chalkoutline
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In 1885, James B Ward published a pamphlet which told the story of Thomas Beale shared with him by an anonymous friend. The story begins with a group of 30 men who head west to hunt buffalo but discover gold and silver instead. After mining the precious metals for a year they decide to move the treasure back to Bedford County Virginia in the fall of 1819. Thomas Beale spends the winter at a boarding house in Lynchburg, VA run by the honest and trustworthy Robert Morriss.
Thomas Beale then leaves in the spring of 1820 and returns in the fall of 1821. He stays again at Robert Morriss’s boarding house. When he leaves in the spring of 1822 he leaves a locked iron box with Morriss and told not to open it for 10 years. Morriss eventually opens the box in 1845 to find three ciphers leading to Thomas Beale’s hidden treasure. The treasure description is revealed using a sequentially numbered Declaration of Independent. All the reader needs to do is solve the Ciphers 1 , the treasure location, and they will be rich!
Reason 1: All the earmarks of a hoax
The story told in the 1885 pamphlet have all the earmarks of being a hoax:
- An adventure out west finds treasure instead.
- The locked box that holds the location of the treasure is never claimed implying the treasure is still out there.
- Cipher 2 conveniently reveals the description of the treasure and approximate location encouraging the reader to solve Cipher 1 and find the treasure.
- Thomas Beale wouldn’t have used such the simple encryption method of sequentially numbering the Declaration of Independence that easily reversed engineered to hide the location of treasure.
- “Beale” means “handsome man”. Robert Morriss describes Beale as the most handsome man he has seen.
Reason2: Ciphers are made up
When you apply any of the three ciphers to the wrong document you will reveal gibberish. Occasionally you may find a short word or short alphabetical string but this is by pure coincidence.
When you apply Cipher 1 to the sequentially numbered Declaration of Independence use to solve Cipher 2, you will find an alphabetical string “ABCDEFGHIIJKLMMNOHPP” at Cipher 1 location 188. This is high improbable, if not impossible, to happen naturally.
This string, also know as the “Gillowby string” appears to be intentionally added when the cipher numbers were fabricated out of thin air.
Reason 3: Thomas Beale can’t be in two places at once
Robert Morriss indicated Thomas Beale signed the register as being from Virginia, that he was wealthy, well-educated and thought he came from the west of Lynchburg, VA. There is only one Thomas Beale that meets all these clues and that is the grandson of Tavenor Beale Jr. from Iron Gate, Fincastle County, Virginia. There are enough records on Thomas Jr as to piece together a timeline of his life which shows Thomas Jr joined his father Thomas Sr. in New Orleans about 1819 when according to the 1885 pamphlet placed him out west digging treasure.
Reason 4: Thomas Beale Recovered the Treasure
The pamphlet makes it appear that Thomas and his party never made it back to recovered the treasure in Bedford County because the locked iron box never was reclaimed by Thomas Beale. However, there is another explanation for not reclaiming the box.
- The Beale party completed their mining operation and loaded their treasure onto pack mules and started back to Virginia. They travel together while they passed through Indian territory but when they would be more conspicuous they split up in 2s or 3s as necessary to avoid detection.
- When they reached St. Louis, Thomas Beale met his colleague who was given the “Key” to the ciphers and took the letter back and why Robert Morriss never received the “Key”.
- They then used the Wiggins ferry, a members at a time, to cross the Mississippi.
- They continued on to Bedford County where they dug up the previous two stashes.
- Thomas Beale never went back to Lynchburg leaving the worthless locked box with Robert Morris.
Reason 5: Impossible to Solve
Although Cipher 2 was solved using a sequentially number Declaration of Independence to encrypt the treasure description, there is no guarantee that this same method was used to encrypt the treasure location; after all this was the most important information/Cipher.
Even if you had the correct document…
1. Was the document numbered backwards? Numbered every other word? third word? Randomly numbered?
2. Did he start number from the first paragraph? Second? Third?
3. Could have used multiple documents?
All of these possibilities and combinations make it impossible to solve using the implied method (i.e., numbered document) in the 1885 pamphlet.
Summary:
Personally, I found researching the Thomas Beale treasure very enjoyable. I am not sure that having been told these 5 reasons would have stopped my efforts since it looked like a challenging quest.
Thomas Beale then leaves in the spring of 1820 and returns in the fall of 1821. He stays again at Robert Morriss’s boarding house. When he leaves in the spring of 1822 he leaves a locked iron box with Morriss and told not to open it for 10 years. Morriss eventually opens the box in 1845 to find three ciphers leading to Thomas Beale’s hidden treasure. The treasure description is revealed using a sequentially numbered Declaration of Independent. All the reader needs to do is solve the Ciphers 1 , the treasure location, and they will be rich!
Reason 1: All the earmarks of a hoax
The story told in the 1885 pamphlet have all the earmarks of being a hoax:
- An adventure out west finds treasure instead.
- The locked box that holds the location of the treasure is never claimed implying the treasure is still out there.
- Cipher 2 conveniently reveals the description of the treasure and approximate location encouraging the reader to solve Cipher 1 and find the treasure.
- Thomas Beale wouldn’t have used such the simple encryption method of sequentially numbering the Declaration of Independence that easily reversed engineered to hide the location of treasure.
- “Beale” means “handsome man”. Robert Morriss describes Beale as the most handsome man he has seen.
Reason2: Ciphers are made up
When you apply any of the three ciphers to the wrong document you will reveal gibberish. Occasionally you may find a short word or short alphabetical string but this is by pure coincidence.
When you apply Cipher 1 to the sequentially numbered Declaration of Independence use to solve Cipher 2, you will find an alphabetical string “ABCDEFGHIIJKLMMNOHPP” at Cipher 1 location 188. This is high improbable, if not impossible, to happen naturally.
This string, also know as the “Gillowby string” appears to be intentionally added when the cipher numbers were fabricated out of thin air.
Reason 3: Thomas Beale can’t be in two places at once
Robert Morriss indicated Thomas Beale signed the register as being from Virginia, that he was wealthy, well-educated and thought he came from the west of Lynchburg, VA. There is only one Thomas Beale that meets all these clues and that is the grandson of Tavenor Beale Jr. from Iron Gate, Fincastle County, Virginia. There are enough records on Thomas Jr as to piece together a timeline of his life which shows Thomas Jr joined his father Thomas Sr. in New Orleans about 1819 when according to the 1885 pamphlet placed him out west digging treasure.
Reason 4: Thomas Beale Recovered the Treasure
The pamphlet makes it appear that Thomas and his party never made it back to recovered the treasure in Bedford County because the locked iron box never was reclaimed by Thomas Beale. However, there is another explanation for not reclaiming the box.
- The Beale party completed their mining operation and loaded their treasure onto pack mules and started back to Virginia. They travel together while they passed through Indian territory but when they would be more conspicuous they split up in 2s or 3s as necessary to avoid detection.
- When they reached St. Louis, Thomas Beale met his colleague who was given the “Key” to the ciphers and took the letter back and why Robert Morriss never received the “Key”.
- They then used the Wiggins ferry, a members at a time, to cross the Mississippi.
- They continued on to Bedford County where they dug up the previous two stashes.
- Thomas Beale never went back to Lynchburg leaving the worthless locked box with Robert Morris.
Reason 5: Impossible to Solve
Although Cipher 2 was solved using a sequentially number Declaration of Independence to encrypt the treasure description, there is no guarantee that this same method was used to encrypt the treasure location; after all this was the most important information/Cipher.
Even if you had the correct document…
1. Was the document numbered backwards? Numbered every other word? third word? Randomly numbered?
2. Did he start number from the first paragraph? Second? Third?
3. Could have used multiple documents?
All of these possibilities and combinations make it impossible to solve using the implied method (i.e., numbered document) in the 1885 pamphlet.
Summary:
Personally, I found researching the Thomas Beale treasure very enjoyable. I am not sure that having been told these 5 reasons would have stopped my efforts since it looked like a challenging quest.
