Mormon History
Fascination With Old Manuscripts - 1823
Ontario Repository – May 20, 1823
Curious Manuscript. -- The
public has been much amused of late, with an account of the discovery of a
curious manuscript at Detroit, which not a little puzzled the learned. It was
determined that it was not Chinese, Arabic, Syriac, French, Spanish, or
English, &c., but what it was no one could tell. Four pages of the book being
sent to major general Macomb, at Washington, he submitted it to the examination
of the professors at Georgetown college, where it has been discovered to be
Irish, and, with a few exceptions, "truly classical." Some "strange
abbreviations" make it difficult to unravel it, but a part has been translated,
and it is evidently a treatise on some of the doctrines of the Catholic church.
-- Niles.
Note: The above Ontario Repository article was reprinted from a late
April 1823 issue of the Baltimore-based Niles National Register. The
Niles report paraphrases an article published in the Detroit Gazette,
on
Mar. 14, 1823. The same Niles "Curious Manuscript" article was also
reprinted by the Pittsburgh Mercury on
May 20, 1823. This was during the period that Rev. Sidney Rigdon lived in
that city and served in the office of Pastor for the First Baptist Church there.
Oddly enough, the "strange abbreviations" and "characters" in the ancient text
were sent to Dr. Samuel Mitchill of New York City for identification -- and this
was five years before Joseph Smith, Jr. provided more characters, from his own
ancient textual discovery, to be sent to the same Dr. Mitchill. Stephen Mack
died in 1826 and was unable to advise his Smith nephew of his own knowledge of
the futility of such a quest for interpretation by "the learned."