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MATTHIAS, religious impostor, born in Washington county, New York, in 1790; died in Arkansas after 1840. He was a country merchant named Robert Matthews, but, after failing in business in 1816, removed to New York, and in 1827 to Albany. He professed conversion under the evangelists Edward N. Kirk and Charles G. Finney, subsequently engaged in the temperance cause, and, claiming to have received a revelation, took to street-preaching. Failing to convert Albany, he prophesied its destruction, and fled to New York, where he involved several respectable families in his delusions, and was tried and acquitted of poisoning Elijah Pierson, a wealthy disciple, in whose family he lived. His impostures having been exposed, he disappeared. Matthias claimed divine attributes, denied the sanctity of marriage, forbade the use of meat, and dressed in what he called a prophet's robe, a long, white garment. His sect dispersed after his exposure. See " Matthias and his Impostures," by William L. Stone (New York, 1835), and "Fanaticism Illustrated in the Case of Matthias," a reply to the foregoing, by G. Vale (1835).
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