I found one of the folk legend-sources I recall, in the writings of the mad but wonderfully named Orestes Utah Bean, who included this paragraph in his missionary lectures:

Mormon told Moroni always to hold the cart-loads of National History and Genealogy in an especially erected vault hid away, then and now in the North End of Hill Cumorah; and into which beautifully decorated vault, about fifteen feet one way and twenty feet the other way, is located a beautifully decorated table about six feet long and three wide; and the side walls are nearly all surrounded with stacks upon stacks of plates, all of the plates written upon since Nephi first made plates for preservation of the history and the genealogy of all their Nephite race from 600 B.C. down to their then, 420 A.D., time of being, turned over to Mormon the Nephite Prophet, via Amaron, more than three hundred years after Messiah had been born at Bethlehem in Judea

which, as you can see, embroiders greatly on even the second-hand sources given in Cameron Packer’s paper.

It is not something I would mention in a Sunday School class today unless somebody else asked about it, in which case I’m glad now to be prepared with a decent answer.

I hope you’ll see this, and post your comment again. If it goes back to the spam filter I promise not to be so ham-fisted about freeing it.

Interesting to compare these lessons with ours today. The above lessons seem more concrete compared to the more emotional/application-based lessons of today.