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“Acquittal of the Mormons in Michigan,” Monmouthshire Merlin, 1851

Also Acquittal of the Mormons in Michigan

Draft — sources verified, prose evolving

TypeNewspaper
Date1851-08-01
ErasStrang era
On this page
Newspaper
Date
1851-08-01
Eras
Strang era
Concepts
mormonismgovernancehistoriography

Summary

The retained university transcription preserves an item from the Monmouthshire Merlin dated 1 August 1851 and datelined Detroit on 10 July, reporting that the mail-obstruction trial of James J. Strang and other Beaver Island defendants had concluded with acquittal of every defendant.

Evidence and limits

This is independent near-contemporaneous newspaper evidence for the reported acquittal. It survives here through a modern university transcription, not an original page image. It does not supply the court name, indictment, full defendant list, evidence, legal reasoning, formal judgment, or proof that other prosecutions were dismissed.

See also

Sources

  1. The held university page transcribes a Detroit, 10 July 1851 item: the trial of James J. Strang and other Beaver Island prisoners on an indictment for obstructing the U.S. mail concluded with acquittal of every defendant. The project holds the modern HTML transcription, not an original Merlin scan, the federal docket, indictment, trial transcript, or verdict form.
    research · strang_legal · sources · byu-rsc-monmouthshire-merlin
  2. Project provenance sidecar for the retained Brigham Young University Religious Studies Center transcription.
    Records the university source URL, retrieval metadata, checksum, and the distinction between the held HTML transcription and an original newspaper scan or court record. No public copy of this file is known; the archive holds one and can provide it on request.
    research · strang_legal · sources · byu-rsc-monmouthshire-merlin.provenance

Added 2 August 2026. Recent changes

Cite this article

Beaver Island Archive, ““Acquittal of the Mormons in Michigan,” Monmouthshire Merlin, 1851”, https://beaverislandarchive.org/documents/monmouthshire-merlin-acquittal-of-mormons-1851/, accessed [date], citing “Acquittal of the Mormons in Michigan,” *Monmouthshire Merlin*, 1 August 1851, p. 2, as transcribed by the Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University. (and 1 further source listed on the page).

Last revised 2026-08-02. Fill in [date] with the date you read it — this page is static and cannot know that.

BibTeX for ““Acquittal of the Mormons in Michigan,” Monmouthshire Merlin, 1851”RIS for ““Acquittal of the Mormons in Michigan,” Monmouthshire Merlin, 1851”