My thanks go to Brad Andrews, a previous contributor to this website, for most of the information detailed below. Brad is a budding and talented short story writer, and his paper The Fifth Generation relates his experience with The Beale Papers and Jean Laffite.

    In the interest of brevity, this page will present the Laffite history only as it may relate to The Beale Papers. Extensive background information on Laffite's career is available from many other websites and books.

    The details herein are derived from The Memoirs of Jean Laffite, from Le Journal de Jean Laffite, by Gene Marshall. I heartily recommend this book for its fascinating historical content.

    One final foreword: The reader should be aware that the authenticity of The Memoirs of Jean Laffite is disputed, as is the manner, date, and place of his death.

    The following are quotes from the book which may link to The Beale Papers.

On disguises and false names:

p. 131 - My officers disguised themselves, as did I, during our appearance or presence in strange places.

p. 154 - I gave my name as Theodore Lucas and a false address in Baltimore.

p. 160 - We agreed never to use our real names so as to hide our identity from the public. A ceremony under disguise proved to be the best.

p. 185 - I always registered in hotels under the false name of William Whiteridge when I traveled from one city to another.

On dueling:

p. 130 - I was an expert duelist and none could handle a sword as well as I.

p. 146 - He falsely stated that the gold and silver had fallen overboard. I asked where they were hidden. John Marotte remained on the defensive and challenged me to a duel. As was the custom, each one drank a cup of coffee on the dueling field, then John Marotte collapsed, pleaded for his life, and admitted to where he had hidden the gold and silver.

p. 174 - Many people have asked me how many duels I had fought and how I could manage to come out the winner of each duel. I fought 17 duels. The second was the hardest and the most difficult with a free Spanish quadroon on his ship Aires de Mora. The other duels were easy.

On secret codes:

p. 132 - Father De Sedella did not know my secret codes...

On the Declaration of Independence:

p. 129 - Their attitude was completely different from my program of government and contrary to the Declaration of Independence, that sacred document which I have highly venerated to this very day, to which I, one day, sacrificed almost all that I possessed...

p. 82 - That would have been enough to tempt many Americans to sell out their land but not enough to understand that the greatest and most sacred manuscripts ever composed and written by men would have been erased from the face of the earth, the great Declaration of Independence and the great Constitution of the United States.

p. 146/7 - They knew the mass of the people were not interested in the sure, proven principles of the American Revolution or, above all, in that sacred document, the Declaration of Independence, to which at a given time my brothers Pierre and Alexandre and I had sacrificed almost all that we possessed at New Orleans.

On St. Louis:

p. 126 - Many of those Negroes were sold to planters and businessmen come from as far away as Saint Louis. The Bowie brothers were the biggest buyers of Negroes. Jn and Christophe Lisa bought a large number of Negroes headed for Saint Louis in the state of Missouri, in exchange for worked leather articles and shoes from Saint Louis.

p. 138 - General Wilkinson greatly praised his men in Saint Louis and advised me to visit them.

            - One of my vessels leaving for Saint Louis...

p. 161 - My daughter and her husband live near Saint Louis.

On Virginia and area:

p. 138 - Manuel Lisa's son, Christophe, visited me during the short time I stayed in Baltimore.   ... while I was on a mission to Washington in the year of grace 1818.

p. 152 - My brother Pierre left New Orleans in mid February 1821. ... He left for Savannah and Charleston.

p. 153 - I remained in Charleston from that date (Oct. 4, 1821) until November 15.

p. 156 - I arrived in Charleston in February 1823 and stayed with the Mortimore family for almost a year. ... I went to Richmond and Baltimore on business.

                I embarked at Charleston for Baltimore in February 1824...

p. 157 - We remained in Charleston until September 1826.

p. 159 - I remained with the Mortimore family close to Charleston from January to July 1831. I moved between July 1831 and December 1831 among Philadelphia, Bridgeton, Boston, and Wilmington...

On freemasonry:

p. 125 - My brother Alexandre died on November 14, 1830. He presently lies in the New Orleans cemetery, and on his tomb inscribed with the name of Dominique You, after a long, elegiac passage, is a Masonic emblem of the charitable society of which he was a member.

On gold and silver hidden and lost:

p. 161 - I gave instructions to the few inhabitants not to reveal the places where my merchandise from our captures was hidden.

p. 162 - ... I was forced to throw valuables overboard when I was pursued by warships of every government. ... The men who executed the orders did not know what I had put in the old cannons so as to hide and seal the gold.

                    There is a little gold near the island of Largo; near other coasts of Cuba as well, but I cannot tell or direct anyone toward that place to retrieve the gold, for I do not know the exact spot. All that I can say is that some of my officers had some silver hidden on Caillou Island.

p. 163 - It would be useless at this late date to find the gold plates and silver ingots thrown overboard at Largo...

p. 171 - ... I am said to have silver and gold hidden in the sandy shores of all the islands along the Gulf coast. ... It is true. There are some caches in places, but I do not have the least idea of the exact locations... I indeed have many valuable articles near New Orleans, buried in some little estuary, tucked away, and unknown by everybody but me.

WANTED Poster

                    This image is courtesy of The Beale Papers, Lost Legacy, by Robert N. Williams:

    The origin and significance of the name Thomas Beale in the upper right corner is not explained in the book.

    The poster translates as follows:

    "1000 piastres* reward will be paid to whomever arrests Pierre Lafitte who, last night, broke out of the parish prison and escaped. The said Pierre Lafitte is 5 feet 10 inches tall, solidly built, nicely tanned and with slightly crooked eyes. We believe it useless to describe him further, the said Lafitte being well known in this town. The said Lafitte brought with him three negroes, namely: Sam heretofore the property of Mr. Sawza; Cezar, belonging to Mr. Lefebvre; and Hamilcar, belonging to Mr. Jarnand. The reward above will be given to whomever delivers the said Lafitte to the undersigned, who will also pay fifty piastres* for each of the said negroes. J. H. Holland, Jailer - State of Louisiana, Court of"

    *"Piastre" is an old french monetary unit. The word is still widely used in french-Canada to denote the dollar.

p. 140 - Between the months of November 1818 and February 1819, my commune had 476,000 dollars put away. My brother Pierre was active in Washington.

    I now quote from Brad Andrews' paper The Fifth Generation:

"The first deposit consisted of one thousand and fourteen pounds of gold, and three thousand eight hundred and twelve pounds of silver, deposited November, 1819. The second was made December, 1821, and consisted of nineteen hundred and seven pounds of gold, and twelve hundred and eighty-eight pounds of silver; also jewels, obtained in St. Louis in exchange for silver to save transportation, and valued at $13,000."

... the Adams Onis Treaty was signed on, February 22, 1819 and ratified on February 22, 1821. ... Jean Laffite was finally exiled from Galveston on February 25^th, 1821...

    In The Beale Pamphlet Morriss claims that Beale’s two visits at his hotel took place on January 1820 and January 1822. Both of these dates fall only eleven months behind the dates of the signing and the ratification of the Adams Onis Treaty.

Treaty signing date: February 1819

11 months

11 months

On the negative side:

    The Laffite memoirs provides many details on his and his brother's whereabouts on specific dates. I have tried to match these with dates in The Beale Papers, dates when T. J. Beale was supposed to be in Bedford or other named places. Here are some examples:

November 1819, first deposit

    Pierre was in Washington in the spring of 1819, and Jean was in Galveston in the summer and later, but there is nothing specific about the fall.

1820, first Beale visit to Morriss

    Pierre was in Havana in January and Jean was in Galveston in November and December.

December 1820, second deposit

    p. 146 - "It was Friday December 22, 1820, that Marotte and his henchmen were sent away from the commune (Galveston). Ten days later a messenger arrived to inform me..."

Iron box left, spring 1822

    p. 154 - "Pierre and I left for Isla de Mujeres in March 1822. ... In the middle of May 1822, I captured another Spanish vessel near the Cuban coast..."

    p. 155 - "I left for Isla de Mujeres in order to make repairs and bring back provisions to the Isle of Pines in June 1822."

January 4 and 5, 1822,  TJB letter to Morriss from Lynchburg

    p. 153 - "I remained in Charleston from that date (Oct. 4, 1821) until November 15. I secretly left for Saint Augustine... to bombard the of El Moro Castle in Havana four days before Christmas."

May 9, 1822, TJB letter to Morriss from St. Louis

    See note above re iron box.

    There is not a single match in time and place.

    And now, to close the loop, there are two other notable quotes in the memoirs:

    On page 152, at the time of the exile from Galveston in 1821:

    "I recommended to Mr. Hall, Mr. Campbell, Mr. Sherman , and those of Bolivar to keep our promise and distribute the gold to the indicated places. ... The majority of my personal valuables and my documents had been sent to Charleston, Baltimore, and Philadelphia."

    Our Lynchburg newspaperman (see Page 24) was born in 1859; his father, Henry H. was born in 1822; his grandfather, William N.  was of the right age (married 1817); his greatgrandfather, Henry Duke, died in 1814. It may have been his grandfather or another relative.

    On page 178, while in Saint Louis in 1850, and on the subject of railroads:

    "I have offered the present of a large quantity of gunpowder to blow up boulders. Mr. Ward, Mr. Kingsley, and Mr. Peabody seem to me very honest, nice men to take care of the railroad."

    The agent for The Beale Papers, James Beverley Ward, had close ties with Saint Louis and was of the right age. In his youth he had been an army payroll clerk in Saint Louis, at a time when Laffite had military contacts there. In 1842, Ward also married in St. Charles, Missouri, another place often visited by Laffite. It is highly probable these two men knew each other. Furthermore, his father, Giles Ward, had been a lawyer in Virginia and may have had business dealings with the Laffite brothers.

Comment

    Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, and the treasure is still there.

    Far more likely however, is that John William Sherman's grandfather, or some other relative, was present in Galveston when the valuables were shipped to Virginia, or that James B. Ward knew Laffite, whose adventures were public knowledge. Between them they conceived The Beale Papers as described on Page 24.

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