Book Description

This volume follows a historical account of two brothers, George Hart (1874-1968) and Clayton Hart (1876-1949), who attempted to decipher the infamous cipher texts known as the Beale Papers. The ciphers, alleged to provide the secrets of a treasure buried somewhere in the county of Bedford, Virginia, were authored by a mysterious figure named Thomas Jefferson Beale who led a hunting party of thirty men to New Mexico. But when they happened upon a gold mine amassing a fortune, they traded some of the gold to obtain silver and jewels, transported their loot back to Virginia in two shipments, and buried it for safe keeping in November 1819 and December 1821. The three cipher texts are alleged to detail the contents of the treasure, the instructions to locate the treasure, and a list of heirs to which portions of the treasure should be distributed. Only one of the three cipher texts were ever solved by using the Declaration of Independence as a key, detailing the contents of the treasure. Despite the publicity the papers received since their publication, none have come forward with the solution. Included in this volume is the text from an 1885 pamphlet attributed to J.B. Ward, detailing The Beale papers, and the narrative of George L. Hart, providing additional history and research that he and his brother discovered in search of the treasure between 1898 and 1922. The typeset manuscript was printed and submitted to the Roanoke Library in 1964 and is now published for the first time.