribe, Emma — describe him dictating with the stone in a hat, his face buried in it to block the light.
- Before the translation, Smith used seer stones in local treasure-seeking. He never denied it; his own newspaper printed the admission as a joke against himself.
- “Urim and Thummim” became an umbrella term for all of these objects after about 1832 — one biblical name applied retroactively to three American objects, and the root of most modern confusion.
- The Church has held the brown stone since the late 1800s through a documented chain of custody, and published the first photographs of it in 2015.
- The gap this page exists to close is between the record and the artwork: the paintings showed a scholar at a desk, and the eyewitnesses described a man with his face in a hat.
Start Here
The 60-Second Version
In 2015, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints published photographs of a small brown rock. The Church calls it chocolate-colored; it is smooth, egg-sized and banded, and geologists working from the published photographs identify the material as banded iron jasper. It had been in church possession, largely unphotographed and undiscussed, since the late 1800s. It is also, by the account of nearly every eyewitness, the object through which Joseph Smith dictated most of the Book of Mormon. Not the gold plates. Not ancient spectacles. A rock he is said to have found years earlier while digging a well.
If that surprises you, you are the reader this page was built for — and you are in good company, because it surprised a great many Latter-day Saints in 2015 too. Here is the compressed version. A seer stone is a small natural stone used, in early-modern folk belief, to see what ordinary sight cannot: lost objects, buried treasure, and in Joseph Smith’s case the words of a translation. He owned at least two before the plates entered the story. The plates came with their own instrument, two clear stones set in silver bows, which the Book of Mormon calls interpreters. Witnesses to the 1829 dictation describe both instruments in use, and for most of the work they describe the method Emma Smith recalled: the stone in a hat, his face buried in it, dictation running hour after hour, the plates often covered on the table or not in the room at all. From 1832 on, church members called all of it “the Urim and Thummim.”
The full story is stranger, better documented, and less scandalous than either the paintings or the internet suggest. The Church’s own essay, “Book of Mormon Translation,” now tells it plainly. This page is about the instruments and the method; the book itself — its text, its witnesses, its historicity — is a separate subject.
From a Well in Palmyra to a Photograph
c. 1822
Joseph Smith obtains the brown seer stone, reportedly while digging a well near Palmyra, New York.
1823
Smith reports the angel Moroni’s visit and a description of the plates and the interpreters deposited with them.
1825–26
Hired by Josiah Stowell to search for a rumored silver mine; in March 1826 he appears before a court in Bainbridge, New York, on a “disorderly person” complaint.
1827
Smith reports receiving the plates and the interpreters.
1828–29
The dictation. Emma Smith, Martin Harris, Oliver Cowdery and David Whitmer describe the stone, the hat, and hours of uninterrupted dictation to a scribe.
1830
The Book of Mormon is published. Smith gives the brown seer stone to Oliver Cowdery, telling associates he no longer needs it.
c. 1832
“Urim and Thummim” takes hold among church members as an umbrella term for the interpreters and the seer stones alike.
1850s
After Cowdery’s death, his widow passes the stone to Phineas Young, who passes it to his brother Brigham.
Late 1800s
Brigham Young’s widow, Zina D. H. Young, buys the stone from his estate and gives it to the Church, where it remains in the First Presidency’s keeping.
2015
The Church publishes the first photographs of the stone, alongside the Joseph Smith Papers volume containing the printer’s manuscript.
Definitions First
What Is a Seer Stone?
Answer first: a seer stone is an ordinary-looking natural stone believed to enable “seeing” beyond normal sight — a folk instrument common in Joseph Smith’s time and place. In 1820s upstate New York, stone-seers, dowsers, and treasure-diggers were part of village life; neighbors who later testified against Smith’s stone use had, in several cases, hired or dug alongside him. The brown stone the Church photographed is banded jasper; the what-it-is-made-of article has the geology, and the how-he-obtained-it article weighs the well-digging and Lake Erie accounts.
The Disambiguation
Three Objects, One Name: Untangling the “Urim and Thummim”
Most confusion about this topic traces to a single terminology decision made around 1832. Three distinct objects sit behind one borrowed biblical phrase, and once they are kept apart, sources that appear to contradict each other stop doing so. The Nephite interpreters were two clear stones set in silver bows, attached to a breastplate, which Smith said were buried with the plates; the Book of Mormon itself describes prepared stones handed down among its prophets for the interpreting of languages (Mosiah 8; Mosiah 28). The brown seer stone was Smith’s own, obtained around 1822, used in treasure-seeking and then through most of the dictation. The white seer stone is the least documented of the three and appears to have stayed with Smith.
After about 1832, church members — borrowing the term Exodus uses for the high priest’s revelatory instrument — began calling all of them “the Urim and Thummim,” and Joseph Smith’s own 1838 history applies the label to the interpreters. One biblical name, applied retroactively to three American objects: that is why a nineteenth-century source saying “Urim and Thummim” may mean either instrument, and why careful histories today write “interpreters” and “seer stone” instead. The Joseph Smith Papers topic page makes the same distinction.
Three Objects, One Borrowed Name
The Nephite interpreters
Found with the plates, 1827
Two clear stones set in silver bows, fixed to a breastplate.
Returned with the plates in 1829.
The brown seer stone
Obtained c. 1822
Smith’s own stone — treasure-seeking first, then most of the dictation.
Held by the Church; photographs published 2015.
The white seer stone
Date uncertain
A second personal stone, the least documented of the three.
Apparently kept by Smith; later history unclear.
All three were called “the Urim and Thummim” — an umbrella term church members adopted by about 1832, and the source of nearly every apparent contradiction between the sources.
The Mechanics
How Did Joseph Smith Translate the Golden Plates?
Joseph Smith’s own total explanation, across his whole life, was five words: “by the gift and power of God.” He never described the mechanics in public. The eyewitnesses did, and they largely agree with each other. Emma Smith, his wife and his scribe in the earliest phase, described him sitting with his face buried in his hat, with the stone in it, dictating hour after hour with nothing between them. Martin Harris said Smith used the seer stone for convenience. David Whitmer described both instruments and insisted the work was done by the gift and power of God and not by any power of man. Oliver Cowdery, who wrote most of the surviving text as it was spoken, remembered writing day after day, uninterrupted, from Smith’s mouth.
The mundane detail explains the strange one. A hat blocks ambient light — the same reason you cup your hands around a phone screen in sunlight. In a candlelit farmhouse, pressing your face into a hat is simply how you make a dark field of view. The genuinely striking detail is a different one: the plates themselves were often wrapped in cloth on the table, or in another room altogether. That is either evidence that the artifact was theater, or exactly what you would expect if the instrument rather than the artifact did the work. The Church’s essay states the hat method matter-of-factly, and scholars note the dictation’s speed — on the order of three months of working days for roughly 270,000 words, with no substantive revision of the manuscript — as a puzzle in its own right, whichever conclusion a reader reaches. The full mechanics, argued both ways, are in the stone-and-hat article.
“In writing for your father I frequently wrote day after day, often sitting at the table close by him, he sitting with his face buried in his hat, with the stone in it, and dictating hour after hour with nothing between us.”
Emma Smith, “Last Testimony of Sister Emma,” Saints’ Herald, October 1, 1879 — describing the translation she scribed
Fig. 1 — the method · stone in hat → face in hat → dictation → plates covered
Step 01
The stone goes in the hat
Most often the brown stone, not the interpreters.
Step 02
The face goes in the hat
Pressed in to shut out the light of a candlelit room.
Step 03
He dictates to a scribe
Emma, then Martin Harris, then Oliver Cowdery, hours at a stretch.
Step 04
The plates sit covered
Wrapped on the table, or in another room entirely.
~3 months
of working days, April–June 1829
~270,000
words of dictated text
None
substantive revision of the manuscript
Conceded Up Front
The Treasure-Digging Years
Before the plates, the stones had a day job — and Joseph Smith never pretended otherwise. Asked years later, in his own church newspaper, whether he had been a money digger, he printed the answer himself, with the joke intact.
“Was not Joseph Smith a money digger? Yes, but it was never a very profitable job for him, as he only got fourteen dollars a month for it.”
Elders’ Journal, July 1838 — question and answer published by Joseph Smith
The record beneath the joke is straightforward. In 1825, Josiah Stowell hired Smith to help search for a rumored Spanish silver mine in Pennsylvania. In March 1826, Smith appeared before a court in Bainbridge, New York, on a complaint under a statute covering pretended treasure-finding; the surviving accounts of that hearing disagree about its outcome, and the honest summary is that we do not securely know how it ended. Stowell, notably, testified in Smith’s favor rather than against him. By Martin Harris’s account, Smith was told by an angel to stop the money-digging, and did, by about 1826.
Two readings work from the same documents. Critics read the treasure years as the tell: a young man with a practiced routine for seeing things in a stone found a way to scale it. Believing historians read the same years as an apprenticeship: a village seer being prepared, in the vocabulary he had, for an assignment he did not yet understand. Neither reading requires suppressing a document, which is why this page lays out the documents rather than the verdict. What the record does not support is the idea that any of this was hidden — the Church’s own essay and its flagship magazine have both stated it plainly, and Smith himself published the admission in 1838. The documents themselves are laid out in the treasure-hunting article and the question of whether this was magic, with the biblical parallels in their own piece.
The Real Grievance
Why the Paintings Never Showed the Hat
Concede it up front, because it is the part that actually hurt people. For most of the twentieth century, church artwork showed Joseph Smith studying the plates like a scholar at a desk — finger on the page, no hat, no stone — and Latter-day Saints who later encountered Emma’s account felt blindsided. “Why didn’t the paintings match the eyewitnesses?” became one of the internet era’s sharpest faith-crisis triggers, and it deserves a straight answer rather than a shrug.
The correction has been institutional and real. The 2013 Gospel Topics essay describes the hat method. The October 2015 issue of the Ensign, the Church’s flagship magazine at the time, carried “Joseph the Seer,” which put the stone’s photographs in front of the general membership along with its provenance. The Church’s own narrative history, Saints, narrates the hat translation in its first volume. The correction is also incomplete in one visible way: commissioned artwork still generally shows Smith with the plates rather than the hat, so the text has moved faster than the pictures. Two honest points hold together here: the old artwork reflected artists’ conventions and incomplete popular knowledge more than any directive to conceal — and the gap between the image and the record was allowed to stand for a very long time, long after the eyewitness accounts were available to anyone who went looking. Both are true. The record is open now, and open records deserve plain summaries.
The Standing Caveat
Chain of Custody
Where the Stone Went
The brown stone’s provenance is unusually clean for a folk object: a documented, hand-to-hand chain running from the dictation table to a photograph. Joseph Smith gave the stone to Oliver Cowdery in 1830, telling associates he had no further need of it. After Cowdery’s death, his widow passed it to Phineas Young, who gave it to his brother Brigham. Brigham Young’s widow Zina D. H. Young — later the Relief Society’s general president — bought the stone from his estate and, with her daughter, gave it to the Church in the late 1800s. It stayed in the First Presidency’s keeping through the twentieth century, referred to occasionally and seen almost never, until the Joseph Smith Papers’ publication of the printer’s manuscript brought full photography with it in 2015.
185 years, hand to hand
The Brown Stone’s Chain of Custody
c. 1822–1830
Joseph Smith
Obtained while digging a well; gave it up once the translation was done.
1830–1850
Oliver Cowdery
His scribe. Held it until his death; his widow passed it on.
1850s
Phineas Young
Received it from Cowdery’s widow and gave it to his brother.
1850s–1877
Brigham Young
Kept it to his death; it stayed with his estate.
1877–late 1800s
Zina D. H. Young
His widow. Bought it from the estate and, with her daughter, gave it to the Church.
Late 1800s–today
The Church
Held in the First Presidency’s keeping; first photographs published 2015.
Chain as given in “Joseph the Seer,” Ensign, October 2015 — the Church’s own account of how the stone reached it.
Fig. 2 — the stone, on record
- Obtained
- c. 1822, reportedly while digging a well
- Material
- Banded iron jasper, per geologists
- Size
- Roughly 5.5 cm — smaller than a hen’s egg
- Shape
- Smooth, egg-shaped, banded in chocolate and cream
- Held by
- The Church, since the late 1800s
- Photographed
- First published in 2015
The stone is now arguably the most famous rock in American religion. The plates are the opposite case: by Joseph Smith’s own account they went back to the angel in 1829 (Joseph Smith—History 1:60), which is why the honest answer to “where are the golden plates?” has been the same for nearly two centuries. Not here. Eleven men signed statements that they had seen them before they went; no artifact remains to examine. The instruments left a trail. The plates did not — a story with its own record, told on our golden plates page.
Go Deeper: The Question-by-Question Record
This page is the narrative; the questions have their own articles.
Did Joseph Smith use magic seer stones to translate?
Believing in the seer stones, it argues, was of a piece with believing Moses parted the Red Sea or Jesus turned water into wine.
Did he use seer stones for treasure hunting?
The treasure years set beside Smith’s own account of taking the plates and translating them with the interpreters and the stone.
Did he translate using seer stones and a hat?
For much of the Church’s history, many of the accounts of Smith’s use of the seer stones were not published. This gathers them.
Are there seer stones in the Bible and the Book of Mormon?
Seer stones in the Northeastern United States of the 18th and early 19th centuries, and the revelatory objects scripture already held.
What is the seer stone made of?
The Church identified the stone as a form of jasper from a banded iron formation. The geology, in full.
How did he obtain the brown seer stone?
The Church owns one of Smith’s seer stones, two-toned brown and black — and the accounts of how he came by it disagree.
The Golden Plates: What They Were & Where They Went
The sibling hub: the object the instruments were used on — the eleven witnesses, the weight arithmetic, and where the plates went.
Mormonism 101: The Complete Beginner’s Guide
Start here if the terms on this page — Moroni, the interpreters, the Restoration — are new.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a seer stone?
A seer stone is a small natural stone believed, in early-modern folk practice, to let its user see things hidden from ordinary sight — lost objects, buried treasure, or revelation. Joseph Smith owned at least two, and eyewitnesses say he used one, placed in a hat to block the light, to dictate most of the Book of Mormon translation in 1828–1829.
What is Joseph Smith’s seer stone made of?
The brown seer stone the Church photographed in 2015 is a smooth, egg-shaped, banded stone the Church describes as chocolate-colored; geologists working from the published photographs identify the material as banded iron jasper. Joseph Smith is reported to have found it around 1822 while digging a well in the Palmyra area, years before he reported obtaining the gold plates.
How did Joseph Smith translate the Book of Mormon?
Joseph Smith himself only ever said it was done “by the gift and power of God.” The eyewitnesses described the mechanics: his wife Emma, Oliver Cowdery, Martin Harris and David Whitmer all describe him dictating to a scribe while looking into the Nephite interpreters or — for most of the work — a seer stone placed in a hat to block the light, with the plates often covered nearby. The surviving dictation ran roughly three months in 1829.
What is the Urim and Thummim in Mormonism?
Originally it is the biblical instrument carried by Israel’s high priest to receive revelation. From about 1832, Latter-day Saints applied the name as an umbrella term to all of Joseph Smith’s translation instruments — the two-stone “Nephite interpreters” found with the gold plates and his own seer stones. That retroactive labeling is why historical sources seem to conflict about which object he was using.
Why did Joseph Smith put his face in a hat?
To block out the light. Witnesses say Smith placed the seer stone in the bottom of a hat and pressed his face into it — the practical way, in a candlelit era, to darken his field of vision and see whatever appeared on the stone. Emma Smith described him dictating that way “hour after hour.”
Did Joseph Smith use seer stones to hunt treasure?
Yes, and he said so himself. His own church newspaper printed the question “Was not Jo Smith a money digger” with the answer “Yes, but it was never a very profitable job to him, as he only got fourteen dollars a month for it.” Stone-aided treasure seeking was common folk practice in 1820s New York, and by Martin Harris’s account Smith gave it up around 1826.
Where is Joseph Smith’s seer stone now?
The brown stone has been in the possession of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints since the late 1800s, when Brigham Young’s widow Zina D. H. Young bought it from his estate and gave it to the Church, following a documented chain of custody from Joseph Smith through Oliver Cowdery and Brigham Young. The Church published the first photographs of it in 2015.
Where are the golden plates now?
By Joseph Smith’s own 1838 account, he returned the plates to the angel who had entrusted them to him once the translation was finished in 1829, and they have never been available for examination since. Eleven witnesses signed statements that they saw the plates before their return; no physical artifact remains to test. Our golden plates page covers the object, the witnesses and the weight question in full.
Are seer stones in the Bible?
Not seer stones by that name — but revelatory objects run through the biblical record: the high priest’s Urim and Thummim, Aaron’s rod, Joseph of Egypt’s divining cup, the brass serpent. Latter-day Saints cite that pattern as context for Joseph Smith’s instruments, and the Book of Mormon itself describes prepared “interpreter” stones handed down between prophets for translation.
Why doesn’t church artwork show the hat?
For most of the twentieth century, paintings showed Smith studying the plates directly — artists’ convention and incomplete popular knowledge rather than the eyewitness record. The Church has since closed the gap: its 2013 Gospel Topics essay describes the hat method, the October 2015 Ensign published the stone’s photographs, and the Church’s own narrative history Saints narrates the hat translation. Commissioned artwork, however, still generally shows Smith with the plates rather than the hat — the text has caught up faster than the pictures.
Sources
- “Book of Mormon Translation,” Gospel Topics Essays (2013) — the Church’s own account of the instruments and the hat method. churchofjesuschrist.org
- “Joseph the Seer,” Ensign, October 2015 — the first published photographs of the brown stone, with its chain of custody. churchofjesuschrist.org
- Joseph Smith Papers — the “Seer Stone” and “Urim and Thummim” topic pages, and Revelations and Translations, Vol. 3 — the printer’s manuscript, published with the stone’s photography.
- “Seer Stones,” Church History Topics — the Church’s own summary of the stones, their folk-cultural background, and their use in the translation. churchofjesuschrist.org
- Joseph Smith—History 1 (1838), on the interpreters and the return of the plates; Elders’ Journal, July 1838, page 43, for the money-digging question and answer. josephsmithpapers.org
- Witness accounts — Emma Smith (1879), David Whitmer, Martin Harris, Oliver Cowdery — collected in John W. Welch, ed., Opening the Heavens: Accounts of Divine Manifestations, 1820–1844 (BYU Press).
- Michael Hubbard MacKay and Gerrit J. Dirkmaat, From Darkness unto Light: Joseph Smith’s Translation and Publication of the Book of Mormon (BYU Religious Studies Center, 2015); Royal Skousen, Book of Mormon critical text project, on the dictation and the manuscripts.
- Richard Lyman Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (Knopf, 2005) — the village-seer culture of 1820s New York.
- Saints, Volume 1: The Standard of Truth (2018) — the Church’s narrative history, which narrates the hat translation.
- Scripture Central — Book of Mormon translation studies: “Why Was a Stone Used as an Aid in Translating the Book of Mormon?” and “Were Joseph Smith’s Translation Instruments Like the Israelite Urim and Thummim?”
- Mormonr — seer stones, with the primary documents laid out side by side. mormonr.org