ECS
Banned
THE HART PAPERS contain several questions and embellishments from the original source of Ward's THE BEALE PAPERS.
George L Hart states in the title-"presenting details of an alleged burial of gold, silver, and jewels...by Thomas Jefferson Beale and associates..."-Ward's "J" has become the name "Jefferson".
It seems from the text that N H Hazelwood who gave Clayton Hart 8 sheets of cipher covered papers instead of the 3 in the BEALE PAPERS that the "unknown author" numbered by length. never mentioned Beale or Ward or the BEALE PAPERS.
"About the time of Hazelwood's failing health, Clayton learned that a man by the name of Ward had spent many years trying to find a key, or keys, to the ciphers..."
This is when Clayton Hart traveled to Lynchburg to speak with Ward and his son as well as Ward's neighbors about the BEALE PAPERS.
From the text we are told that only a few pamphlet copies existed due to most being destroyed in a fire "before a plan of distribution or sale".
By this, THE HART PAPERS allude that Ward was the "unknown author" and that only a few copies were placed on sale- which conflicts with the run of adds in the LYNCHBURG VIRGINIAN and the eventual lowering of the price to 10 cents.
*NOTE* There is NO outside documentation of this meeting outside of THE HART PAPERS- not in the newspaper interview in 1934 by Martha Rivers Adams with Ward's daughter, granddaughter, and grandson or in the reports Lt Thomas Fawcett of his interviews in the 1940's to Col Friedman.
The first and only mention is in the Jan 1, 1952 HART PAPERS.
Then where THE BEALE PAPERS had rumors of Indian massacres, the medium "detailed their being set upon by Indians...when all were killed and scalped".
There is also the mention of "THE PLANTERS HOTEL' in St Louis that was never named in the original BEALE PAPERS from where the unreceived "key letter" was sent.
*NOTE* Claudine Fulton Ellis utilized the Planters Hotel "key letter" not being delivered with another cast of players not mentioned in either previous works.
George mentions that a Mr Otey is his wife's first cousin (is this the Mr Otey of the iron box shown to Pauline Innis?) and also writes, he, "the writer will make an effort to put in writing all that he knows or surmises about the above subject".
How much of THE HART PAPERS was "surmised" by George L Hart from Ward's copyrighted BEALE PAPERS?
