Among the “Miscellaneous Manuscripts” in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress is an 1835 letter from Albert Brown to which he expresses his feelings about the Church in Kirtland and also provides interesting corroborative details concerning the history of the acquisition of the Egyptian mummies and papyrus records. His report that the price of $2400 was paid to Michael Chandler for the mummies and the records is a nearly contemporary account—written just four months after the purchase—and it agrees exactly with the figure that appears twenty-one years later in L. C. Bidamon’s certificate of provenance, submitted with the mummies to A. Combs in 1856.
