In 1820, on a farm in Pompey, New York (a town between Sharon, VT and Palmyra, NY), a farmer named Philo Cleveland found a sandstone rock featuring a carved inscription in Latin while he was clearing a field. The stone’s inscription included the date 1520, which would have made it the earliest known European artifact in North America.

Philo brought the stone to the local blacksmith in the town of Watervale who displayed it to customers as a curiosity. The blacksmith allowed visitors to the shop to further dig out the inscription using nails from the shop which made the inscription more prominent and newer in appearance. About six months later, the stone was moved to the town of Manilus where several scientists inspected it. After a year in Manilus, it was put on display in the State Museum of the Albany Institute.

By 1872, it had been moved to the New York State Museum of Natural History where it could be inspected by more authorities. By 1880, it was displayed in that same museum.

The stone was analyzed in an article in The Literary Chronicle in 1823, concluding that the inscription might be a reference to Pope Leo X’s reign with the symbol in the middle representing the fall of man and the letters L. S. standing for loco sigilli (place of seal). The cross emphasized the Christian connection. This story was seemingly built upon by future researchers:

  • 1842. Barber and Howe theorized in Historical Collections of the State of New York that the stone might have maked the resting place of a Spaniard who died after traveling north from Florida in search of gold.
  • 1847. Henry Schoolcraft attributed the stone to a member of Juan Ponce de Leon’s expedition searching for the fountain of youth which he published in his book Notes on the Iroqouis. He posited that “Leo” was a shortened form of “Ponce de Leon.” (Ponce de Leon landed in Florida in 1512).
  • 1849. Joshua V. H. Clark wrote that the stone marked the grave of a Spanish explorer in his book Onondaga, or Reminiscences.
  • 1851. E. G. Squier published Antiquities of the State of New York, endorsing the stone’s authenticity.
  • 1863. Buckingham Smith, an author and researcher submitted an article to the American Antiquarian Society suggesting the stone was a memorial to a dead Spanish missionary, and that the inscription referred to Pope Leo X.
  • 1860s. LDS leader and scientist John F. Boynton endorsed a connection between the Pompey Stone and the Cardiff Giant [1], another artifact later proven to be a hoax.
  • 1879. Henry Homes gave a lecture to the Oneida Historical Society that was the most full-throated defense of the stone’s authenticity to date, claiming that it had been thoroughly authenticated. He added to the story that it was a Spaniard named Leo who was captured and adopted by a Native American tribe. The stone was, he suggested, made by a companion from this Native American tribe upon his death.
  • 1884. Historian Berthold Fernow (seriously where do some of these names come from?) cited Homes in Narrative and Critical History of America.

But, alas, after such a long run, this is where the story takes a turn.

1894. Reverend William Martin Beauchamp, a shrewd Onondaga antiquarian, noted that the ground where the stone was found was completely unsuitable for burial. He also became skeptical of the origins when he discovered that the authenticity had never been seriously questioned. He inspected the stone and concluded that the tools used had been two different types of cold chisels, a hammer or mallet and a punch. He also noted that the L and numbers were written in a modern style, not how they were written in the 16th century, and that there had been no natives living near that area in the 16th century. He wrote an article explaining why it was likely a 19th century creation. As a result, a man named John Edson Sweet wrote that his uncle Cyrus had confessed to him in 1867 that he created the hoax, more or less as a joke.

Despite this new information, at least two Catholic priests later cited the stone as authentic evidence that Catholics had populated the area as early as 1520.

I only just heard about the Pompey Stone hoax last month on an episode of Stuff You Missed in History Class, but there are obvious reasons for someone raised LDS to find this story interesting. There were a lot of these types of “ancient” artifacts popping up in this part of the country at this time. The cultural milieu in which this was pretty unique:

  • intense religious revivalism
  • treasure digging
  • fascination with prophecy
  • folk magic
  • speculation about “lost races”

One of the main reasons is that white settlers had a really hard time believing that Native Americans built the ancient earthworks they found across North America. It’s similar to the more recent thinking that the pyramids must have been built by aliens because there’s no way such backwards non-white people could possibly . . . yada yada yada. Not believing that the native people were capable of such sophisticated building projects was psychologically necessary to justify taking their land by force. Tale as old as time. This created a culture in which white settlers produced theories to explain away the achievements of the people they stole from, including:

  • lost Israelites
  • Atlanteans
  • Vikings
  • Egyptians
  • rogue Europeans (as with the Pompey Stone)
  • vanished “civilized” races

The Book of Mormon came forward amid this same time of speculation and justification, fitting very well into the prevalent thinking of the day. One key difference is that the Book of Mormon did not leave an artifact to be investigated and proven or disproven (one problem with the Kinderhook plates and the Book of Abraham). If there is no artifact, the claims are not based on a physical or scientific examination of the plates, but instead can be based on the text itself and spiritual witnesses of believers. To put it another way, if the glove does not fit, you must acquit, but if there’s no glove at all then you can believe whatever you want.

Ultimately this points to the question: what types of evidence should count for religious claims? When we look closer at various artifacts (and hoaxes), there is a consistent pattern of religious leaders and followers being vulnerable to hoaxes if the hoax appears to confirm a belief they already hold (such as the Cardiff Giant). But that’s certainly not to say that others are not susceptible to be fooled by hoaxes. Any human viewing an artifact that confirms a pre-existing belief they hold is likely to want to believe. This is true when a fake relic:

  • confirms an existing belief
  • satisfies an emotional need
  • strengthens identity
  • resolves uncertainty

I’ve said many times that if you cobbled together all the wood that supposedly was part of the crown of thorns in all the reliquaries across the world, you could build a briar patch that would stump even Brer Rabbit. And yet, if you want to see those relics, get ready to stand in a long line and probably pay a donation. Given that most Christian relics were gathered after Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity 300 years after Christ’s crucifixion, there’s good reason to be suspicious about their authenticity, but they are very meaningful to worshippers. And who know? Some of them might be accurate. Seems like a stretch, but IDK.

  • Have you been interested in things like biblical archaeology (or BOM archeology) or are you skeptical of these efforts to “prove” scripture?
  • Do you think it’s valid to overlook things like anachronisms or mistakes, prioritizing the meaning derived from scripture?
  • Are people today equally prone to falling for hoaxes as they were before?
  • Had you heard of the Pompey Stone and the Cardiff Giant? What other fake relics that have been debunked have you heard of?
  • Do you find the cultural origins of the BOM to be significant or irrelevant in how you view the book?

Discuss.

[1] Unearthed in 1869 in Cardiff, NY, this was a statue of a 10-foot tall “petrified man.” It turned out to be a hoax perpetrated by George Hull, a cigar-maker and atheist from Binghamton, NY. He had been in a heated debate with a Methodist minister over the biblical passage in Genesis that said “There were giants in the earth in those days,” and he set out to prove how easily the public could be fooled by literal interpretations of religious texts. He quarried a massive block of gypsum in Iowa (gypsum is basically plaster–easy to carve). He hired sculptors in Chicago to carve the figure, using acid and stains to give it a weathered look and needles to create fake pores so the “skin” looked realistic. He then secretly buried it on the farm of his cousin in upstate NY and waited for the hilarity to ensue. In 1869, the status was discovered by workers. Scientists and paleontologists quickly dismissed the hoax, but many clergymen and members of the public lined up to pay 50 cents to see it and declared it a miracle that proved the Bible was true.