



A Singular Discovery:



The Curious Manuscript, Mitchill, and Mormonism



By Richard Stout -- Part 5 In his Online article "Cryptography in the 16th and 17th Century," Thomas (Penn) Leary notes, "Secret writing became a preoccupation of the English. A doctor called Timothy Bright wrote the first book on shorthand which was published in 1588 under the title, The Arte of Shorte, Swifte and Secret Writing." 54 According to The Oxford Companion to the English Language, "Tiro's system... influenced the first modern system, developed in England by Timothy Bright... Over the next 50 years some 13 orthographic systems were published, the best-known being Thomas Shelton's Short Writing (1626), which Pepys used." 55 Leary's article goes on to quote a contemporary source which speaks almost contemptuously of the proliferation of shorthand systems in his day. Bishop John Wilkins wrote the cryptographic work Mercury: or the Secret and Swift Messenger in 1641. Leary writes:



In discussing shorthand as a style of cipher Wilkins says that a form of it was practiced by Roman Magistrates and that there was a dictionary of shorthand characters published by Janus Gruterus [1560-1627]; "Cicero himself writ a Treatise on this Subject." In Elizabethan and Jacobean times "This Short-hand Writing is now so ordinary in Practice (it being usual for any common Mechanick both to write and invent it ) that I shall not need to set down any particular Example of it."

As has already been stated, credit for Tironian notes usually goes to Cicero's servant Tiro, not Cicero himself. But Wilkens' pithy remark not only confirms Bright's borrowing from Tironian notes, but also proves that an explosion of systems in the 17th century was rooted in Tiro's characters. A shorthand text contemporary with Joseph Smith also attests to the direct connection between the look of later shorthands and Tironian notes. In the introduction to the seventh edition of his shorthand text, The Art of Short Hand Writing (Philadelphia, 1829), Marcus Gould writes, "The first publication upon this subject of which we have any correct information was about the year 1500, from a Latin manuscript, dated 1412. Various other publications followed in succession, without materially advancing or changing the character of the art, till about the commencement of the 18th century...." (iii) It is further interesting to note that at least two of these early systems, Thomas Shelton's Zeiglographia and Metcalfe's Stenography, appear as marginalia in printed books. 56



Given the circumstances, I think it highly likely the marginalia in Paff's Bible and the "signs and symbols" which were "so exactly alike" in the Detroit Manuscript were shorthand notes from a system invented some time before the 19th century. Because so many characters from the "Anthon transcript" resemble Tironian notes and early modern shorthand characters, I believe it fair to conclude -- given the connections already enumerated in this paper between the "curious" manuscript's owner Abraham Edwards, Stephan Mack, Joseph Smith, and Samuel L. Mitchill -- that the "Anthon transcript" is, very likely, primarily a random collection of early modern shorthand characters transcribed from the Detroit Manuscript. And, if Anthon was correct in his conclusion that Dr. Mitchill suspected "some trick" when Harris showed him the characters, then their similarity with the Irish manuscript's "signs and symbols" would certainly explain Mitchill's suspicion.



It is also very possible that, in the meantime, Dr. Mitchill suspected -- or became reasonably certain of -- what the "signs and symbols" actually were. Three years after the Detroit Manuscript affair, arguably the most famous diaries in the English language were published. Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) was the first British secretary of the Admiralty. His amazing diaries, which give perhaps the most candid view of London during the reign of Charles II, were written in early modern shorthand. 57 John Smith, an undergraduate at St. John's College, undertook the Herculean task of deciphering the diaries. Ironically, as Mr. Smith labored over the manuscripts, "Thomas Shelton's Tachygraphy, giving a full explanation of this particular system of shorthand, was also on the shelves of the library. But so little were the books known that neither the Master nor the Fellows of the college knew of the existence of this key which would have saved Smith weeks if not months of labour." 59



The 1825 publication of Pepys' diaries met with "an immediate and phenomenal success." 60 It seems unlikely that the famous decipherment would have gone unnoticed by the eclectic Mitchill. If news of Pepys' diaries gave Dr. Mitchill the clue he needed to realize what the "strange abbreviations" in the Detroit Manuscript probably were, it would make even more sense if he suspected trickery when shown "reformed Egyptian" by Harris.



I would like to predict that with diligent searching through musty archives it may yet be possible to unlock the specific system used in the "Anthon transcript," but I can't. Eric Sams states these basic (and discouraging) facts of deciphering the numerous shorthand journals which have baffled historians in his groundbreaking article "Cracking the Historical Code" (Times Literary Supplement, Feb. 8, 1980):



...the early shorthands themselves were quite like contemporary cipher-systems. One main difficulty in gaining access to the former lies not in the absence of keys, but in the presence of a huge jangling bunch of them. In the last four centuries, at least 300 different shorthands have been published in England alone , and many others will have circulated in manuscript form . Further, each such system could be altered or adapted at will by each user. Even the printed manuals were often revised by their authors in later editions, or plagiarized by others. So it is usually impossible to begin by identifying the system and consulting the source-book.



It is however entirely feasible, given enough shorthand text, to decrypt the system by means of analysis and induction, without ever seeing the published manual or indeed knowing of its existence. (154)

Even if the text of the "Anthon transcript" represented a continuous shorthand message, its seven lines are far too few to decode. If the characters were drawn from the Detroit Manuscript, as I believe they were, even there the shorthand notes seem only to have been scattered amongst the Gaelic. Had the majority of the facsimile pages given to Grace been made up of "strange abbreviations," it would have been impossible for him to have translated what Mitchill called "arbitrary marks." This practice of substituting the occasional shorthand symbol for a word (as we do with "&") was not uncommon. In some cases occasional words in a diary were replaced with shorthand notes for convenience, while at other times they guarded against prying eyes.



What makes the job of spotting the exact system used without decoding first especially hard is that the symbols often "mutate." For instance, adding a particular superscription to a symbol (this appears to be the case with several of Joseph's "Caractors") can change the signified word's meaning or alter its case, tense, etc. The position of this marker around the original also affects the meaning. Sometimes the superscription (or subscription, etc.) or another word's symbol is connected in cursive fashion to the original, making a hybrid which may differ significantly visually from the original while only changing the meaning slightly. In some systems several character-like symbols become what appear to the novice a mere squiggly line when combined (very much like the second symbol on the fourth line of the "Anthon transcript.").



Obviously, I could not check each of the hundreds of systems that were available to the scribe(s) of the Detroit Manuscript. But in the dozen or so pre-19th century systems I did check, a majority of the symbols on the "Anthon transcript" could be accounted for. Perhaps the most surprising is William Addy's symbol for altogether -- a black square. I had assumed that the three black squares in the "Anthon transcript" could not have originate in shorthand. After all, taking the time to draw and fill in a square would not seem the most efficient way to denote a word quickly. However, there it is in Addy's (and Joseph's) characters. Symbols from Addy's shorthand meaning idolatry, Christ, cross of Christ, and trespass are also found in the "Anthon transcript." I have included below just a portion of a page from Jeremiah Rich's New Testament in shorthand. The reader will note quite a number of identical and very similar characters just this tiny fragment has in common with the "Anthon transcript."



Exhibit "A"





This small sample of early modern shorthand above is from

Jeremiah Rich's 1673 New Testament. The reader will find

more than fifteen different characters here which are also

found in the "Anthon transcript."

The early modern shorthand systems are not the only form of writing linked to cryptography which may be represented in the "Anthon transcript." An exclusively Irish form of writing, ogham, seems to be represented there as well. Ogham (pronounced OH-yam) is an ancient alphabet primarily inscribed on the edges of large standing stones. Originally, horizontal notches carved to the right or left of a vertical corner, and diagonal and horizontal lines running around the stone's edge, stood for twenty letters. Five dipthong symbols were added later. When ogham is written on vellum or paper, a horizontal stem-line replaces the vertical edge of the stone and the "notches" are drawn using vertical and diagonal strokes (see Exhibit "B" below).



Exhibit "B"





Standard Irish Ogham

A check of the "Anthon transcript" does not reveal any marked similarities with traditional ogham at first blush. One possible exception is the symbol made up of nine vertical strokes above a horizontal line found on lines two and three. The only problem is that no standard ogham letter uses nine strokes: the maximum is five (of course Joseph could have copied the ogham letters "C" and "Q," ignorantly running them together). However, as alluded to above, ogham was adapted by the Irish in numerous ways as a code. It is possible that several of these cryptographic adaptations found their way into the "Anthon transcript," including this nine-stroke symbol.



One of the most famous Irish manscripts is The Book of Ballymote, written in the late fourteenth century. In The Secret Languages of Ireland (Cambridge, 1937), R. A. Stewart Macalister devotes an entire chapter to the cryptography section found in the Ballymote manuscript. He takes great pains to point out the importance of this tract on codes to the knowledge of things Irish. On page 39 he argues: "The nature of the volume in which it is found almost compels us to treat it with respect. This is a sober compilation of learned matter, historical, genealogical, and so forth, contained in an enormous book of vellum, each leaf of which, at a guess, might have cost half-a-crown's worth of money in our current rate of exchange. It was intended to be a permanent record of facts deemed to be of importance."



Returning to the one symbol in the "Anthon transcript" which vaguely resembles traditional ogham, Macalister gives a clue as to its possible meaning. One of the ciphers he mentions on page 55 is Ogham Bricrend. A very simple code, it merely gives a numerical value to each letter in order of the ogham alphabet and represents each with that number of strokes. Since "B" is the first letter in the ogham alphabet, it is denoted by one stroke, second letter "L" by two, and so on. The nine strokes of the "Anthon" symbol could have represented "C" or even the Roman numeral for 100 in the manuscript from which it was copied. The examples given on page 56 by Macalister do not use a stem-line, but this does not disqualify the "Anthon" symbol, as even the author of the Book of Ballymote, Macalister points out, slipped up in this way. He mistakenly placed a stem line in a code ("Ridgeless Ogham") that should not have had one. (48) Besides, these codes were adaptable. Furthermore, the code directly above Bricrend on page 311 of the Ballymote manuscript, while not mentioned by Macalister, appears to be set up the same numerical way, the only difference being each stroke passes through a stem-line (see Exhibit "C").



Exhibit "C"





The ogham code symbol on the left is from page 311 of the 14th century

Book of Ballymote (the vertical line is merely a divider). The three

symbols on the right are from the "Anthon transcript."

The Ballymote writer suddenly, and without explanation, changes from using strokes to using dots in Ogham Bricrend. On line four of the "Anthon transcript" is a character made up of a horizontal line with a row of four dots below it. This exact cipher appears on page 312 of the Ballymote manuscript (see Exhibit "D" below).



Exhibit "D"





The highlighted symbol (left) of four dots below a stem line is from page

312 of the Ballymote manuscript. The "Anthon transcript" symbol to its

right is from line four of the transcript.

Another interesting ogham code possibly represented in the "Anthon transcript" is "C" Ogham, or Ogham Coll. "C"s in various positions (normal, backwards, and on their backs like "U"s) and combinations represent vowels and dipthongs. Macalister's illustrations look more like parentheses than standard. "C"s (52) For example, ") )" would represent the dipthong "ua." This doubled symbol is found on lines one, two, and five of the "Anthon transcript," as are forward and backward "C"s and the combination "( )" on line six.



A variation of Nathair fria fraech ("Serpent through the heather") would seem to appear on each line of the "Anthon transcript" but the third. Macalister describes it as "written in ordinary Ogham, and a wavy line drawn, which runs alternately above and below the successive letters (see below). "Anthon" symbol eleven, line two, could be described as the ogham letter "C" with the wave under it. The sample alphabet given for this code on page 313 of the Book of Ballymote shows the wavy line rising above the ogham "C." However, this wave placement would seem to be arbitrary to code users. If by choice or faulty memory the wavy line were started down rather than up at the beginning of the alphabet, the "C" symbol would appear identical to that of the "Anthon transcript." The variations of this symbol on the other five lines have four to five dots below the four strokes on the stem-line. I don't pretend to know why this would be if these are Irish symbols, but it should be noted that one of the codes on the same page (313) uses strokes with dots below them (like inverted "i"s). These possible variations of "Serpent in the heather" may originally have been used to further disguise what, in the Ballymote manuscript, is a childishly simple, if not monotonous, code.



The initial symbol of the "Anthon transcript" appears five times throughout. It is made up of two "parentheses" with a horizontal line through their middles -- "two bows and an arrow." Usually the second "bow" is larger. There are three slight variations relative to the horizontal line: the line crosses both curves, the line touches the edge of the first curve but crosses the second, and the line crosses the first while only joining the second. A symbol identical to the first variation is found on the first full line of ogham codes in the Book of Ballymote. It should be noted in the illustration below that the Irish cipher even has a dot in front of it similar to one of the three "Anthon" characters it is compared to. (It should also be noted that the vertical line at the left of the ogham character is not part of the character, but a dividing line.)



There are other symbols in the "Anthon transcript" which can be read as ogham code letters, but those described above stand out most distinctly. Is it mere happenstance that some of the symbols suspected of being copied from a lost Irish manuscript turn out to bear a striking resemblance to specifically Irish cryptograms? Is this just another coincidence like Dr. Mitchill being asked to give an opinion on the "unknown characters" of both the Detroit Manuscript and the "Anthon transcript?" As the "coincidences" pile up, it may be profitable to remember the words spy novelist Ian Fleming put in the mouth of his title character, Goldfinger. After secret agent James Bond has crossed Goldfinger's path several times, the villain remarks: "Mr. Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: 'Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action!'"



In the midst of my lengthy comparison of ogham and early shorthand characters with the "Anthon transcript," I made a remarkable discovery -- the idea for which should have come far earlier. It dawned on me that Abraham Edwards may have acceded to the request of the successful scholar in the affair. William Grace had requested a "perfect copy" of the manuscript. If Edwards had sent Grace such a copy -- or even the original -- it might still be in the possession of Georgetown University. I called Georgetown's archives and began describing the history of the Detroit Manuscript to one of the archivists. He suddenly interrupted my recital saying, "I'm pretty sure we've got that manuscript here."



A few days later I received six photocopies from Memorial of the First Centenary of Georgetown College, D. C. Comprising a History of Georgetown University (New York, 1891). This hundredth-anniversary history of the school was written by Roman Catholic historian John Gilmary Shea. The archivist had highlighted the following item:



About this time [1824] the college received a donation to its library which had attracted public attention, and which has been preserved to our times to renew it. There was a manuscript found, it is said, in a cave in Sandusky which puzzled the pundits of the West. It was not written in Chinese, Arabic or Syriac; it certainly was not French, Spanish or English, but what it was no one could tell. Some pages were sent from Detroit to General Macomb, at Washington, and "he submitted them to the examination of the professors of Georgetown College, who pronounced it to be Irish." The whole manuscript was subsequently sent to the college it was a copy of Geoffrey Keating's History of Ireland, as Father Grace, an accomplished Gaelic scholar, was not slow to recognize. (65-66)

Exhibit "E"





Naithair fria fraech ("Serpent through the heather") ogham code

letter on left Book of Ballymote, p. 313. Two of several similar

"Anthon transcript" symbols on right.

At the risk of sounding turgid, I was electrified! Despite a few anomalous details, this could only be a description of the Detroit Manuscript. It certainly seemed odd that even though Detroit was mentioned, and Nile's Weekly Register quoted nearly verbatim, that the place of discovery was given as a Sandusky cave. However, the mention of Father Grace and Geoffrey Keating's book -- although a different work than the religious treatise described by Grace (as confirmed by Nuala Ni Dhomhnail) -- seemed to add evidence that this was the "curious manuscript" actually found under a house in Detroit





Exhibit "F"





The two early modern shorthand symbols above are from an Irish

manuscript found in a cave in Sandusky Ohio and sent to William Grace,

the scholar who had recognized the Detroit Manuscript as Gaelic.

This shows the Irish did use English shorthand symbols, and strengthens

the argument for such symbols being present in the Detroit Manuscript.

Within a week I was sitting in the reading room of one of Georgetown University's archives. Before bringing out the manuscript, the archivist, who read Gaelic, told me he had checked further after our conversation. Georgetown's manuscript contained neither Keating's History nor his Defense of the Mass. It did, however, begin with Keating's retelling of the Deirdre legend. That was not a good sign, Keating's material appeared at least 178 pages into the Detroit Manuscript, not at the opening.



The pages of the Georgetown manuscript are seven inches by six inches. The sixty-nine dark yellow leaves sewn into a deerskin cover reveal different inks and handwriting from one section to the next. For the following reasons it cannot be the Detroit Manuscript:



1. At 138 pages it does not approach the "3 to 4 hundred pages" mentioned in the Gazette. The leather cover appears to be the original and could never have accommodated more than double the present contents.



2. There are numerous English words and phrases in the Georgetown manuscript. Some of these words, such as "basilisk," "buffalo," "monkey," or "crocodile" may not have had an Irish equivalent. Sentences such as "Say no more of that or I'll leave you in thraldom," are just odd.



3. On one of the two pages sewn into the back cover is written, "Hibernia fair and Scotland." Hibernia is Ireland. That should have given even "the learned" in Detroit a clue. Further, this phrase appears on one of the interior pages: "[Illegible] my English will reign for Irish is daily odious." It would seem obvious that a second manuscript was found in Sandusky in 1823-24. Its reference to "Hibernia" and "Irish" told the finder what he had. Remembering the recent, nationally-covered affair of the Detroit Manuscript, he sent his discovery to a man whom he knew from the press could translate Gaelic-William Grace. Sixty-seven years later, John Gilmary Shea confused the newspaper account of the Detroit Manuscript (probably found among Grace's papers) with the history of its Sandusky "cousin" in Georgetown's archives. Shea can hardly be faulted, after all, who would expect two Irish manuscripts (or facsimiles) found in the Midwest to find their way to Georgetown within a year of each other? Either that is what happened, or the real Detroit Manuscript lies somewhere miscataloged in that institution (which I have been assured is not the case).



__________

54 First published in Cryptologia (July 1996), Leary's Online article can be viewed at URL: http://home.att.net/~tleary/crypto.htm.

55 Tom MacArthur (Ed.). The Oxford Companion to English Literature (Oxford, 1992), 932.

56 Eric Sams, "Cracking the Historical Code," (London) Times Literary Supplement (Feb. 18, 1980), 154.

57 "Pepys, Samuel," Encylcopedia Britannica (1971), 589-590.

58 Robert Latham, The Illustrated Pepys (Berkeley, 1978), 12.

59 Arthus Ponsonby, Samuel Pepys (New York, 1928), 57.

60 Latham, 12.

