R.W. Alderman reports Martin Harris as having claimed that Joseph used Peep-stone in a hat to translate plates.
R. W. Alderman, Statement from December 25, 1884 in Naked Truths about Mormonism 1 (January 1888): 3, M273.2 N163 v. 1 no. 1 1888, Church History Library
In February, 1852, I was snowbound in a hotel in Mentor, Ohio, all day. Martin Harris was there, and in conversation told me he saw Jo Smith translate the “Book of Mormon,” with his peep-stone in his hat. Oliver Cowdery, who had been a school-teacher, wrote it down. Sidney Rigdon, a renegade preacher, was let in during the translation. Rigdon had stolen a manuscript from a printing office in Pittsburgh, Pa., which [Solomon] Spaulding, who had written it in the early part of the century, had left there to be printed, but the printers refused to publish it, but Jo and Rigdon did, as the “Book of Mormon.”