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We reported a couple of months ago about a led plate found at the site of John D. Lee's Southern Utah homestead. The plate was inscribed with a message (supposedly sighned by Lee) stating that Brigham Young ordered the infamous Mountain Meadows Massacre. Many historians believe that Young indeed was involved in plotting the massacre. However, this plate apparently is a fake.
The U. Park Service hired a forensics expert to examine plate. That expert has reported the plate to be a forgery. See the story below. Rocky Mountain News, May 1, 2002 Inscription blaming Mormon leader for killings questioned A scrawled message on a lead plate that blames an 1857 massacre in southern Utah on Brigham Young is a fake, a documents expert has concluded. The lead sheet, which was discovered by a U.S. Park Service volunteer in January inside an Arizona fort, contained a message purportedly written by John D. Lee that said Young ordered the killing of 120 Arkansas emigrants in an episode that came to be known as the Mountain Meadows Massacre. But William J. Flynn, a forensics expert from Phoenix, said Tuesday that the handwriting is definitely not that of Lee, the only person tried for the massacre. "Flat out, not only is it a forgery, but it's not a particularly good forgery," Flynn said. Lee was executed by a firing squad in 1877. Mountain Meadows, which saw the killing of roughly 120 members of a wagon train lead by John T. Baker and Alexander Fancher, remains a controversial episode in Utah history. It was originally blamed on Indians, but many historians have concluded that local members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints were involved. |