For those that love to figure out numbers, here is a
story of lost treasure that will keep you puzzled! It’s the story of a code that
has been handed down for years and if broken, could leave the clever mind with
enough money to last a lifetime! The story involves a man with his hunting
buddies and an innkeeper and has just enough mystery and tales of fortune to
have kept people intrigued for many years!
Thomas Jefferson Beale was a man who stood about
six feet tall and had dark eyes with hair to match. He was very handsome with an
even, dark complexion and was also an extremely honest and loyal man. In 1817
Beale and thirty of his hunting pals headed out to Santa Fe to hunt game. They
were planning on staying in Santa Fe for two years and called Beale “Captain”
because he acted as the group’s leader. Leaving on May 19, 1817, they arrived in
Santa Fe on December 1 of that same year.
There is very little game wandering the countryside
in the middle of winter and so the group had to wait until the following spring
before any real hunting could be done. Some of the men grew restless waiting for
the nicer weather and they set out on foot to explore the area some. They told
the others that they would return in two or three days. Four weeks later the men
still had not arrived back and Beale was preparing to send a group of men out to
look for the other group. The scouts that Beale had asked to go in search of the
missing men were just preparing to leave when two of the men from the missing
group returned. They were very excited and began to share their story.
The group had travelled 250 or 300 miles north of
Santa Fe as they were following a large herd of buffalo. They set up camp one
evening and began to gather wood for a fire when one of the men found a lump of
rock that was much different from ordinary rocks. He believed that he had found
gold and after careful inspection, the other men believed so as well. The group
went to investigate the area where the man had found the gold and found that
there was as much gold there as one could hope to take! The group sent two men
to get Beale and the rest stayed to start collecting gold.
Beale gathered up the rest of the group after
hearing the story and they set out to join the others at the gold site. When
they arrived, Beale hired Indians to help them collect the gold and the group
stayed for eighteen months working in the mine. Once they had collected a
significant amount of gold, they knew that their lives could be in danger if
robbers happened upon them while they had so much gold. They decided to travel
east with what they could, hide it, and come back later to collect more of it.
Beale took ten of the men and went to Virginia to hide the gold. The rest of the
men returned to their homes.
Before leaving, the men devised a map to the
treasure so that at any time, any of the original thirty men could return to the
mine to get more. But knowing that a regular map could lead to someone else
making off with their treasure, they had all conjured up a code, known only by
them, that would lead the way to the mine. Once Beale arrived in Virginia, he
found an innkeeper by the name of Mr. Robert Morriss, who was known to also be
an honest and trustworthy man. Beale decided to stay with Mr. Morriss for three
months in 1820, from January to March. Over that time period, Beale and Mr.
Morriss came to be very good friends.
When March arrived and it was time for Beale to
return to the mine with the others, he again hired Indians to help them uncover
the gold. They stayed for another eighteen months or so and in the fall of 1821,
the group decided to split up and join again the following spring so that they
could look for more. Beale headed back to Virginia, hid their findings, and
stayed again at Mr. Morriss’ inn. He stayed again over the winter and in March
of 1822 was about to set off for the gold mine once again. Before leaving this
time, he gave Mr. Morriss an iron lock box and asked Mr. Morriss if he would
keep it safe until he returned. Mr. Morriss agreed and took the box, without
knowing its contents, from Beale.
It was May 9, 1822 when Mr. Morriss was sent a
letter from Beale. In the letter, Beale explained that he was currently in St.
Lousi but that he was going to be travelling west so that he could hunt for
buffalo and grizzly bears. He made sure that Mr. Morriss knew how important the
iron lockbox and its contents were and made the innkeeper promise again that he
would guard the box carefully. Beale told Morriss that there were two letters
and three separate pages of numbers. The letters told of the hunters’ story and
how they happened upon the gold mine. The story went into such great detail as
to tell of where Beale had hidden the treasure he had and great details about
the mine. The letters also stated what the contents of the treasure were. The
letters also said that the numbers on the following pages were codes. The codes
told the location of the mines, the location of the buried treasure, and the
names of the thirty-one beneficiaries. Each beneficiary was one of the men in
Beale’s original group of hunters and Mr. Morriss, for his significant role in
keeping the treasure safe. He told Beale to keep the box for ten years without
opening it. If after ten years, Beale had not gotten into contact with Mr.
Morriss, he was to open the box and go find the treasure to distribute to the
beneficiaries.
That was the final contact Mr. Morriss had with
anyone in relation to the iron lockbox. Beale was never heard from again and
neither were the beneficiaries. Needless to say the man that was to bring the
code key never appeared. Ten years passed and Mr. Morriss did not attempt to
open the box. He was a very honest man and wanted to be sure that no one was
going to come to reclaim it. After twenty-three years had gone by, he opened the
box.
In 1862, Mr. Morriss knew that he was not going to
be alive for much longer. He needed to find a way to decipher the codes and
claim the treasure, as he had originally been asked to. He had tried for years
but had come up with very little. He asked James B. Ward of Virginia to come
look at the codes and try to decipher them. He told the man that if the codes
could be deciphered, he would split his share of the fortune with him. Morriss
never saw his share or any part of the treasure as he passed away the very next
year.
After Morriss’ death, Ward continued to work
feverishly trying to decipher the codes. The numbers went very high so he
determined that the numbers must be based on a document. Upon further studying,
he concluded that the code was based on the Declaration of Independence. He
deciphered the code by taking each number and counting that many words into the
document. He then took the word that the number led him to and used the first
letter of that word. This is as much as he could decipher:
“I have deposited in the County of Bedford about four miles from
Bufords in an excavation or vault six feet below the surface of the ground the
following articles belonging jointly to the parties whose names are given in
number three herewith. The first deposit consisted of ten hundred and fourteen
pounds of gold and thirty eight hundred and twelve pounds of silver deposited
November 1819. The second was made December 1821 and consisted of nineteen
hundred and seven pounds of gold and twelve hundred and eighty eight pounds of
silver also jewels obtained in St. Louis in exchange for silver to save
transportation and valued at thirteen thousand dollars. The above is securely
packed in iron pots with iron covers. The vault is roughly lined with stones and
the vessels rest on solid stone and are covered with others. Paper number one
describes the exact locality of the vault so that no difficulty will be had in
finding it.”
After running out of money in 1885, Ward had the code transferred into pamphlets
and freely handed them out to the public so others could try to decipher it and
perhaps share the wealth with him. However, most of those pamphlets were lost in
a fire.
