Legend of the Stone Maps

[i am the horse]

my known fact is the stones do pertain to a specific area.. sorry no documents on that.

 

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[azdave35]

my known fact is the stones do pertain to a specific area.. sorry no documents on that.

yes they do...its called heartache and misery...lol

 

[cactusjumper]

All,

I have it, from a very good source, that Travis did try to sell the stones to several locals. They were believed to be fakes.

Good luck,

Joe Ribaudo

 

[Not Peralta]

Something to consider, If Travis made the stone tablets, where did he get the info to put on them, and at the time who was he associated with. ? NP

 

[azdave35]

Something to consider, If Travis made the stone tablets, where did he get the info to put on them, and at the time who was he associated with. ? NP

there are dozens of phoney maps to the ldm....many people over the years have forged them starting with julia thomas...any imaginative artistic individual could have carved those stone maps with no problem

 

[cactusjumper]

Dave,

Now that I am pretty sure that Travis tried to sell the Stone Maps, it really makes no difference to me who made them. He did have friends in Apache Junction.

One other thing......For those who think I wasted years trying to solve the Stone Maps, I always knew they could be frauds. At the same time, I believed they were carved by someone who was very familiar with the terrain. I told every member of my team's, over the years, that they could be fakes.

I was always looking for Harry LaFrance's cave of gold bars.

Take care,

Joe

 

[Not Peralta]

there are dozens of phoney maps to the ldm....many people over the years have forged them starting with julia thomas...any imaginative artistic individual could have carved those stone maps with no problem

I was not talking about the LDM, and if Travis or anyone that made the stone tablets were did they get the info to put on them.? np

 

[Oroblanco]

Sarge

In the letter is written " ...dug up 5 old Spanish treasure maps made on slabs of stone "

View attachment 1156967

Five maps doesn't mean five slabs of stone . This is a fact . Or isn't ?

Actually that sentence DOES say they are stone slabs, with maps carved into the stone. So yes it means five slabs of stone, with maps on them. Could be confusing though if you look at it the wrong way.

Oroblanco

 

[Cubfan64]

Oroblanco;4510661]Actually that sentence DOES say they are stone slabs, with maps carved into the stone. So yes it means five slabs of stone, with maps on them. Could be confusing though if you look at it the wrong way.

Roy - it's all a matter of semantics and interpretation. If you look at it objectively, it could read that either 5 physical stones were dug up with maps on them, or that slabs of stone were dug up that contained 5 maps. As with most everything else related to the Stone Maps, there's too many ways to look at things.

 

[Oroblanco]

Roy - it's all a matter of semantics and interpretation. If you look at it objectively, it could read that either 5 physical stones were dug up with maps on them, or that slabs of stone were dug up that contained 5 maps. As with most everything else related to the Stone Maps, there's too many ways to look at things.

I must respectfully disagree Paul, the sentence in the letter reads

dug up 5 old Spanish treasure maps made on slabs of stone

<enlarged to emphasize the way the sentence is composed, not to be funny - maps MADE ON STONE not slabs and maps separately.>

 

[Treasure_Hunter]

As far as documents go, I believe this would be a good place to start:

The Peralta Stone Maps

This is not a site that is in competition with TNet, so I hope I'm safe posting it.

Good luck,

Joe Ribaudo

As long as website is not open for discussions your safe..[emoji106]

 

[coazon de oro]

Frank, my reference to the script style vs R. Tomlinson's age was to point out an anomaly. Its a fine point of discussion and proves or disproves nothing. Its only an interesting tid bit to file away.

The fact that there are multiple notes and letters all in the same handwriting proves they share a common maker, not necessarily that they were penned by the person whose signature they carry. I said from the beginning that I could "get over it" easily, and I can. Its just an interesting anomaly.

I draw your attention, particularly, to the formation of the letter "r". Through out the body of the letter, in all 31 instances of its use, the Zaner Bloser version of the lower case letter "r" is used. That's a style most students were taught during the late 1940's through the late 1970's. Too late for Mr. Tomlinson's elementary education. My estimate of R. Tomlinson's birth date would have been placed him in an earlier area of time where the earlier classic Palmer style of lower case "r" was taught. Under normal circumstances it would be his "go to" style and would have been, at least, intermixed into the body of the letter where his hand would have formulated the contents quickly. With little thought as to the pen strokes.

If you will further notice the earlier classic Palmer style "r" is used in the address word "Portland". High point of speculation here, but I would suggest that was from looking back at another source document for the actual address and unconsciously adopting its style.........just a guess and not even a strong speculation.

Carry on please, its a very interesting topic concerning the Stone Maps.

Lynda

Howdy Lynda,

You seem to know something about handwriting, so I am going to refer you to the "Peralta Tesora Mappa" on post #25. You will notice that the T seems to resemble the one of Robert Tumlinson's signature on his letter to Garman. You will also notice that the p's on "Mappa" also resemble those of Mr. Tumlinson in the same letter.

It has long been the opinion of many that Albert Erland Morrow was the creator of the "Peralta Tesora Mappa" since it was said to be found in his possession when he was found crushed by a boulder in a tunnel he was digging back in 1970. It was believed he had copied the PSM's after viewing them somewhere, either the Life Magazine or the picture of the three stones on the car bumper. None of those ideas seemed to have been possible.

What does seem possible is that he somehow acquired that map from either Garman, Bob Ward, or Robert Tumlinson himself. After all, the well known history according to Clarence O. Mitchell, who bought the stone maps from Travis Tumlinson's wife, states that Travis loaned the stone maps to his uncle Robert for two years before he took them back in 1959. This gave time for Robert to copy that map in a way to search for the treasure with his landlord Gene Davis who financed the trips, where he met Garman. Clarence was told that Robert never forgave Travis for taking the stones back, so this gave him reason to write to Garman, to try and make some money out of his information, and reason to lie.

In the letter to Garman he offers to show photos only, because that is all he had. That letter, and paper map just gives more strength to Travis, as being the finder. Sorry that I can not post the link without breaking the rules.

Homar

 

[Cubfan64]

I must respectfully disagree Paul, the sentence in the letter reads




<enlarged to emphasize the way the sentence is composed, not to be funny - maps MADE ON STONE not slabs and maps separately.>

Can't disagree on what the letter states, just saying it can be read 2 different ways - just because you would write it one way to mean one thing and another to mean another doesn't mean everyone else would do it the same way. Just offering a different way to look at it.

I'm just in the process of posting a relevant portion of a Bob Garman interview that relates to this whole issue.

 

[Cubfan64]

Frank - I'm having a problem with the computer program I use to re-record the cassettes and then do the sound and other audio conversions to make the recording easier to hear and transcribe, but I re-listened to the portion of the interview about the Tumlinsons and it's not too long actually. I'm just gonna do my best to transcribe that portion of the tape from my normal player. It'll take awhile to get it all done so I'll do it in segments until it's finished - hope that's ok, and I may mess up a few words along the way that I just can't hear well...

As a "forward" to this, let me just say that after listening to the whole tape I can tell that Bob Garman appears to have a fairly good memory but he does admit a couple times when he can't remember something. Greg tries to get him to just tell some stories from memory and succeeds most of the time, but other times Bob reverts to reading directly from a book or manuscript of his which I believe became "Mystery Gold of the Superstitions." This is just my opinion, but I get the feeling too that sometimes when he tells stories from memory, they almost have the feel of being "rehearsed" as though he's told the same thing many times or even sort of recited it in his head and is almost reciting it again for the tape. The reason I say that is when Greg breaks in with questions now and then, Bob sort of sounds like it takes him some time to get back on track - it just lacks that normal "flow" of conversation if you know what I mean. Bob does stumble a bit in his stories and confuses things, but I believe he was in his 80's at this time so it is what it is.

Lastly - I'm not a Stone Map person, so I'm not going to try to do any sort of interpretation of what Bob Garman says here. I also obviously am not posting this here because I'm vouching for the authenticity of anything Bob says, but rather just to pass it along and let other people discuss and come to conclusions. The tape is not particularly easy to transcribe - he mumbles quite a bit at points. I sort of switched in my transcribing also in that I really prefer doing completely literal transcriptions, but sometimes people just use too many "uh's," "ums," slang, broken sentence structure, etc... that it gets tremendously tedious to do that so sometimes I switched to just transcribing the main point, but other times I added the "color" of his actual speaking.

If there's anything you want me to clarify, or go back and recheck, please just ask. I especially tried hard to get precise wording when he was talking about actually finding the maps (who was there) and which maps were found when. I listened a number of times, and honestly I'm not completely sure whether Travis was alone when he found the first map, or Robert was with him. "He" and "we" sound way too similar from Bob to be 100% sure I got it right, but I did hear a "they" in there at least once so you'll have to just decide for yourselves. After I get my program running and clean up the audio it might help, but until then this is what I've got to work with. It was clear to me though that both were together when the rest of the maps were found.

Anyways - enough jabber. Go ahead read and enjoy.

May, 1981 Interview - Greg Davis interviewing Bob Garman...

Greg: Tell me about Tumlinson

Bob: Tumlinson? Well, the first time I met Tumlinson must have been in 1955, somewhere around in there, about 1955. I may have a different date somewhere else as I remember, but it was close to bein’ in 55. I’m satisfied of that because there was a friend of mine went with me out there in the mountains and he was with me when Tumlinson came along.

And so, we was going down Randolph Canyon at the time and when we got pretty well down Randolph Canyon we run onto a fella, he was… he was watching us come, and the other two fellas that was with him was big husky lumberjacks, and we stopped and chatted with ‘em for a little bit, and then he told me, he says that we found some Spanish maps here a short time ago, less than a year ago. And he says, I’m gonna tell you about ‘em a little, but he says I won’t tell you very much, but he said we did run into some old Spanish maps. And I told him where I lived, and I says if you’ll come into my home, I says maybe I can give you some information on some of those maps, I says if they’re old maps, I says they might be Spanish maps and then again maybe they won’t be Spanish maps. But he says, no he says I’ll come in to see you but I won’t give you any information on the maps, he says, they belong to his nephew here and he says his nephew wants to keep all of it a secret, every bit of it. And so I told him ok, but you’ll be in to see me yes and so he came in to see me and he told me the story of how the maps was found.

Greg: How was that?

Bob: How were they found? He told me, he said his nephew here was driving home from… to Texas from Los Angeles. He said after the war was over why his nephew didn’t have to stay over there and work anymore. And he said that…

Greg: What was his nephew’s name?

Bob: His nephew’s name was Travis Tumlinson, and so he said Travis will be going home to Texas, and he says while he was on his way to Texas, he says Travis got interested in wanting to see Weaver’s Needle. And he says, so we took this old highway after we got to uh… before we got to Queen Creek, and he says we took the old highway and he says Travis got out and looked around a little bit and was stretchin’ his legs when he stepped on one of these maps. And he said, we didn’t know that there was any more than one, he says there was just the one. And he said we’d seen that there was sketching on ‘em and that’s what us believe they were maps. So he says we took them over… or says he took ‘em over…

Tape ended at this point – Greg changed the tape over and it appears he asked Bob to go back a little bit in the story and recount that last part….

Bob: Travis Tumlinson, he was on his way to Texas to see his folks. And he drove off of the main highway just west of uh… Florence Junction a little ways. And he says they drove back on the highway, they stopped the car, got out and looked around and Travis wanted to stretch his legs a little bit and then he took a notion he wanted to see Weaver’s Needle, and so they kept looking this way and that way they couldn’t see Weaver’s Needle so they went on a little farther with the car and then they got out and looked again for a place where they could see Weaver’s Needle. They didn’t see any, but they did run along… stumbled onto the stone maps while they was looking for Weaver’s Needle, so it’s quite likely they got off on the left side of the road down there and looked around there and then went on into Florence Junction and they washed the maps… they cleaned the dirt off of ‘em and then they seen that they really were maps.

R.G. Tumlinson told me that Travis was rather skeptical about the maps, but he got pretty well hepped up on ‘em and decided that they were maybe rich Spanish maps or where they might show the way to Spanish mines or buried treasure, and so they put ‘em in the car and Travis headed for Texas. And when he got over to his dads place, his dad couldn’t give him any information on ‘em.

Greg: What was his father’s name?

Bob: R.G. Tumlinson. And so… no, R.G. Tumlinson was his uncle. He couldn’t get any information out of his uncle… or his father, after he got to Texas him and his father took ‘em to some University over there in Texas and the only thing that they could tell him was that they was at least a hundred years or more older and that they were of Spanish make. So, after they came back here then they got to lookin’ around out there again they thought maybe they might find more maps to where they might learn more of it. But they never had no luck right away, so a year or so later, R.G. Tumlinson began getting more and more interested and he decided he’d go back there and look and so Travis went with him, they went back and looked and the first thing that they found after they came back here to Arizona, why was the number 2 and the number 3 map. And so they decided that there might still be more there yet, and they took a good look at the first map that they found and they read on that map in one place it read look for the mapa, look for the heart. And, he said we decided, Travis and I decided, he says that we was going to look more because it says look for the heart and look for the map, so he says there must be a better, bigger map here and there must be a heart shaped something here. And he said when we looked good, he says we ran onto two other maps that was just stickin’ out of the ground just a little bit. And he says we dug ‘em out and we found out when we got them dug out that there was still another map underneath them. And he says, when we got to that one, he says it was a small map that was broke, the heart shaped one and he says, that satisfied them then, he says we knew that we had the heart and he says we knew that we had the other map that the stone map, one of ‘em told about, that is the first map. And he says we knew we had that one because it says look for the mapa, and he says after we got the stone out and washed and cleaned, he says, it did have a map on it and he says, the map, the one with the map on, the heart shaped map, he says that one he says, it had to be the one that was mentioned on the first map, so we figured that we had that one. Even so, why we looked more but he said it was no use. But he says, from year to year why we’ve been looking.

And they was lookin’ on my mine claims out there for about, off and on for 10 years and they’d go and look them over and then they’d leave there and go some other spot and leave there and go some other spot and then come back to my mine claims and away they’d go again. And one day I seen a girl comin’ up the road and so when she got to me I asked her, I said where to? And she said, oh just walking. And I said, well this is a dangerous place, I says don’t you realize it’s not a good place for a girl to be out here alone? And she says, I’m not alone, she says my husband’s just down the road a little ways and she says, we’ve been coming out here every year for years and I think that was the last year they came, they came no more then. But they kept a lookin’. They’d look in other places.

There's a short bit more, but I'm too tired so I'll finish it tomorrow night.

 

[wrmickel1]

Sarge

In the letter is written " ...dug up 5 old Spanish treasure maps made on slabs of stone "

View attachment 1156967

Five maps doesn't mean five slabs of stone . This is a fact . Or isn't ?

The five maps are the trail map (witch is 2) the horse the priest and the remove able heart

Wrmickel1

 

[Loke]

...
I was always looking for Harry LaFrance's cave of gold bars.

Take care,

Joe

Did you find it? ;-)

 

[Oroblanco]

Did you find it? ;-)

Ditto - enquiring minds want to know

 

[sgtfda]

Thanks Paul. That's very interesting

 

[Old]

Homar,

First let me explain I am no handwriting expert. I'm a jack of many trades but a master of very few. I do legal research, mainly land records, but also civil case work. In doing so I often read and decipher colonial era documents up through current day scanned documents. As a part of that I review the document for possible signs of forgery. I take more care in civil actions than land records where notary acknowledgments are required. Although; its a part of the review for both.

Its not unheard of for such items of evidence to be fabricated. That's why handwriting styles catch my eye. Its one of the things I'm used to looking for. But I'm no expert, not by a long shot. Its my job to report anomalies, its the judge's job to sort it out.

All that said..........I did take a look at the handwriting, limited as it is, on the Peralta Tesora Mappa and compared it the Tumlinson sample shown here. It IS interesting.

It appears to me the pen used for the map is a larger point than the one used in the letter. Its going to be heavier and not flow as well as the one used in the letter. The "p" in mappa is suspect but not really conclusive. The "T" in Tesora is more interesting in that the stoke style is the same as used with "Tumlinson" without as much flare. What I do find identical is the "m" in mappa with the "m" in "my camp" and "made on slabs".

But, that and a buck 50 will get you a cup of coffee. Unless you go to Starbucks which will be a buck 2.50 plus tax.

Lynda

 

[Cubfan64]

Thanks Paul. That's very interesting

Frank, if I'm interpreting Bob's story of the finding of the stones, it sounds like the Horse/Priest stone was the only one found first. It was taken to Texas and later Robert and Travis both went back and using the "search for the map, search for the heart" from that first stone, they uncovered the 2 trail stones (maps 2 and 3) and underneath they found the broken heart stone.

If that's all true, it's interesting because it means the photo we've seen of the trail stones and heart on the automobile bumper were from the 2nd trip, not the first. It also means the heart stone was broken when they found it, so they are probably the ones who "repaired it" with whatever glue they used.

Of course all that assumes Bob's story is correct and I have no clue about that.

The last bit that I'll try to transcribe tonight talks a little bit about communication between Robert and Bob over the years. He mentions that he has a number of original letters (of which Greg probably got at least a few). Bob for some reason implies that it's his desire to divide those letters amongst a number of people and places (libraries, etc...) eventually - he seems to have a "thing" against giving everything to one person and would rather divide everything up.

I won't get around to transcribing the rest of the tape for awhile, but there's a few things I found of interest.

1) Bob tells a story about an uncle of his who supposedly met and/or knew Jacob Waltz at one point in his life. I've never heard that story, so have no idea if there's any factual information there or if it's just one of what Joe would call "hell, I was there" stories.

2) I got the strong feeling that Bob never did any searching for the Lost Dutchman or very minimal at least. He came to the conclusion early on that it would be a better use of time and more potentially valuable to use his self taught geology skills to search out new mines and prospects rather than spend time looking for something that was lost and may be too hard to find.

3) He does spend a little time talking about his prospecting and mine claims and stuff in the Millsite Canyon area primarily, so I would guess that stuff might be of interest to you Frank, although I don't think he really gives much specific information that can be followed up on - then again, I don't know that area, so you may pick up on something I couldn't.

Glad you found it interesting. I always find myself listening to those old interviews and cringing when I hear them say something that I wish I could ask important followup questions, but they move on to something else. I bet Greg feels the same way now that he has so much more experience doing taped interviews.