The Pompey Stone Hoax

The Pompey Stone was discovered in the early 1820s, and was believed to be hundreds of years old. It turned out to be a hoax, but a fairly benign one.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 2:06Holly Frey?

  Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 2:17Tracy V. Wilson?

  Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson.

• 2:20Holly Frey?

  And I'm Holly Frey.

• 2:22Tracy V. Wilson?

  This is coming out on April Fool's Day, so I wanted to find an episode about some kind of historical hoax or a prank. But with the times that we're living in, not one in which anybody got seriously hurt, or killed, or otherwise just harmed. And also, I did not want something like the Piltdown Man, which was a scientific hoax that led some researchers at least, just down the wrong path to wrong conclusions for years. And then it helped erode the public's trust in science and scientists when that hoax was exposed. So I didn't want anything with consequences like that. We talked about

• 3:07Tracy V. Wilson?

  the Piltdown Man in an episode that we ran as a Saturday classic back in January of 2022. Today's hoax did lead people astray a little bit, but in a way that was fairly localized, not so much fallout. It was called the Pompey Stone.

• 3:26Holly Frey?

  The Pompey Stone was unearthed on the farm of Philo Cleveland, who lived in Onondaga County, New York. He lived in Waterville. That's an area between the towns of Manlius and Pompey. And those two towns were really interconnected, and various accounts put Cleveland's farm in one or the other of them, but really situated in the middle. All of this is about 15 miles or 24 kilometers southeast of Syracuse. Coincidentally, Pompey is just a few miles east of Cardiff, New York, home to the Cardiff Giant, which would become one of the most sensational archaeological hoaxes in US history after its purported discovery in 1869.

• 4:08Holly Frey?

  So in 1820 or 1821, Philo Cleveland was cutting down trees and digging up rocks to expand a meadow on his farm. And toward the end of the day, one day, he used an iron bar to turn a large stone out of some damp ground. He was tired by this point, so once he'd pried up this stone, he leaned against a nearby stump to rest with his hands on the top of the bar. While he was resting, his eyes sort of fell on the stone that he had just turned over, and he noticed that it seemed to have some letters or markings on it. He did not really think much of this, and after he got up again, he put the stone on top of the pile of rocks that he had dug up earlier in the day.

• 4:54Holly Frey?

  A few days passed before he got back out there, and in the meantime, it had rained. The rain had washed the dirt off of this stone, making the markings on it a lot more obvious. The stone was about 14 inches long by 12 inches wide and 8 inches thick. That's about 36 by 30 by 20 centimeters. In the center, there was an engraving that looked like a sketch of a snake climbing a tree. There was a phrase or a name partly on one side of the tree and partly on the other, and it looked like Leo de L on, almost like Leo de Leon with a period after Leo and a letter missing from Leon.

• 5:37Holly Frey?

  So on the bottom left was a Roman numeral six that's made up of the capital letters VI and the number 1520. And on the bottom right was a large X, which in some interpretations was meant to be a cross, and that was next to some kind of indistinct shape. If you look at photographs of this stone today, the inscription doesn't quite look like that, because at some point after this, some unknown person altered it.

• 6:04Tracy V. Wilson?

  So this etching, this carving, whatever you want to call it, it was interesting enough that Cleveland invited some of his neighbors to look at it. And then eventually he took the stone over to a nearby blacksmith's shop. For about the next six months, people would stop by the shop and they would take a look at this stone. In the words of Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, who wrote one of the earlier printed accounts of this, quote, "It was not uncommon for some of them to take a horse nail or old file and scrape the cracks, seams, and carvings till all the parts of the inscription were freed from dirt."

• 6:41Holly Frey?

  The stone was eventually taken from Watervale to Manlius, where it remained for about a year. And during that time, in Schoolcraft's words, it was, quote, "visited by several gentlemen of science, most of whom were disposed to admit that it was genuine." He doesn't say who these gentlemen of science were or how they made this determination. And neither does anyone else who mentions them. Eventually, the stone was given to the State Museum of the Albany Institute, now known as the Albany Institute of History and Art.

• 7:15Tracy V. Wilson?

  I like how there's just these mysterious gentlemen of science.

• 7:19Holly Frey?

  Just some dudes came by. They were credentialed. It's fine. Don't ask questions.

• 7:23Tracy V. Wilson?

  They all said it was legit. About 20 years passed between the stone's reported discovery and the first description of it in writing that I was able to find. That was in the 1841 Historical Collections of the State of New York, containing a general collection of the most interesting facts, traditions, biographical sketches, anecdotes, et cetera, relating to its history and antiquities with geographical descriptions of every township in the state, illustrated by 230 engravings. That was by John W. Barber and Henry Howe.

• 8:06Tracy V. Wilson?

  These two men wrote a lot of books like this. Just the title of it reminds me of the kinds of books that you would find in a touristy gift shop, the books about like the state or local history and lore. Barber had already written and illustrated books on the city of New Haven, the states of Massachusetts and Connecticut, and the whole region of New England, New York, and New Jersey before this book came out. And he also wrote other similar books after this one came out. Howe was a collaborator on some of Barber's books and also wrote a number of similar history books of his own. Barber also wrote religious works like "The Bible Looking Glass" and "The Picture Preacher",

• 8:50Tracy V. Wilson?

  some of which Howe contributed to.

• 8:53Holly Frey?

  Barber and Howe sourced for the story of the Pompey Stone was an unpublished history manuscript written by someone they call the Reverend Mr. Adams. That was the Reverend John Watson Adams, who worked as a schoolteacher in Manlius before being ordained and installed as a pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Syracuse. Adams died in 1850, so it's possible that Barber and Howe met him while researching this book. It's possible that they also talked about the Pompey Stone with locals.

• 9:26Tracy V. Wilson?

  Barber and Howe described this stone as being part of the archaeological landscape of the area. Quote, "In the cultivation of the lands lying upon the Anandaga Creek, innumerable implements of war and husbandry have been found, scattered over a territory of four or five miles in length. Swords, gun barrels, gunlocks, bayonets, balls, axes, hoes, etc. have been found. A stone was found in the town of Pompey, now in the Albany Museum, about 14 inches long by 12 broad and 8 inches in thickness. It has in the center a figure of a tree with a serpent climbing it with the following inscription on each side."

• 10:08Tracy V. Wilson?

  And then it just kind of renders those letters as text.

• 10:14Holly Frey?

  Barber and Howe offered this explanation for how to interpret the inscription. Quote, "We have here the true chronology of the pontificate of Leo the 10th, and probably the year in which the inscriptions were made. The inscriptions may be translated, Leo the 10th, by the grace of God, eighth year of his pontificate, 1520. This stone was doubtless designed as a sepulchral monument. L S signified the initials of the person buried, the cross, that he was a Catholic, and the inverted U, some other emblem which is now in a great measure effaced." What Barber and Howe describe as an inverted U, other sources have interpreted as the letter N.

• 10:58Tracy V. Wilson?

  Barber and Howe went on to say, quote, "Mr. Adams considers that it is not incredible that this stone was carved by a Spaniard on or near the spot near which it was found. Florida was discovered by the Spaniards as early as 1502. Possibly some adventurers of this nation, allured by the story of a lake at the north whose bottom was lined with silver, the salt at Selina Springs, traversed this region in pursuit of their darling object. One of the number dying here, the survivor or survivors may have placed this monument over his remains."

• 11:34Holly Frey?

  These were the first of many people to publish work about the stone, and we'll get to more after a sponsor break.

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• 14:22Holly Frey?

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• 15:04Holly Frey?

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• 15:30Tracy V. Wilson?

  For decades, people seemed to just take for granted that the Pompey Stone was a genuine 16th century relic. In 1847, six years after Barber and Howe published their history of New York, geographer, geologist, and ethnologist Henry Rowe Schoolcraft published an edition of his book, Notes on the Iroquois: Or Contributions to American History, Antiquities, and General Ethnology. Schoolcraft was born in New York, and his writing career started with accounts of his travels through Missouri and Arkansas. He was appointed a federal Indian agent in 1822, and he married a woman named Jane Johnston, who had both Scots-Irish and Ojibwe heritage.

• 16:14Tracy V. Wilson?

  Schoolcraft wrote a number of books about indigenous peoples, culture, and history, including a six-volume work that was commissioned by Congress.

• 16:23Holly Frey?

  The 1847 edition of Notes on the Iroquois was about 200 pages longer than the one he had published a year before, and it included a section called Antique Inscribed Stone of Manlius. In it, Schoolcraft gave a description of the Pompey Stone and an account of its discovery and what happened to it afterward, which we read a bit from earlier. Schoolcraft's interpretation of the inscription is, quote, "By the figure of a serpent climbing a tree, a well-known passage in the Pentateuch is clearly referred to. By the date, the sixth year of the reign of the Roman pontiff Leo the 10th has been thought to be denoted.

• 17:03Holly Frey?

  This appears to be probable, less clearly from the inscriptive phrase Leo de Lon 6 than from the plain date 1520, being six years after this pontiff took the papal chair." So the Pentateuch is the first five books of the Christian Bible, and the most well-known passage involving a snake is, of course, the Book of Genesis, in which a serpent tempts Eve to eat an apple from the Tree of Knowledge.

• 17:29Tracy V. Wilson?

  The basic assumption, pretty much across the board, was that 1520 was the year that this stone had been carved. And people also assumed that the person who did that carving was Spanish. Schoolcraft walked through some of the proposed explanations for who this person might have been. He said it could not have been someone who arrived with Hernán Cortés, even though Cortés arrived in southeastern Mexico in 1519. Schoolcraft thought Cortés and his force would have just been way too focused on conquering the Aztec Empire to send anybody exploring farther north until after they were done conquering the Aztec capital in 1521.

• 18:11Holly Frey?

  Apparently, Schoolcraft had heard people suggest that the stone could have been carved by someone who arrived with Hernando de Soto. But that was impossible, since de Soto didn't even leave Spain until 1538.

• 18:25Tracy V. Wilson?

  Another possibility was that this was somebody who had arrived with Juan Ponce de León, who reached Florida in 1513.

• 18:34Tracy V. Wilson?

  As we said earlier, part of the inscription looked almost like it said "de Leon." Schoolcraft also vaguely suggested that this rock could have been inscribed by somebody associated with Portuguese explorer Gaspar Corter Real, who reached Greenland in 1500 and Canada in 1501. Corter Real disappeared on his return voyage and was presumed lost at sea. His brother mounted an expedition to search for him and disappeared in 1502 and was presumed lost as well.

• 19:09Holly Frey?

  Schoolcraft did not try to pinpoint which of these was most likely to have been the source of the stone, but he offered this general explanation. Quote, "If by the prefix of Leo or Lion, a compliment to a brave and hardy explorer was designed to have been expressed, it would have well corresponded with the chivalric character of that age. As a mere historical question, a claim to the discovery of the interior of New York by the Spanish Crown might, in this view, find something to base itself on." Schoolcraft then made it clear that the first really concrete evidence of a European presence in the area traced back to the French in the mid 17th century, roughly 150 years after

• 19:54Holly Frey?

  the year inscribed on the stone.

• 19:57Tracy V. Wilson?

  Two years after Schoolcraft published this book, Joshua V. H. Clark of the New York Historical Society wrote about the Pompey Stone in Anandaga, or Reminiscences of Earlier and Later Times, being a series of historical sketches relative to Anandaga with notes on the several towns in the county and Oswego. Clark used the Reverend John Watson Adams' unpublished manuscript as a source for this book, and he also made a couple of references to Schoolcraft's work. His description of the stone and how it was found is extremely similar to Schoolcraft's, even down to the detail of Philo Cleveland being tired and resting against a stump with

• 20:41Tracy V. Wilson?

  his hands on top of the bar and the stone being visited by, quote, "gentlemen of science." It is not totally clear whether Clark was paraphrasing Schoolcraft or if both of them were actually paraphrasing Adams and Schoolcraft just did not mention using Adams as a source.

• 21:01Holly Frey?

  Clark did not doubt that the stone was authentic. In his words, quote, "It is not at all probable that Mr. Cleveland or any of the persons who first saw the stone in the field or at the shop could have designed or executed the carvings. Besides, there are many persons now living who would bear testimony to its authenticity." He concluded that the stone might have been a memorial to someone who had died. Quote, "It may not appear incredible that a party of Spaniards, either stimulated by the spirit of adventure or allured by the love of gold or driven by some rude blast of misfortune, may have visited this region, lost one of their number by death, and erected

• 21:43Holly Frey?

  this rude stone with its simple inscription as a tribute to his memory."

• 21:48Tracy V. Wilson?

  In 1851, Ephraim George Squire published Antiquities of the State of New York, being the results of extensive original surveys and explorations with a supplement on the antiquities of the West. He gave the same basic description of the Pompey Stone and how it was found, as the men before him had, saying, quote, "There seems to be little doubt that the stone was found as represented, and that is a genuine remnant of antiquity." Some have supposed that it attests that Ponce de Leon, Narvaez, or some other Spanish adventurer penetrated thus far to the northward during the period of Spanish adventure in Florida.

• 22:29Tracy V. Wilson?

  We haven't mentioned Narvaez before this, but we talked about his expedition in North America in our episode on Estevadico in August of last year.

• 22:38Holly Frey?

  In 1863, Buckingham Smith submitted a paper to the American Antiquarian Society, which society librarian S.F. Haven summarized in his report in the society's proceedings that year. Tracy was not able to find the actual paper, but according to Haven, Smith called the stone a "well-authenticated relic" and suggested that the inscription may have been abbreviating the phrase "Leo Decimus Pontifix Maximus" or "Leo the Tenth Pope."

• 23:11Tracy V. Wilson?

  On November 11th, 1879, Henry A. Holmes, librarian of the New York State Library, delivered a 13-page paper on the Pompey Stone before the Oneida Historical Society. And this paper gave the most in-depth and detailed exploration of the stone's possible origins. Holmes noted that the region where the stone was found was "full of archaeological finds related to the area's indigenous peoples, as well as French and Dutch settlements dating back to the 17th century."

• 23:45Holly Frey?

  Holmes went on to say, "The genuineness of the inscriptions upon it have never been questioned by any of those who have written regarding them, down to Mr. Haven of the American Antiquarian Society, who very lately has declared them to be well-authenticated. These writers have merely failed to give explanations or conjectures regarding its origin and meaning that have harmonized with all the facts."

• 24:11Tracy V. Wilson?

  From there, Holmes summarized the work of Clark, Schoolcraft, Squire, and Smith. He said of Schoolcraft's notations about the Pentateuch and Leo the Tenth and Poncedeleon, "His contradictory conclusions only create dilemma and bewilderment." He found Clark's explanations to be "nearer to correct, though incomplete."

• 24:35Holly Frey?

  Overall, Holmes thought these earlier explanations were "either improbable or impossible." It is even now surmised that the stone might refer to Leo the 10th Pope, and only for the reason that he was Pope from 1513 to 1521. But he was not from the town or kingdom of Lyon, a part of Spain, and there is nothing but the date to connect the stone with him. Leo, or Lyon, is a very common name among all the Latin nations. It is surmised that the name may have referenced to Ponce de Lyon, the discoverer of Florida. The answer is that in this case, there is no coincidence of a name of person, but only of a name of place.

• 25:20Holly Frey?

  Holmes also pointed out that a lot of the speculation around the stone's origins linked it to expeditions that happened after 1520, which didn't really make any sense.

• 25:31Tracy V. Wilson?

  Like so many other people who had written before him, Holmes concluded that the Pompey Stone was a memorial to someone who had died. He interpreted the inscription as meaning, "In the year of our Lord 1520, in the sixth month, which according to Old Style would be September or October, Leo, a Spaniard of the city of Lyon in Spain, died here."

• 25:53Holly Frey?

  But he added another layer to who that person might have been. Quote, "The Pompey Stone is a memorial stone of a European, probably of a Spaniard, who previous to 1520, with one or more companions, had been made a captive by the Indians in some part of North America, and both had been adopted as members of the tribe with which they were living, and one of them had become a Sakim. At the death of Leo, a surviving companion carved on the stone his name, with the month and year of his death, and emblems of his hope of an immortal life."

• 26:30Tracy V. Wilson?

  From there, Holmes argued that this person might have arrived in North America on pretty much any expedition in the late 15th or early 16th century, not just the ones that departed from Spain, because there were people from all over Europe on every voyage. He listed off a huge number of expeditions as possibilities. He also speculated that there could have been other, smaller voyages that left Europe and never returned and were never written about, and any of those could have included people from Spain. He thought expeditions to the Caribbean and Central and South America were possibilities as well. Maybe people left on their own and traveled north, very far, all the way to what's down

• 27:15Tracy V. Wilson?

  New York, and just nobody ever really documented it.

• 27:18Holly Frey?

  Holmes also backed up this conclusion by noting that there was a lot of writing about European contact with indigenous peoples and Europeans who started living among indigenous communities in North America. He said it would take too long to write about all of them, but, quote, "The original narratives and the compilations of the historians show that there were many, either as captives or as adopted members of the tribes, living with them and occasionally acting as interpreters to vessels that touch the coast for commerce." Our libraries are full of narrations of what are called Indian captives.

• 27:55Tracy V. Wilson?

  He also speculated that the engraving was an amalgam of Christian and indigenous imagery. He said that the figures on the bottom right, one of which just looks kind of like some lines to me, were two crossed pipes and a tobacco pouch, and those were all meant to represent peace. He said the serpent climbing the tree merged the biblical tree of knowledge of good and evil, which Holmes said was also the tree of life, with an indigenous reverence for trees and for serpents. He backed all of this up with descriptions of serpent symbolism and serpent worship from indigenous communities around the world.

• 28:36Holly Frey?

  Holmes also claimed that the Onondaga people worshipped a figure called Hoda Haro, who was depicted with snakes in his hair. This seems to be a sort of mangled interpretation of an indigenous story about the founding of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. In that story, Tarodaho was an Onondaga man who was described as an evil sorcerer, whose body was twisted and whose hair was filled with writhing snakes. When the peacemaker united the nations of the Haudenosaunee, he had to convince Tarodaho to join the side of peace. And as part of this, the peacemaker is said to have combed the snakes from Tarodaho's hair.

• 29:18Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, I don't think there's any other figure that he could have been referring to with this kind of incorrect name of Hoda Haro. And also, this was not about worshipping a figure with snakes in their hair. Holmes concluded, quote, "I think we are authorized to regard the Pompey inscribed stone with its genuineness and authenticity as the earliest monument, either in the state of New York or in the United States, attesting the discovery of the new world and the presence here of the European."

• 29:52Holly Frey?

  So that was a whole lot of writing about something that it turned out was fake. We will get to that revelation after we pause for a sponsor break.

• 30:35Holly Frey?

  We've all done it, tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self diagnose. And sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health Versus Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeart Media's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends.

• 31:17Holly Frey?

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• 31:38Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 32:23Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 33:38Tracy V. Wilson?

  After Henry A. Holmes delivered his paper before the Oneida Historical Society, the Pompey Stone started to get some press outside of New York. Harper's Weekly was based in New York City, but it was distributed nationally, and it published a short write-up about the stone in December 20th, 1879. That write-up called Holmes "a quote, 'accomplished and accurate scholar.'" In 1885, another short piece from the Rochester Post Express was picked up and published all over the country, including in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Minnesota, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Vermont, and Wisconsin.

• 34:20Tracy V. Wilson?

  This is just a couple of paragraphs, and it said that the Pompey Stone was "the grave marker of a Spanish adventurer who had come looking for gold," and that it was "the earliest known evidence of Europeans in the area."

• 34:35Holly Frey?

  In 1894, Onondaga County started preparing for the celebration of its centennial. And as part of that, Episcopal Rector William Martin Beecham had the opportunity to examine the stone. Beecham's formal education was in religion. He had a Doctor of Sacred Theology degree. But he had also done a lot of work in archaeology and ethnology, doing some of this work on government commissions and serving as archaeologist of the New York State Museum. He published at least 10 books over the course of his life.

• 35:08Tracy V. Wilson?

  After examining the stone, Beecham wrote up his findings and sent them to the Syracuse Journal, which printed them on June 9, 1894. He said that this inscription was not, as a lot of people had supposed, etched onto the stone with a knife. Someone had used multiple stone carving tools, including two different cold chisels, both of them good quality. They had slightly different shapes and one of them was duller than the other. Some of the marks had been made with a smith's punch. These had been struck with a mallet or a hammer. Beecham wrote, quote, "A hammer, two cold chisels, and a good punch would make a pretty

• 35:48Tracy V. Wilson?

  good kit of tools for a wandering Spaniard, and he may have found these things enough. If anyone thinks he carried them so far, he may believe in the Pompey Stone."

• 35:59Holly Frey?

  From there, Beecham pointed out that the characters in the inscription were not 16th century characters. They were purely modern, which could be confirmed by comparing them to the numerals in books printed 150 or 200 years earlier, or to recently printed books, which they matched. According to Beecham, the shapes of the letter L and the numeral 5 were particularly problematic.

• 36:25Tracy V. Wilson?

  And there were more problems. Based on the account of the stone's discovery, it was found in a spot that was wet and strewn with boulders and large stones. In other words, this was not a good spot for a settlement, or a grave, or even a temporary camp. There also wasn't an indigenous settlement known to be nearby in 1520. In Beecham's words, quote, "I may add that I have investigated several frauds in every way more antique in character than this inscription."

• 36:59Holly Frey?

  Beecham doesn't really unpack why people were so ready to believe something that to him was such an obvious fake. But knowing how much local lore there was around the stone, after he submitted his piece to the Syracuse Journal, he braced for impact. But then he was pleasantly surprised to hear from John E. Sweet, whose response to Beecham's article was published in the journal on June 11. Sweet said, quote, "My uncle Cyrus Avery, who was born in Pompeii and lived there during the early part of the century, told me the last time I saw him, 1867, that he and his nephew William Willard of this city

• 37:40Holly Frey?

  cut the figures on the Pompey stone and just to see what would come of it. When it came out in Clark's History, so much had come of it, they thought it best to keep still altogether. I have no doubt the tools were those mentioned by Mr. Beecham as such tools were exactly the ones most likely to be at hand in Grandfather Avery's blacksmith shop at Orin. Mr. Willard's friends will hardly credit his being interested in a practical joke of that kind, but Mr. Avery, a brother of the late Dr. Avery of Phoenix, was given to just that sort of thing." Sweet went on to say, quote, "The Pompey stone is nothing more or less than a joke.

• 38:24Holly Frey?

  It can hardly be called a fraud, as it does not pretend to be anything, nor did the makers ever do anything to make it appear that it was. I doubt if either of them ever saw it after it was brought to light. Really, I hardly think the stone worth sending back to Albany, and Mr. Beecham may congratulate himself upon having sized up the inscription so accurately."

• 38:48Tracy V. Wilson?

  Later on, Colonel William A. Sweet corroborated John Sweet's account, and Beecham later speculated on why Avery and Willard had chosen these particular words and dates that they inscribed on the stone. In Beecham's words, "The answer is simple. They were of a notable New England family and, of course, familiar with the history of the Reformation. The year 1520 saw Luther's renunciation of papal authority followed immediately by his excommunication by Leo the 10th. No New England boy was ignorant of the approximate date of these events. To them, they were the greatest in European history. When an early date was desired, one soon after the discovery by Columbus, no other

• 39:33Tracy V. Wilson?

  date was so likely to be used."

• 39:36Holly Frey?

  All of this definitively marked the Pompey Stone as a hoax, but there were still some people who referenced it as legitimate after this point. For example, in 1896, the Reverend Dr. John F. Malaney of Syracuse gave a sermon in which he used the Pompey Stone as evidence that Spanish Catholics had visited northeastern North America 100 years before Protestants arrived and before the Dutch settled on Manhattan Island. Malaney assumed that the stone was a marker to a Catholic missionary who had died. A 1905 article in the New York Tribune framed the stone as though it was authentic and proof of an early Spanish presence in New York.

• 40:20Holly Frey?

  In 1933, the Reverend John Thomas Conlon published an article titled "The Beginnings of Catholicism in New Netherland," including a footnote citing the Pompey Stone as evidence of a few Spanish Catholics in what is now New York, noting, "The monument is regarded as genuine and authentic."

• 40:41Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, I suppose none of them had heard the news. Today, there's a historical marker in Pompey, New York, which was placed by the New York Folklore Society William C. Pomeroy Foundation in 2017. That historical marker is headed "Legends and Lore," and it says, "Pompey Stone: 1800s prank believed true." There's some more text after that, and it ends with "1894: Hoax Revealed."

• 41:10Tracy V. Wilson?

  That is the Pompey Stone. Do you have some listener mail that may or may not be a hoax? It is not a hoax. It is about the unusual spelling of Florida from our Fort Mosaic episode. So that's sort of tangentially related to today, since that also had a lot of Florida discussion. This email is from Steph. Dear Holly and Tracy, I will type part of the time in all caps just to avoid confusion with lowercase L's in this email. This is about how in one of the things that we read in the Fort Mosaic episode, the word Florida was spelled L-L-O-R-I-D-A, all in lowercase.

• 41:53Tracy V. Wilson?

  This is just my intuition plus knowledge of manuscripts from studying European history music sources. However, here goes. The writer chose to draw a somewhat confusing double F on purpose to avoid having it perceived, considering the writer's no caps writing style as L-L-O-R-I-D-A. LL is of course the Yezma digraph in Spanish. A reader could misapprehend the all lowercase Florida as L-L-O-R-I-D-A, which would send them down the wrong phoneme road. And who knows? They might never get to F-F-L-O-R-I-D-A, or aha, Florida. And then there is a link to a knowledgeable linguist talking about double letter usage

• 42:36Tracy V. Wilson?

  in modern Spanish. And says, this is all I've got. Obviously, listeners who work with historical Spanish manuscripts more than me will send you their expert and corroborated answers, which you can please index above mine. Thank you for your rigorously historical and gracious presence on the internet. And then there's a series of five hearts for the way you always aim to recognize human dignity in your retellings, analysis, and remarks. Steph. P P P S. Here is a photo of our family's departed the happy dog who went by happy for short. He was a short, energetic and vocal mix of rat terrier, plus we don't know what, and we miss him. And so we have a very, very adorable, just very inquisitive looking puppy dog.

• 43:21Tracy V. Wilson?

  Sweet baby. Very sweet. Thank you so much, Steph, for that email. I don't know if this explanation has to do with the use of L L O R I D A as a spelling, only because that particular thing was not a Spanish document. It was English speakers coming from Carolina to Florida. So it's possible, but maybe not. But it is the only potential explanation we have received so far as to why it may have been spelled that way. So thank you again, Steph. If you

• 44:01Tracy V. Wilson?

  would like to send us a note, we're at [email protected]. And you can find the show notes to our episode with links to all of these many things we read from today at missedinhistory.com. And you can subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app and anywhere else you like to get your podcasts.

• 44:25Tracy V. Wilson?

  Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 44:39Holly Frey?

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