Alleged Forgery By Strang
Some have insisted that the Voree Plates were forged by Strang. Isaac Scott, an ex-Strangite, claimed that Caleb Barnes, Strang's former law partner, said that he and Strang had fabricated them from a tea kettle belonging to Strang's father-in-law, as part of a land speculation scheme they had hatched.
According to Scott, Barnes and Strang "made the 'plates' out of Ben ’s old kettle and engraved them with an old saw file, and...when completed they put acid on them to corrode them and give them an ancient appearance; and that to deposit them under the tree, where they were found, they took a large auger...which Ben owned, put a fork handle on the auger and with it bored a long slanting hole under a tree on 'The Hill of Promise,' as they called it, laying the earth in a trail on a cloth as taken out, then put the 'plates' in, tamping in all the earth again, leaving no trace of their work visible.”
Wingfield Watson, a High Priest in Strang's sect who knew Strang personally, vigorously challenged these allegations in an 1889 publication entitled The Prophetic Controversy #3.
Strang was assassinated in 1856. The Voree Plates remained with his family, until they disappeared sometime around 1900. Their current whereabouts are a mystery.
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