DALLAS – One of the most infamous forgeries in United States history heads to auction for the first time in June. The Oath of a Freeman, a pledge of loyalty and duty demanded of all new members of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, is said to be the oldest printed document in English North America, produced in Cambridge, Mass., around 1638 or 1639. But the only known copy of this diminutive broadsheet was made in 1985 by a master forger and convicted murderer who has spent the last 34 years in a Utah prison.
That man is Mark Hofmann, subject of the 2021 Netflix true-crime mini-series Murder Among the Mormons.