Who indeed! Probably the same person who wanted them to dig there...Man can be lead down bad or False paths. It is the simple man who believe every word, it is the intelligent who give thoughts to his steps...
Also.mention of David Barnes Lynds 1840
"1790-1820 ... Vaughn ... a philanderer and a man of ill repute..."
Hey you're the guy that bashed A Vaughn's reputation in my post #110 above. Pleased to meet you.
Everything alleged to be prior to 1840 is to be considered suspect and likely embellished or invented unless it can be substantiated. That's just a bare minimum requirement. The origin story still given as fact is a complete invention, though. We know that much. 1795 is 32 years after the Planter migration of 1763 to the granted there which includes lots on OI. The alleged discovery of the stone is 40 years after (1803). 40 is a recognizable and repeating numeric detail of this story. The quest there is about finding a shaft that has been described with recognizable symbolic details, not finding a treasure. The reason the shaft was described in the fashion it was has to to do with a desire for it to be recognizable and belonging to a specific pre-Bible era Hebrew narrative that is part of the Freemasonic folklore. As I mentioned to you, some of the OI story details actually fish from another local account and were later attributed to OI. There are enough searcher shafts and activity there to support a boatload of modern speculations. Interesting parallels exist with the numerical details given about this mystery and the Chaldean and Pythagorean numerology that is seen in the early speculative Freemasonry. This suggests that the mystery is modeled on something that has an identifiable origin in fiction. We'd have to think that Freemasons from Truro went there and discovered a Freemasonically inspired story quite by coincidence. It is much more likely they crafted one, or retold one, from bits and pieces they could salvage. Nolan's Cross seems to be quite relatable to the survey of 1762. It's orientation in relation to the main road that divides the island stands out. It is of note that the island was planned and surveyed by someone closely associated with the first Nova Scotia lodge which was part of the 40th regiment of foot. There has always been a possibility that some sort of symbolic layout was executed ca. 1762 at the time of Morris' surveying. It makes little sense that anything significant would be buried there, though, as the land was immediately granted to settlers. For Nolan's cross to have been much earlier and to then "fit" onto the plan of 1762 is a bad suggestion, imo. One can also easily show that the proportions of the "cross" using the kingdom stone excavated by Amundsen is exactly 5 by 8 (720x1152 feet) or 40 again. This once again lines up with a Masonic suggestion (4T is the emblem of Holy Royal Arch Masonry). This is not only modern speculations. The local NS author Thomas Chandler Haliburton wrote an account lampooning the OI story in 1847 as a Masonic non-story. I always recommend people go read that early take on it.
