Joseph Cosey (February 18, 1887 – 1950) is the favorite alias of notorious forger Martin Coneely. He was very skilled at mimicking the handwriting of historical American figures.
Early life
Joseph Cosey was born Martin Coneely on February 18, 1887, in Syracuse, New York. He was the son of Irish Catholic immigrant Robert Coneely, a "cabinetmaker by trade", and Sarah Bease of Virginia. When he tried to sell it to a New York City book dealer, however, the dealer told him it was a fake. Over the years, they have become valuable collector's items in their own right. among them the Alfred Whital Stern Collection of Lincolniana in the Library of Congress. The noted collector A. S. W. Rosenbach was proud to have a Cosey forgery of two verses from Edgar Allan Poe's poem "The Raven".