This "historical mystery" comes from Harriet Branton and her book, "Focus on Washington County." This book comes from our own library at the historical society and contains many other interesting stories from Washington and Greene Counties that you might see in our future blog posts. So sit back and relax as we take you back in time with this history mystery!
One of the most intriguing mysteries to shake the orderly world of American history took place in the 1930s and 40s right here in southwestern Pennsylvania.
It was in 1945 that the Greene County Historical Society published work entitled The Horn Papers: Early Westward Movement in the Monogahela and Upper Ohio, 1765-1795. The apperance of the innocent-looking books caused an almost immediate uproar in historical circles. Before the dust had settled, southwestern Pennsylvania had recieved almost as much national attention as it had during the stormy days of the whiskey rebellion a century and a half earlier.
The facinating story began in 1932, when on August 15 of that year a resident of Topeka, Kan., named William Franklin Horn wrote a letter to teh editor of the Observer. He described a collection of family papers which included diaries and notebooks of his ancestors, Jacob and Christopher Horn, from 1735 to 1795. There was also a town plat of Augusta Town and descriptions of the "lost" communities of Augusta Town and Razortown, accounts of heretofore unrecorded Indian battles, early court dockets for West Augusta County (the disputed portion of southwestern Pennsylvania which for awhile was claimed by both Pennsylvania and Virginia), genealogical records and other items of interest to historians in Washington and Greene Counties.
W.F. Horn himself had been born in Greene County in 1870; he was the great-great-great grandson of Jacob Horn. W.F. Horn's father Soloman had moved his family to Kansas in 1882. Along with their other possessions the Horns took along a trunk full of manuscripts and documents dating back to the 18th century. It was this batch of papers which included the diaries and notebooks of his ancestors that Horn wished to publicize. He said he made handwritten copies of the documents because of the tattered and deteriorating condition of the originals. The originals could not be produced.
In spite of the probable newsworthiness of Horn's story and the correspondent's willingness to write it all up for publication in the Obeserver, the editor hesitatied to accept the offer. The documents were sensational in that they filled in numerous gaps which had baffled historians of the newly found region for many years. Some newly found facts were also startling; for instance, Horn's court docket alleged to record preceedings at Camp Catfish and Spirit Spring in 1773 and 1774, dates which contradicted the previously established date of the earliest English-speaking court in Washington County as September 17, 1776. In 1905 the Washington County Historical Society had even erected a marker commemorating the event. Then there was the graphic account in the Horn papers of a tremendous battle at Flint Top in 1748 in which some 12,000 Indians had been killed. Historians knew of Indian battles in the region, but no previously recorded engagement ever mentioned such a slaughter; there was reason to believe that no such large gathering of Indians had ever occurred in this area or that the physical evidence of so many casualties could have gone unreported for so long. The Horn collection also provided data about Christopher Giest, John Canon and an assortment of people important in the early history of western Maryland and Virginia which contracdicted previously documented accounts of their exploits.
So, while the editor of the Observer hesitated, Horn took his story and his papers to Waynesburg. There the Democrat-Messenger printed excerpts from the collection during 1933 and 1934. (The Obeserver eventually ran weekly installments featuring the papers in 1935-36.) W.F. Horn himself visited Greene County frequently and developed quite a following as a lecturer on local history and genealogy. An interesting and dynamic speaker as well as an affable, friendly man, he seemed to be a walking encyclopedia of facts and information and was only too willing to help people, without charge, with their family histories and genealogies.
In addition to the documents which Horn brought along there was also quite a collection of artifacts which aroused more than a little interest. These included a small marble cross which had been presented by a fur trader, Jean LeBeau, to Jacob Horn in 1739; a Virginia colonial coin dating from 1734; two pieces of 18th century glassware; a wooden razor box made by Jacob Horn, and dozens of items made of wood, hide, flax, stone, and shell, plus arrowheads, carpenter's tools and surveying instruments.
For nearly a decade a lively debate over the authenticity of the Horn collection went on in local historical circles. As early sa 1936, when in August two lead plates, alleged by Horn to have been buried as boundary markers by a French expedition in the 18th century, had been found and dug up just where he said they would be, and there was talk in Greene County of issuing the Horn papers in book form. Horn allowed himself to be persuaded, and a monumental nine-year project of preparing the large collection for publication was begun. A two-volume work begain to take shape- it included a transcript of the diaries, 22 maps, letters, reports of the speeches, genealogical data, the court docket, 500 family histories, and other manuscripts. A third volume, containing warrant, survey, and patent maps prepared by the Pennsylvania Land Office was also planned. It was a prodigious undertaking, for the Horn documents were in considerable disorder. As Horn told it, he had himself copied the diaries after the family chest was opened in 1891 because of th edeteriorating condition of the original manuscripts; however, his copies were so disorganized that the Greene County historians had a complicated editorial job on their hands as they prepared the papers for publication.
When the three-volume work rolled off the presses in December 1945, there was an almost instant storm of criticism from some of the nation's most prestigious scholars in American history. One of the first to recieve a set for review was Julian Boyd, Librarian of Princeton University and a recognized authority on western Pennsylvania history. Boyd, in the summer of 1946, wrote to Guy Stanton Ford, Secretary of the American Historical Association, that the Horn papers were "sheer fabrications." He concluded, however, that the volumes were not intended as a hoax and that they "were not intended to defraud." But, he wondered, "what was the motive?" Boyd's alarums to the AHA resulted in the appointment by the Institute of Early American History and Culture of a blue-ribbon committee of historicans to study the papers and evaluate their authenticity. Chaired by Dr. Solon J. Buck, Archivest of the United States, the committee set about its misison immediately.
As the committee proceeded with its work in the late 1946 its investigation was hampered by Horn's illness. Confined to his Topeka home, he was unable even to correspond with members of the committee. The work proceeded, nevertheless; the committee examined the documents and made a number of observations. There were, among other things, numerous words and phrases not likely to be used by 18th century inhabitants of the region; historical inaccuracies; and a writing style that suggested that the diary, the notes, and the court docket had all been written by the same person.
More damaging evidence came from a specialist on the staff of the National Archives who examined the supposedly original court docket and several maps, plus a few sheets of horn's 1891 transcript. the findings indicated that the cover, paper, binding, and sewing of the court docket were not of the 18th century origin; the text of the docket was written with a type of metal pen and ink not available in the 18th century; the maps were drawn on the paper of modern origin; and excerpts from the diaries were writtin in ink "of the same type used in the docket and maps." The conclusion of the expert was that "one person produced all of the items examined" and that the writings were all "produced no earlier than 1930."
Finally, a number of the artifacts were subjected to expert scrutiny. The 1734 Virginia colonial coin turned out to be a Dutch piece (no coins were issued by Virginia until 1773); the white marble cross was alleged to be of modern origin; the two pieces of glassware, supposedly produced before 1795, were of late 19th century or early 20th century manufacture; and the use of modern machine-made brads and screws in the razor box marked it as a piece of modern craftmanship.
Most damaging of all was the fact that two lead plates alleged to have been buried by the French turned out to be fake. Spectrographic analysis showed that a type of Missouri lead, unavailable in western Pennsylvania in the 18th century, had been used. Furthermore, the French inscriptions on the plates were "most certianly not written by a Frenchman in any century."
The committee's inal report concluded that (1) the Horn papers showed numerous signs of fabrication; (2) they were full of anachronistic words and phrases and historically inaccurate statements of fact; (3) there were a number of "internal discrepancies"; (4) from a stylistic point of view the evidence suggested that the papers were written by the same person; (5) the "original manuscripts" in the collection, the court docket and maps, were recently produced; (6) the "transcript of 1891" was probably prepared at a much later date; and (7) the artifacts included in the collection were "spurious."
It wasn't all bad, however. The committee concluded that the third volume of the Horn papers, the one containing the survey and patent maps, was a very valuable work and that "the Greene County Historical Society rendered a real service to historians and to genealogists by publishing these maps and surveys."
As for William Franklin Horn, broken in health, he was reported after his illness to be "no longer interested" in the papers. He died at his home in Topeka on October 3, 1956, at the age of 86.
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