why nobody had seen this

[Rebel - KGC]

There are several very strong indicators that render the story to be highly questionable, at best. And we also know for certain now that some of the details in the narration were highly inaccurate for the times, etc. And you are correct when you single out the author's description of Beale and his character, almost as if detailing an alter-ego.

AND! It was Written as if so, by a WOMAN!

 

[Rebel - KGC]

Anne Royall.

 

[Rebel - KGC]

BUT! She died in 1854.

 

[Rebel - KGC]

Wanna see the BEALE PAMPHLET PAPER...? "Google" BEALE PAMPHLET PAPER. HAPPY reading...

 

[ECS]

We've all been "beat down" at some point by people who have more experience/history/knowledge then we do, some of us just don't view it as a "beat-down" or continue to change user identities thinking we are fooling everyone...

...and the beat goes on...

 

[Ottokadd]

Hi Everyone.....I haven't been on the site in years and have just came back tonight. I was doing some research that shot me right back....I actually forgot I even had a login for here and glad I could remember my login info.

Anyways, I first came across this interesting subject a few days ago and kind of got sucked in "hook, line and sinker"....but the doubting Thomas in me kept thinking this can't be a true story. I am surprised to hear on other sites just how many people are absolutely serious that this exists and some have spent decades trying to figure this all out. It's kind of sad but I'm glad I'm not the only one who has quickly come to the realization that none of this is true.

James, I have read all your posts here and commend you on the very well written subject matter, logic and clarity of your thoughts on this subject. You seem to be a very logical thinking person (guess that explains the computer programming) and have a couple of thoughts I wanted to run by you and everyone else who may care to comment.

After reading the Beale Papers, the very first question that popped into my mind is how in the world would the Author of this document know to use the Declaration of Independence as the Key? There must have been millions of other thoughts that would cross one's mind before the DOI jumped up at you don't you think.....that was my first thought. Then as I started to look at the decryption process a second anomaly slammed out at me and that is if Beale (an apparent cipher expert with the military) wrote this cipher extremely carefully as I know he would given his background and training, then why would you make an obvious error in the very beginning of your cipher. Second word "have", third letter "v" is not correct. If you look at the code, the fourth character is 807 which is supposed to correlate to the first character of the 807th word of the DOI which is "into(807)" when it really should have been the first character of word 818 which is "valuable(818)" and the first instance of the letter 'v' at the beginning of a word. There are numerous other blunders in the decrypting of this message using the DOI which is immediately made me think this is all a ruse because a trained expert cipher like TJ Beale would not make errors of this nature because of the preciseness required in encoded messages.

Or am I missing something basic and rudimentary here....can anyone confirm the errors I have seen or have a logical explanation for them? I would love to hear your responses.....

Cheers

OttoKadd

 

[Ottokadd]

Another thought....does anyone know for a fact that TJ Beale was even a real person and if so, does his history suggest any alignment with the story? I know there is a ton of Thomas Beale's from that era but is there any way to confirm any f this information. Are there other documents, letters or diaries to back any of this stuff up? I'm still a little hopeful that a shred of this may be true as I love a good adventure.....helps me go to sleep at night...

 

[ECS]

There is NO CREDIBLE evidence that Thomas J Beale existed outside of the pages of the Beale Papers story narrative.
As for trained cipher expert, James Beverly Ward's Hutter cousins were very familiar with Confederate codes and ciphers, Edward S Hutter saved CSA Sec of State Judah P Benjamin's Vattels LAW OF NATIONS, which was used a a master CSA code book.
If you research the Ward/Risque extended family and that of Ward's wife, Harriet E Otey, you can find similar locations and events that are mirrored in the Beale Papers job print pamphlet-from James Beverly Risque duel with Thomas Beale over Risque's niece, Julia Handcock who married Clark of Lewis & Clark to the Kennerly cousins Mercantile/ Outfitters Store in St Louis, to John Pickrell Risque being murdered by Native Americans while inspecting gold and silver mines in Arizona a year before Ward applied for copyright with only the title on a borrowed letterhead.

 

[bigscoop]

Another thought....does anyone know for a fact that TJ Beale was even a real person and if so, does his history suggest any alignment with the story? I know there is a ton of Thomas Beale's from that era but is there any way to confirm any f this information. Are there other documents, letters or diaries to back any of this stuff up? I'm still a little hopeful that a shred of this may be true as I love a good adventure.....helps me go to sleep at night...

As for the Thomas Beales & Thomas J. Beales of the period, there are several but only one known person of the correct age and who also fits the general description, this being the Thomas Beale in Richmond who lived in, and was a representative of, the Jackson Ward district in that same city, just 90 miles down the road from Bedford/Liberty. This Beale later moved to Texas to live with family shortly after the narration was published. Hard to imagine that he wasn't aware of his name and general description being used in a fantastical tale of treasure given that he was just 90 miles down the road and he was fairly well known, and a lot of traffic passing back and forth between both destinations. This is the only such TB of the period that we know of who was of the right age and who fit the general description.

As for any documented connections to the narration there are none, zip, nothing. And yes, the entire cipher portion of the narration is riddled with blunders, and as you noted not even the author's own key actually produces a fluid clear text for the C2 cipher as is represented. And there are also several historically incorrect details regarding the time period, etc., etc.

What there is "a lot" of is an abundance of wild speculation and conjecture as is all-too common with any tale of lost/hidden treasure.

 

[jamesrav]

we benefit from being 40 years removed from the 'heyday' of this phenomena (my guess anyway ; very few had access to a computer at all in the 60's or 70's) and can now see "the warts and all" due to everyone's contribution over the years. As far as the encoding errors, I think there's a good explanation in Ward himself. Although the 'right brain-left brain' concept is apparently false, some people are English Majors and some are Mathematicians. People do seem to have certain talents, literary vs. logic. Ward's writing is quite good, I admit to having to look up some of the words he used. But I have a hunch that the detail-oriented 'brain' needed to slowly, deliberately, create a cipher was not his strength. He clearly did not go back and check his work twice (as we are all taught to do on Math problems). So I think it was just sloppiness. Getting C2 'close' was clearly good enough, and the errors have been noted and are a 'curiosity'. I think the recently de-coded Zodiak cipher also was shown to have errors, so that psycho was not quite the genius he thought he was.

As far as people spending years, decades on this - I must admit I spent several years and thousands of dollars on another armchair quest ("Treasure: In Search of the Golden Horse") long ago. The mania takes over and there's no escape. Mel Fisher had his famous saying "today's the day" to keep him going over the 15 years he searched (and of course he had every reason to confidently know that the Atocha was real and nearby somewhere - not the same with Beale). I'm fond of a saying an author used regarding Elizabeth Holmes and the Theranos fraud: she was a "prisoner of belief". A much more compelling expression than "being in denial". Ward might have used such a term regarding himself if he actually had spent years on the Beale ciphers as claimed.

 

[Str8 Shooter]

Otto, you need to get the originals which the NSA had. Beale had all the right numbers. At best, would be off by only 1 when future editions of DOI added an "a" in a sentence.

The other 10 spaces were from the mis-numbering of "the friend's" copy of the DOI which used 480-489 twice.

A lot of info on the internet uses "the friend's" mis-numbered corrections to represent Beale's actual numbers.

Thus you have people concluding that Beale did not do this and may not have even existed.

 

[ECS]

There is NO EVIDENCE that Thomas J Beale actually existed outside of the Beale pamphlet pages or that the perilous adventure treasure narrative in the pamphlet ever occurred.

 

[Rebel - KGC]

There is NO EVIDENCE that Thomas J Beale actually existed outside of the Beale pamphlet pages or that the perilous adventure treasure narrative in the pamphlet ever occurred.

AGREE!

 

[bigscoop]

Otto, you need to get the originals which the NSA had. Beale had all the right numbers. At best, would be off by only 1 when future editions of DOI added an "a" in a sentence.

The other 10 spaces were from the mis-numbering of "the friend's" copy of the DOI which used 480-489 twice.

A lot of info on the internet uses "the friend's" mis-numbered corrections to represent Beale's actual numbers.

Thus you have people concluding that Beale did not do this and may not have even existed.

So you're saying that the NSA has "the original Beale ciphers?".....lol The Beale Pamphlet copies "are the originals"....all else came afterwards, but there have been several attempts to "manufacture" the alleged originals that proceeded the pamphlet copies....lol

The NSA has nothing more then what we do.

 

[bigscoop]

There is NO EVIDENCE that Thomas J Beale actually existed outside of the Beale pamphlet pages or that the perilous adventure treasure narrative in the pamphlet ever occurred.

And that's a fact.....

 

[jamesrav]

Str8 Shooter, where is mention of "the friend" in the pamphlet? this has me thoroughly confused. I originally also thought there was an intermediary friend, since the pamphlet constantly refers to the "the writer" - but the writer is Ward himself. "Until the writer lost all hope of ultimate success, ... ". This is Ward referring to himself, not some other person. Unless there's a crucial sentence in the pamphlet that plainly says 'the following narration refers to another person' , everything referred to concerns Ward. There are two early mentions of a friend ("and to one old and valued friend", "and the persistent advice of his friend"), so unless one is jumping to the conclusion that Ward is 'covering' for the friend , who is actually the person that deciphered # 2, etc. I see no reason to conclude that everything mentioned is not Ward's own efforts.
_______________

I forgot to mention perhaps the biggest red flag of all, the 23 year time lag.

"The box was left in my hands in the Spring of 1822, and by authority of his letter, I should have examined its contents in 1832, ten years thereafter, having heard nothing from Beale in the meantime; but it was not until 1845, some twenty-three years after it came into my possession, that I decided upon opening it."

WHAT Morriss waited 23 years, even though instructed to wait 'just' 10? Morriss practically idolized Beale, yet ignored his request to act after 10 years? This is not believable. Who would even wait 10 years? Who would wait a year? If I could find an equivalent lock, I would have opened the box immediately (just kidding), examined the contents, and put on the replacement lock. No harm done.

Ward had to introduce this huge time delay, since he had a time problem. He needed to create a history for the tale, since it couldn't be a recent event that might be researched. So he needs to go back in time a bit, introduce a new person (Morriss) to provide the history. So far so good. But if Morriss opens the box after 10 years (and really now, why not 2 or 3 or a max of 5?) then things are happening 'too quickly'. Ward needed to add in the 23 years to give some distance, and then of course his own time working on the ciphers. That provided a sufficient time span from the (supposed) very beginning of this. But it unfortunately introduces the preposterous idea that Morriss was apparently too busy or too lazy for 23 years to open the box.

 

[ECS]

In the Beale narrative text, Morriss gives the letters, ciphers and iron box to an unnamed person who becomes the author of THE BEALE PAPERS.
This "unknown author" after 20 years of attempting to "solve" the ciphers, with only the provided DOI solved cipher 2, chooses James Beverly Ward to be his agent for copyright and publishing, remaining the "unknown author".
I am amazed that you missed this, jamesrav, my friend.

 

[Str8 Shooter]

In the Beale narrative text, Morriss gives the letters, ciphers and iron box to an unnamed person who becomes the author of THE BEALE PAPERS.
This "unknown author" after 20 years of attempting to "solve" the ciphers, with only the provided DOI solved cipher 2, chooses James Beverly Ward to be his agent for copyright and publishing, remaining the "unknown author".
I am amazed that you missed this, jamesrav, my friend.

He did not miss it. In fact he even points out that he read it. Then he goes about twisting it to be Ward writing about himself based on no proof whatsoever.

ECS,

I totally agree that no one has presented any evidence that Beale existed outside the pamphlet.

As for the perilous adventure the only narrative that correlates is the plains indians saying that gold was moved from the west to the eastern mountains.
Because there are no stories from any other sources citing that someone other than Beale did this, is it a stretch to associate it with Beale.

This is just like Atlantis, did it exist outside of Plato's writings.

 

[ECS]

Ward, who I believe wrote this with impute from his wife Harriet E Otey, cousins F C Hutter and John William Sherman who also acted as editor and printer, copyrighted and published as "agent" to avoid lawsuits from those who squandered their time and neglected their business to search for a fictional Beale treasure in Bedford county, Virginia.

 

[jamesrav]

okay, so I finally see he stuck in the paragraph at the very end: "The gentleman whom I have selected as my agent, to publish and circulate these papers, was well-known to Mr. Morriss ...". Fair enough, my error, and semi-clever way to try to remove oneself (Ward) from the proceedings. What's interesting is that nobody studying the ciphers seems to believe or even acknowledge that, for example the guy who gave a talk at the Beale symposium (my earlier link), refers to Ward throughout (deciphering #2) and makes no mention of the 'true' writer. And the gal who did the linguistic study of Beale vs. Pamphlet Writer (and concludes they are the same person, with some pretty strong examples) refers to Ward as the writer, not some intermediary. So if Ward was trying to disassociate himself from the situation (for obvious legal reasons) by being merely "an agent", he certainly didn't convince anyone.
________

and one more thing: amazing coincidence that the 'real writer' appears to easily convince Ward to be an 'agent' in printing and distributing this pamphlet. That Ward wasn't a doctor, or owned a business, and could readily take on the task of handling all the details (and barrage of questions that the 'writer' freely admits he wants to avoid - how nice to burden Ward with that). And of course Ward now is voluntarily involved, perhaps in an adverse legal sense, should things go bad. Sign me up for that job!

I'm now so glad I spent mere hours writing some programs and hand typing some documents to test. I guess as a naive kid with thoughts of treasure, the machinations of people trying to make a quick buck never crossed my mind. Now much older but wiser.