The Beale ciphers are a set of three ciphertexts, one of which allegedly states the location of a buried treasure of gold and silver estimated to be worth over 30 million US dollars in the present time. The other two ciphertexts allegedly describe the content of the treasure, and list the names of the treasure's owners' next of kin, respectively. The story of the three ciphertexts originates from an 1885 pamphlet detailing treasure being buried by a man named Thomas Jefferson Beale in a secret location in Virginia in 1820. Beale entrusted the box containing the encrypted messages with a local innkeeper named Robert Morriss and then disappeared, never to be seen again. The innkeeper gave the three encrypted ciphertexts to a friend before he died. The friend then spent the next twenty years of his life trying to decode the messages, and was able to solve only one of them which gave details of the treasure buried and the general location of the treasure. Since the publication of the pamphlet, a number of attempts have been made to decode the two remaining ciphertexts and to find the treasure, but all have resulted in failure.

First printed in 1885, this is pamphlet is a restored facsimile-reproduction of the original historic tract entitled The Beale Papers. These papers were the center of a controversial claim, wherein a narrative describes the origins of a treasure, amounting to a modern estimate of $20 million, that was buried somewhere in the Virginian county of Bedford in 1819 and enlarged again with another deposit in 1821. The narrative speaks of a mysterious figure named Thomas Jefferson Beale who left these papers with his innkeeper after some short visits and was never heard from again. The numeric cyphers within, once decoded, are said to provide the precise location of the treasure; since believed to be in the foothills of Blue Ridge Mountains. These cyphers have been challenged by several prominent researchers, cryptologists, mathematicians, and historians since they were first made public. Genealogists too have endeavored to discover the identity of their author and, in the mid 1900s, The Beale Cypher Association was developed to both conduct research on and compile a library of reports and memoranda concerning the cyphers. David Khan, author of Codebreakers, declared in 1972 his belief that the papers were an elaborate hoax. Yet in 2001, a Freedom of Information Act request lead to the declassification of a plethora of reports and studies of The Beale Papers, held by National Security Agency (NSA).Though with all the controversy and fame brought to this story in centuries past, none have alluded to its discovery. Even to this modern day, none have been able to come publicly forward to legitimately provide the solution to the riddle within, nor give proof that the treasure has been claimed. Are these cyphers an unbreakable code without the required key? Are the papers simply a centuries old American hoax meant to attract tourism to the county? or, turn a profit in pamphlet sales? Whatever the truth of the matter is, this document is a mysterious piece of early American history that is enveloped with such obscurity that hundreds, if not thousands of men, have dedicated decades of their life to solving the puzzle, or searching within the wilderness of Bedford County, with the small yet lingering hope that they with discover the Beale Treasure.

Folder includes research notes and other material such as journal articles, and copies of and extracts from Jefferson-related correspondence.