1. For a full account of Wells’s attempts to obtain Cowdery’s likeness, see Junius F. Wells, Editorial, Contributor 5 (October 1883): 34–35. Other background information throughout is from Edward L. Hart, Mormon in Motion: The Life and Journals of James H. Hart, 1825–1906 (Salt Lake City: Windsor Books, 1978).

2. James H. Hart to Deseret News (dispatch sent from Seneca, Newton County, Missouri), August 23, 1883, published in the Deseret News, September 4, 1883.

3. Hart also served as first counselor to William Budge in the Bear Lake Stake presidency.

4. Hart to Deseret News, September 4, 1883.

5. Hart to Deseret News, September 4, 1883.

6. Hart to Bear Lake Democrat (dispatch sent from New York), August 29, 1883, published in Contributor 5 (October 1883): 35.

7. James H. Hart to the Bear Lake Democrat, March 18, 1884, published March 28, 1884. The complete texts of Hart’s interviews with Whitmer are also reproduced in Lyndon W. Cook, David Whitmer Interviews: A Restoration Witness (Orem, Utah: Grandin Book, 1991).

8. The poem has been reprinted many times. The full text of the poem can be found in Contributor 5 (October 1883), the same issue that carried the frontispiece of the Three Witnesses.

9. From Wordsworth’s “Observations Prefixed to Lyrical Ballads” in The Great Critics, ed. James Harry Smith and Edd Winfield Parks, 3d ed. (New York: Norton, 1951), 514.

10. James H. Hart, Journal, Special Collections and Manuscripts, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah (hereafter cited as BYU Archives). Hart wrote this entry in longhand, but his journal contains a great deal written in shorthand.

11. Hart to Deseret News, September 4, 1883.

12. A copy of this printing of the poem and footnote is pasted in James H. Hart’s scrapbook, now in author’s possession but shortly to be turned over to BYU Archives.