Don Bradley (often with Mark Ashurst-McGee) has done excellent work on the Kinderhook Plates, including the following online resources:
"President Joseph Has Translated A Portion": Solving the Mystery of the Kinderhook Plates
(with Ashurst-McGee), The Kinderhook Plates
The essay on the topic is the following:
Don Bradley and Mark Ashurst-McGee, “’President Joseph Has Translated a Portion’: Joseph Smith and the Mistranslation of the Kinderhook Plates,” in Michael Hubbard MacKay, Mark Ashurst-McGee and Brian Hauglid, eds., Producing Ancient Scripture: Joseph Smith’s Translation Projects in the Development of Mormon Christianity (Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, 2020): 452-523.
Interestingly, Bradley and Ashurst-McGee were not
the first to postulate that Joseph’s comments derived from the Egyptian grammar
material (though they, of course, have done the best work demonstrating this).
In his 1981 book, What Mormonism Isn’t, Ian Barber offered a connection
as a strong possibility:
(1) This raises the
question of who may be most properly given ultimate responsibility for the
“Egyptian Alphabet”. My impression from sources is that the project was
probably initiated and generally supervised by the prophet, with the brethren
perhaps acting as his scribes, but also being allowed to exercise their own
abilities in attempting to compile an alphabet and grammar, as I believe the
Phelps section indicates.
(2) As an interesting
parallel to Joseph Smith’s Egyptian experiences in Kirtland, note the
“kinderhook plates” incident in 1843, where a forged set of supposedly ancient
American metal plates were unearthed and brought to Nauvoo. Not aware of their
falsity, Joseph Smith and other Church leaders freely speculated about the
characters engraved upon them, seeing a superficial parallel to Egyptian
(probably the hieratic of the Joseph Smith Papyrus). On the basis of such a
similarity Joseph appears to have attempted to make sense of some of the
characters, and speculated about their possible meaning as implied by a letter
of Parley Pratt and William Clayton’s contemporary journal. Clayton styled such
an effort as a “translation”, and unfortunately his second hand report was
later converted into the first person on Joseph Smith’s history, making it look
as if the prophet had boldly declared that he had initiated such a work, a
statement exploited by his critics as the falsity of the plates became apparent
in recent years. (H.C. 5:372). However, although encouraged by his
contemporaries to translate the plates “and so more towards throwing light on
the early history of this continent than any man now living,” (Nauvoo
Neighbour, broadside, 24 June 1843). Joseph let the plates leave Nauvoo without
attempting to purchase them (contrast his reaction to the mummies in Kirtland
on recognising, presumably, the Abrahamic association of the facsimilies) and
as with the Kirtland Egyptian Alphabet, made no official mention of them and no
attempt to publicise his speculations. Again, the comparison between the
arrogant and audacious translator of the Tanner’s and the cautious prophet
aware of his limitations and unwilling to speculate too freely is most
instructive. (See Stanley Kimball’s well researched article exploring several
of these points in The Ensign, August, 1981, pp. 66-74). (Ian Barber, What
Mormonism Isn’t [Auckland, New Zealand: Pioneer Books, 1981], F-15)
