(by Dan Mento, Ancient Origins, 4 April, 2018)
The Beale Ciphers have challenged treasure hunters for almost 200 years. Is the Declaration of Independence the key to finding the gold, silver, and precious stones that Beale buried near Bedford, Virginia? Can the puzzle of the ciphers be solved? A woodshop teacher has found a solution but not the treasure.
Beale’s Treasure a Freemason’s Tale by Dan Mento identifies lifelong Freemason Dr. Robert Morris, the second Freemason Poet Laureate and father of the Order of the Eastern Star, as the architect of the Beale Papers. Dr. Robert Morris and the Committee on Foreign Correspondence wrote the Beale Papers.
The Beale Papers are a legendary – near mythological – account of a man named Beale who traveled to Colorado from Virginia to hunt buffalo in 1816 with thirty other men. It is reported that after one of the members of the hunting party discovered surface gold, the hunting adventure turned into a mining expedition.
According to the account, Beale and his men mined for over two years and amassed thousands of pounds of gold and silver ore. Beale and a few of his men journeyed back to Virginia twice, burying thousands of pounds of gold ore, silver ore, and an assortment of jewels just four miles (6.44 km) from the town of Bufordville in Bedford County, Virginia.
Beale left behind three encrypted pages with an innkeeper named Robert Morriss. The Beale Ciphers told of an associate of Beale’s who would return to Bufordville with a key to decrypt the encrypted pages and claim the treasure. The associate never arrived. The three encrypted pages are described as containing the location of the treasure, the names of the relatives of the miners, and the contents of the buried treasure. In 1885 the three ciphers were…
read more at the Ancient Origins website
