Martin Harris (Latter Day Saints)
Book of Mormon witness
Martin Harris (May 18, 1783 – July 10, 1875) was an early convert to the Latter Day Saint movement who financially guaranteed the first printing of the Book of Mormon and also served as one of Three Witnesses who testified that they had seen the golden plates from which the Book of Mormon had been translated.
Early life
Harris was born in Easton, New York, the second of the eight children born to Nathan Harris and Rhoda Lapham. According to historian Ronald W. Walker, little is known of his youth. When he was 9, his family moved to Palmyra (then known as Swift's landing), where his father bought 600 acres of land. On March 27, 1808, Harris married his first cousin Lucy Harris. Between 1809 and 1822, they would have four children together.
Harris served with the 39th regiment of the New York State Militia of Ontario County, New York in the War of 1812. He was an orderly sergeant, and when he was called for active duty in 1813, he hired a substitute to serve in his place for a period of three months. It was registered that Harris served 9 days of active duty, during which time he served as a private. Five of those days came when he helped secure Sodus Point following a skirmish in 1813, and four of those came from the battle of Pultneyville, in which he protected the village from British landing in 1814.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1893466. VIAF identifies the subject as 11209216. The Library of Congress control number is n82251377. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1783, 1875, 1808 and 1809.
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This entry incorporates text from “Martin Harris (Latter Day Saints)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.