He came to Knoxville 1855 as a letterer and engraver for a monument company. In l857 he moved to Bat Creek to operate a monument business. In l890, he was still in the monument business as well as being a Federal Claims Commissioner and leader of Monroe County Republicans. Emmert was a relatively uneducated, obscure former Confederate Army private from Bristol, Tennessee and life-long Democrat who was employed in l884 by the Smithsonian to dig in Indian mounds in what was a successful attempt to prove that the Mound builders were not descendants of the lost Tribe of Israel. That theory was the prevailing belief in the Nineteenth Century.
Old myths die hard.
There are many, including Mormons, who still cling to it. Some of these believers use the Bat Creek Stone to support their belief. Those who have believed the Bat Creek Stone to be a forgery of fraud, include Dr. Charles Faulkner, anthropologist at the University of Tennessee and Jefferson Chapman, Director of the U.T. McClung Museum. They believe that Emmert perpetrated the fraud. My researches indicate that Emmert himself, was a victim of the fraud, set up to send in a fraudulent engraved stone so he would get fired, for the second time.