The April 10, 1895 Kansas City Star squeezed a brief same-day notice of Katharine’s lengthy testimony into its evening edition; the morning Times and Journal of the following day carried the verbatim transcript at length (see the reconstructed talk preserved on olivercowdery.com). The Star’s evening dispatch read:
[The article opens with an account of the RLDS Conference’s deliberations on the Order of Enoch, the relation between President Joseph Smith III and the Quorum of Twelve, and the anticipated revelations — for context only; the Katharine paragraphs follow.]
To-day at the testimony meeting, Mrs. Caroline [sic] S. Salisbury, sister to the first Joseph Smith and only surviving member of the original six people who founded the Church of Mormon in 1830, told the historic story of how Joseph Smith the prophet found the gold plates of the book of Mormon buried in the Hill of Cumorah in New York state. Mrs. Salisbury is a woman 83 years old, but she related graphically and with force and vigor the oft-told story. It required fully half an hour.
Mrs. Salisbury made two or three departures from Mormon history in her story, which the Saints explain by saying that age has impaired her memory somewhat.
Sister Horner, an aged saint, bore testimony of the truthfulness of the story told by the only surviving member of the original Mormon church. She was at Far West when the mob took Joseph Smith out of the jail at Carthage and shot him. She was a resident of Kirtland, O., when the saints were mobbed there and Joseph Smith was tarred and feathered and aqua fortis poured down his throat.
An elder under the excitement following these historical reminiscences delivered this prophecy:
PROPHESIES CHRIST’S COMING.
“Thus saith the Lord: Inasmuch as you will continue faithful in this great work God has established on the earth the time is not very far distant when Jesus Christ will break the clouds of heaven and come reign on this earth.”
A female saint from Illinois told of a vision which had happened to her, attesting the truth of the book of Mormon and the divinity of the church. Others related like experiences.
Elders Butterworth and Terry presided at the testimony meeting.
[The Star’s evening notice is intentionally compressed; Katharine’s actual half-hour address — describing Moroni’s appearances, the recovery of the plates from the Hill Cumorah on Sept. 22, 1827, the loss of the 116 pages, and the Three and Eight Witnesses — was printed in full the next day by the Kansas City Times and Kansas City Journal. Kyle R. Walker reconstructed and analyzed that fuller text in “Katharine Smith Salisbury’s Recollections of Joseph’s Meetings with Moroni,” BYU Studies 41:3 (2002).]