To deny the existence of the Beale Treasure is very hard to do especially when it challenges your intellect. Most people pursue the cypher codes because they believe they are intelligent enough to accomplish this feat.
They find that there actually was a Washington Hotel in Lynchburg, Va., that Robert Morriss was the proprietor even though years after Thomas J. Beale was to have been there. Other than these two facts and the fact of Robert Morriss' wife being Sarah Mitchell and the fact that James Beverly Ward did live near Lynchburg and there was a Job Printing Company. Other than these few facts none of the stories in Thomas J. Beale's letters can be verified.
The original letters have never been found and the author did not even give his name. The letters were signed TJB not Thomas J. Beale or the infamous Thomas Jefferson Beale, which no one has any proof of ever existed.
Sure grandfather James Beverly Risque had a duel with a Thomas Beale in Fincastle, Va. Beale left because of reprisals from family and went to New Orleans, then to Europe and then coming back and married the Governor's daughter, fought in the Battle of New Orleans then died in September, 1820. Not a man that could have buried a treasure in Bedford County, Virginia.
Then there was his young son, Thomas Beale, Jr. After his father's death he built the plantation home where his father passed away. He kept up two hotels and raised produce on the plantation. He did good business up until the later end of 1822 when his health started down hill like his father's and he passed away in 1823. So neither of these two Thomas Beale's had anything to do with burying of a treasure in Bedford County, Virginia.
Since, now all we have is the story itself printed in what has become known as the Job Print Pamphlet or the Beale Papers, copyrighted in 1884 and published in 1885.
Only a few copies sold and James Beverly Ward told Clayton Hart in 1903 that most of the pamphlets had burned in a fire at the Printing Press Office. Well the Print Office burned in 1883 a full year before the copyright and over two years before the publication.
So now we have to fall back on the content of the Job Print Pamphlet and what exactly the un-named author said and did. He said by accident he broke the code paper marked number 2 by using a copy of the DOI which he numbered and placed in the pamphlet as proof of his work. Now if you go and decipher C2 for yourself you will find amazingly that the un-named author made several and I do mean several mistakes in his decipherment. Do the decipherment of C2 before you even think about deciphering C1--the exact locality of the vault and C3 ----the names of his associates and to whom the shares of the treasure are to go to with their exact locations.
C2 will convince you that the story is made up by the un-named author. I wasted over fifty years on this STORY so please do not waste yours! But if you are still not convinced then you may continue to hunt and you may find another treasure in the process but there is no Thomas J. Beale Treasure buried in Bedford County, Virginia.
