Speaker 1: You're listening to American Shadows, a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Bankey. The Freemasons
Speaker 1: are the oldest known fraternal organization in the world. Their
Speaker 1: roots can be traced back to England in Scotland, with
Speaker 1: guilds of Stonemasons and cathedral builders going back as far
Speaker 1: as thirteen hundreds. When the need for new cathedrals declined,
Speaker 1: the Masons shifted their focus. They are a male oriented,
Speaker 1: oath bound society that requires strict discipline from its members.
Speaker 1: And although the Freemasons are not a secret society, they
Speaker 1: are a society with secrets. What goes on behind closed
Speaker 1: doors has been the subject of blockbuster movies and best
Speaker 1: selling novels. Members have included Beethoven, Winston Churchill, King, Edward Seventh,
Speaker 1: and Oscar Wilde. In the United States, fourteen presidents, thirty
Speaker 1: five Supreme Court justices, and thirteen signers of the Constitution
Speaker 1: have been Masons. The Freemasons are still well organized and
Speaker 1: practicing today in America. It's said that the Freemasons lurk
Speaker 1: behind every aspect of life, from the early days of
Speaker 1: our nation's capital, to political influence to murder in sevent
Speaker 1: a British author claimed that secret factions of the Freemasons
Speaker 1: called the Illuminati, were subverting religions in state authority. Certainly,
Speaker 1: at the time, members held high ranking positions at every social, political,
Speaker 1: and economic level. Rumors and whispers of conspiracies became widespread,
Speaker 1: but perhaps none as scandalous as the events of eighteen
Speaker 1: twenty six. On September twelfth, that year, stoneworker William Morgan
Speaker 1: vanished from an upstate New York jail. Considered more of
Speaker 1: a professional drunk and bagabond than Stonemason, Morgan had moved
Speaker 1: his family from town to town, and from one failed
Speaker 1: business endeavor to another. Along the way, had managed to
Speaker 1: infiltrate the Freemasons, and it was there that Morgan's venture
Speaker 1: scheming took another direction. He had partnered with one David Miller,
Speaker 1: a struggling local newspaper publisher, to write a tell all
Speaker 1: book on the inner workings and secrets of the Freemasons.
Speaker 1: The two had begun teasing the public with the impending release,
Speaker 1: hinting there were mysterious ceremonies, rituals, and headline grabbing corruption.
Speaker 1: The hype Morgan hoped would need an instant bestseller and
Speaker 1: a hefty fortune, and naturally, the Freemasons were less than thrilled.
Speaker 1: They demanded Morgan returned stolen documents and halt the release
Speaker 1: of the book. Neither happened. Lodges held meetings to discuss
Speaker 1: how to deal with the potential fallout. On September eleventh,
Speaker 1: law enforcement loyal to the organization arrested Morgan for outstanding debt.
Speaker 1: Later that night, several Masons arrived at the jail with
Speaker 1: bail money. As they ushered Morgan away to an awaiting carriage,
Speaker 1: a witness allegedly heard him shout murder. The former Stonemason
Speaker 1: was never heard from, more seen again. As the news traveled,
Speaker 1: the story became more elaborate, until the rumor was that
Speaker 1: the Freemasons had kidnapped and killed Morgan. Miller went on
Speaker 1: to publish the book, even after a small, mysterious fire
Speaker 1: broke out in his shop. The book, along with the
Speaker 1: story of Morgan's disappearance, became a symbol of all that
Speaker 1: was wrong with the young country, sparking the anti Masonic movement.
Speaker 1: The Mason's who had bailed Morgan out that night stood
Speaker 1: trial in eighteen twenty seven, though without sufficient evidence that
Speaker 1: there had been a murder, the judge handed down lenient sentences.
Speaker 1: The book went on to be a bestseller even without
Speaker 1: the many secrets the authors had promised, and membership in
Speaker 1: the Freemasons dwindled for a while. Some believe Morgan was dead.
Speaker 1: Others thought he had fled to Canada. Some die hard
Speaker 1: conspiracists claimed he had assumed a new identity as a
Speaker 1: pirate in the Cayman Islands. Exactly what did happen to
Speaker 1: him is a mystery lost time. But we're drawn to
Speaker 1: mysteries and seemingly unsolvable disappearances. And there's one disappearance that
Speaker 1: has captivated historians and the public for centuries. I'm Lauren Vogelbaum.
Speaker 1: Welcome to American Shadows. In the first colonizers arrived on Broino,
Speaker 1: a small island nestled between what's now known as the
Speaker 1: Outer Banks Barrier Islands and the North Carolina Coast. Settlers
Speaker 1: and crew arrived to a land far from anything they've
Speaker 1: known back in England. One of their ships had been
Speaker 1: lost at sea, leaving the newcomers with few supplies. The
Speaker 1: captain set sail back to England, promising to return with
Speaker 1: more ships and goods. After a harsh winter, those who
Speaker 1: survived elected to return to England on another ship that
Speaker 1: had arrived at the island. They set foot back in
Speaker 1: their homeland just days before the supply ship arrived on Rono.
Speaker 1: Unaware the settlers had left, The captain and crew were
Speaker 1: startled to find the camp deserted. Worried something had happened,
Speaker 1: the men searched for weeks before finally leaving a few
Speaker 1: soldiers and supplies behind and heading back to England. Within weeks,
Speaker 1: those left behind were dead. Sir Walter Raleigh remained undaunted
Speaker 1: by this harsh, unforgiving land. For his next attempt to
Speaker 1: colonize North America. He sent just over a hundred men,
Speaker 1: women and children. The new colonists survived high seas to
Speaker 1: discover their new home wasn't anything like the land they expected.
Speaker 1: Like the other colonists before them, they had come unprepared
Speaker 1: with insufficient supplies. Raleigh chose colonist John White as the
Speaker 1: first governor. While he had no political experience, he had
Speaker 1: been to the America's before. He had served as an
Speaker 1: artist tasked with illustrating and documenting the so called New World.
Speaker 1: The ship arrived on Roanoke on July twenty second of
Speaker 1: fifteen eighty seven. The next morning, Governor White led a
Speaker 1: search party and found the remnants of the former colony,
Speaker 1: including the skeletons of the men who had been left behind.
Speaker 1: White thought that Indigenous people had attacked and murdered the men.
Speaker 1: It seems it didn't occur to him that the indigenous
Speaker 1: people in question probably weren't especially keen on having their
Speaker 1: land and resources forcibly taken over. Though the discovery was gruesome,
Speaker 1: it didn't persuade the colonizers to return to England. On
Speaker 1: July twenty five, they disembarked from the ship and sought
Speaker 1: to rebuild the camp, despite having no experience surviving in
Speaker 1: the middle of the wilderness. The settlers hadn't come from
Speaker 1: England's elite society, but neither had they come from its underbelly.
Speaker 1: Many had been used to a bustling city. They had
Speaker 1: been shopkeepers, lawyers, or tradesmen. In exchange for colonizing America,
Speaker 1: England had promised them land of their own. With limited knowledge,
Speaker 1: the settlers planted crops and built new homes. On August eighteenth,
Speaker 1: White's daughter Eleanor Dare gave birth to a girl, making
Speaker 1: Little Virginia Dare the first English child born in America.
Speaker 1: Life was hard but good. The newcomers did their best
Speaker 1: to make a better way of life than they had
Speaker 1: in England. Unfortunately, they had the little Ice age era
Speaker 1: to deal with. The weather proved inhospitable, with droughts in
Speaker 1: the summer and harsh cold winter. When one of their
Speaker 1: own wandered off into the wilderness and was killed by
Speaker 1: one of the local peoples, White realized that they were
Speaker 1: greatly outnumbered and sent a delegation of twenty one men
Speaker 1: to try to make amends with the indigenous tribes. Assisting
Speaker 1: them was an indigenous man called Montero, who had lived
Speaker 1: among the English. After his intervention and negotiation, the colonists
Speaker 1: and the Crowatin people feasted together in a gesture of peace.
Speaker 1: It turned out that they shared a common enemy, another
Speaker 1: group of indigenous people, perhaps called the Rono. Feeling more
Speaker 1: safely settled, White returned to England on November five, four
Speaker 1: more supplies. Unfortunately, the Spanish Armada prevented him from returning
Speaker 1: as quickly as he had hoped. The Anglo Spanish War
Speaker 1: caused Queen Elizabeth, the first to commandeer every available ship
Speaker 1: in anticipation of battle. White didn't return to the settlement
Speaker 1: for three years. When he finally arrived on his granddaughter's birthday,
Speaker 1: in he found the Roanoke settlement completely deserted. Houses had
Speaker 1: been dismantled, the building supplies have been taken. Only a
Speaker 1: single clue to their whereabouts had been left. Someone had
Speaker 1: carved a word on a wooden gate post crow at in.
Speaker 1: Believing the settlers had gone to live with the Crowdens,
Speaker 1: he returned to the ship for the night, intending to
Speaker 1: set out the next morning to look for them, but
Speaker 1: the anchor rope snapped and bad weather forced the ship
Speaker 1: out to sea and back to England. White never saw
Speaker 1: his family again. Roanoke remains one of America's enduring mysteries.
Speaker 1: The disappearance of an entire colony without a trace has
Speaker 1: since become an iconic enigma, fueled by fiction, speculation, and
Speaker 1: insufficient evidence to point to any one explanation. In nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty seven, President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave a speech commemorating
Speaker 1: the lost colony. A bridge had connected Roanoke Island with
Speaker 1: the mainland, and the community had begun working on infrastructure
Speaker 1: to support tourism the island and the Lost Colony experienced
Speaker 1: a resurgence in interest. Historians discovered that Sir Walter Rally
Speaker 1: tried to return to the island again in fifteen ninety four,
Speaker 1: but the expedition failed due to poor weather conditions. After
Speaker 1: he was implicated and imprisoned for his role in an
Speaker 1: attempt to dethrone King James the First, The next search
Speaker 1: for the colonists didn't happen until six seven. John Smith
Speaker 1: of the newly established Jamestown, Virginia settlement, had been captured
Speaker 1: by the Powatan people. In his talks with their leader,
Speaker 1: he learned about a place where people wore European clothing.
Speaker 1: Smith instantly thought of the Lost Colony and sent a
Speaker 1: letter and map to England. Two of Smith's search parties
Speaker 1: in sixteen o eight failed to locate the colonists. In
Speaker 1: sixteen o nine, England received an unverified letter that the
Speaker 1: Powhatan had slaughtered any surviving colonists, though no evidence or
Speaker 1: remains suggested the statement was based on facts. Periodically, searches continued,
Speaker 1: though interest had faded over the years. Then, between seventeen
Speaker 1: o one and seventeen o nine. Explorer and naturalist John
Speaker 1: Lawson spent time at the original colony site and visited
Speaker 1: the Hatteras tribe when he noticed the strong English influence.
Speaker 1: Members told him that some of their ancestors had been
Speaker 1: white with gray eyes. Lawson believed that the colonists had
Speaker 1: assimilated into the local peoples once they lost contact with England.
Speaker 1: The explanation seemed plausible, and further research died out until
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century, when academics began to theorize about what
Speaker 1: had happened to the colonists again. One theory agreed with
Speaker 1: Lawson that the colonists had assimilated with some particular try.
Speaker 1: They further theorized the Powhatans had attacked them in retaliation
Speaker 1: for the English kidnapping their people. Another theory speculated that
Speaker 1: the colonists had integrated with possibly multiple peoples when they
Speaker 1: realized no help was coming from England. The gate post
Speaker 1: carving seems to suggest that at least some left with
Speaker 1: the crow Atints, since none of the local tribes were
Speaker 1: large enough to take in all the colonists, scholars have
Speaker 1: determined splitting up the village among the local peoples would
Speaker 1: have been the most logical choice. The last holdouts in
Speaker 1: the village may have finally decided to leave with the
Speaker 1: Croatans and left the carving in case White returned. Excavations
Speaker 1: have never turned up a sign of a struggle or
Speaker 1: massacre at the site. Along with missing building supplies, This
Speaker 1: suggests the colonists left of their own a core. There's
Speaker 1: also the possibility that tried to build a ship and
Speaker 1: returned to England, though this is unlikely since they wouldn't
Speaker 1: have had enough provisions to make the journey. If they
Speaker 1: did try this, they were most likely lost at sea.
Speaker 1: But there's one more explanation. A small area off the
Speaker 1: outer banks has coffins inscribed with Christian markings, suggesting that
Speaker 1: the colonists might have moved there. The theory goes that
Speaker 1: they were harvesting sassafras for Rally to sell. This supports
Speaker 1: the conspiracy that Rally not only returned, but that he
Speaker 1: kept the colonists survival quiet for personal gain. In the
Speaker 1: late eighteen hundreds, archaeologists began digging at the Roan Oak site.
Speaker 1: The influx of Irish and German immigrants had sparked some
Speaker 1: multigenerational Americans to connect with their English ancestors. Meanwhile, the
Speaker 1: indigenous peoples who might have held some answers were driven
Speaker 1: from the area to grant the land to European descended farmers.
Speaker 1: Without a lot of facts or evidence, the legend of
Speaker 1: the lost Colony of Roanoke was revamped. All that remained
Speaker 1: were fictional stories until Louis Hammond made a rather unusual
Speaker 1: discovery in ninety seven. James Lester, an Emory University geologist,
Speaker 1: was leaving the university's alumni building on November eight seven
Speaker 1: when Lewis Hammond approached and introduced himself. He showed Lester
Speaker 1: the rock he carried and asked if someone in the
Speaker 1: geology department might help to cipher the markings carved onto it.
Speaker 1: Hammond told the geologist had come across the stone near
Speaker 1: the Virginia, North Carolina border. Lester admitted that the markings
Speaker 1: were unusual and difficult to make out. Before long, English
Speaker 1: and physics professors, as well several curious students, joined them.
Speaker 1: They pieced together a single word, an ananias Annanias had
Speaker 1: been Virginia Dair's father. Excitement washed over the group. The
Speaker 1: stone appeared to be a pivotal piece of evidence in
Speaker 1: the disappearance of those first colonists. The scholars took the
Speaker 1: stone to the biophysics lab for further evaluation. One of
Speaker 1: Emery's rising star professors rushed to the lab when he
Speaker 1: heard the news, Heyward Jefferson Pierce Jr. Was the university's
Speaker 1: expert on southern history. The team studied the stone late
Speaker 1: into the evening, with barely a break for lunch or dinner.
Speaker 1: When Pierce and the others came out of the lab,
Speaker 1: they announced to their peers that they had deciphered the
Speaker 1: rest of the carvings. The stone told of heartbreak and loss.
Speaker 1: It read Annonia Stare, and Virginia went hence into Heaven.
Speaker 1: The rest of the scratches mentioned a burial site where
Speaker 1: the remains of the colonists were buried after they had
Speaker 1: been massacred. The team made plans to revisit the site
Speaker 1: where the stone had been found and begin an archaeological day.
Speaker 1: Hammond signed an agreement that granted Emory temporary custody of
Speaker 1: the stone, as well as exclusive research and publication rights.
Speaker 1: Two days later, Hammond, Lester, and Pierce left for Edenton,
Speaker 1: a town on the Virginia North Carolina border. When they arrived,
Speaker 1: they had difficulty finding the exact location of the stone's origin.
Speaker 1: After leading the professors around a swamp, Hammond pointed to
Speaker 1: an approximate location. They hunted for additional inscribed stones or
Speaker 1: any evidence of the lost colony. Two days of exhaustive
Speaker 1: searches turned up nothing. Then Hammond left, never contacting the
Speaker 1: men or the university. Again suspicious, Emery hired the Pinkerton
Speaker 1: Agency to investigate. The agency reported that no named Lewis
Speaker 1: Hammond existed. Pierce bought the stone for five hundred dollars
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty eight so that he could continue his
Speaker 1: study and perhaps locate additional evidence. If some of the
Speaker 1: colonists had survived, they might have left other clues to
Speaker 1: their whereabouts. He became so obsessed that he took a
Speaker 1: leave of absence from Emory. Then, in May of ninety nine,
Speaker 1: a stone cutter by the name of Bill Eberhart claimed
Speaker 1: to have come across thirteen more inscribed stones on a
Speaker 1: hill in Greenville County, South Carolina. He contacted Pierce, who
Speaker 1: quickly bought the property. While his piers thought the discovery
Speaker 1: was another scam. Pierce concluded that the stone cutter wasn't
Speaker 1: smart enough to pull off such a scheme, though he
Speaker 1: never found any more stones on the property. On July fifteenth,
Speaker 1: Isaac Turner of Atlanta, Georgia stepped forward, claiming he had
Speaker 1: found a fifteenth stone. Not to be outdone, Eberhart returned
Speaker 1: with stone sixteen through thirty five that he had allegedly
Speaker 1: uncovered in Habersham County, Georgia. Then a man named William
Speaker 1: Bruce delivered stone number thirty six, and Eberhart showed up
Speaker 1: once more with stone's thirty seventh through forty five, five
Speaker 1: of which he claimed were grave markers. By winter, newcomer
Speaker 1: Tom Jett turned in stone's forty six through forty eight.
Speaker 1: With so many stones been nothing coming from them, Pierce
Speaker 1: began losing the university's support. Instead, he convinced his father
Speaker 1: to help Pierce Senior ran Burnow College in Georgia. To
Speaker 1: Emery's relief, the college took over support and funding. On
Speaker 1: October nineteenth of nineteen forty, Pierce called a press conference.
Speaker 1: He claimed he had uncovered the story of Elizabeth Dair's
Speaker 1: survival from Massacre's forced marches and her desperate pleas for help.
Speaker 1: Pierce also wrote a lengthy piece about the Dare Stones
Speaker 1: and sent it to the Saturday Evening Post. The Post
Speaker 1: assigned one Boyden's Sparks. The investigative reporter interviewed Pierce's former
Speaker 1: Pierce and determined that the stones were fake and that
Speaker 1: Pierce was trying to salvage his career and reputation. Eber
Speaker 1: Heart had a history in faking indigenous relics and had
Speaker 1: ties to two of the other men who had found stones.
Speaker 1: The Post's article pointed out Pierce's delusions and stated that
Speaker 1: Emery's greatest minds had been swindled by a Georgia hillbilly.
Speaker 1: After the story appeared, Pierce retorted that eber Heart had
Speaker 1: blackmailed him and his father, threatening to tell everyone they've
Speaker 1: been working together to defraud the universities. For one day,
Speaker 1: the news knocked World War Two stories from the top headlines.
Speaker 1: Pierce moved to Michigan, and he never spoke of the
Speaker 1: Dare Stones again. Though historians and scholars discounted the Dare
Speaker 1: Stones as forgeries and hoaxes, Pierce believed the first stone
Speaker 1: was authentic, based on the journal of one English writer
Speaker 1: by the name of William Strachy. In sixteen o nine,
Speaker 1: Strachy had sailed North America for a new lease on life.
Speaker 1: A shipwreck left him stranded on Bermuda for nearly a
Speaker 1: year before he and the other survivors built a small
Speaker 1: boat and hugged the coast line up to Jamestown, Virginia.
Speaker 1: Miraculously they've all survived the trip. They found the settlement
Speaker 1: in total disarray. Strachy wrote in detail about the conditions there,
Speaker 1: which in turn served as the basis of the study
Speaker 1: of early colonial life for future historians like Pierce. Strachy
Speaker 1: also wrote about a prophecy and massacre that he said
Speaker 1: explained the Roanoke colonist's fate, and for Pierce, the prophecy
Speaker 1: neatly lined up with the inscription on that first stone.
Speaker 1: Pierce also relied on a Powhatan prediction of a pataquismic event,
Speaker 1: and the prophecy claimed a nation would rise from the
Speaker 1: Chesapeake Bay and overtake the Powhatan. A chief had purportedly
Speaker 1: become so frightened that he ordered the Chessapeake people's extermination.
Speaker 1: The English had the misfortune of being in the Chesapeake
Speaker 1: Bay area around the same time, the colonists who went
Speaker 1: to live with locals may have been massacred along with them.
Speaker 1: The theory was speculative, but Pierce took it to heart.
Speaker 1: The wording and grammar on the stone matched the writing
Speaker 1: and the spelling of the time, and colonists had been
Speaker 1: known to leave carvings in stone and wood. If Pierce
Speaker 1: was right, the first stone was authentic but discounted as fake.
Speaker 1: Though Brunell College kept all forty eight Dare stones, it
Speaker 1: removed them from public display in At first, they were
Speaker 1: stored in a boiler room beneath the school's auditorium. Today
Speaker 1: they reside in the attic inside one of the campus houses.
Speaker 1: Archaeologists are now certain that stones two through forty eight
Speaker 1: were indeed faked, but that first stone tests are inconclusive.
Speaker 1: While it may be possible to determine the authenticity of
Speaker 1: the stone, the media circus in the nine thirties has
Speaker 1: caused scholars and universities to be understandably reluctant. The project
Speaker 1: would be costly and time consuming, and there's some concern
Speaker 1: that it might damage their reputations, as it did with Pierce,
Speaker 1: which leaves us with the mystery intact. We may never
Speaker 1: know if the original dare Stones message was real or
Speaker 1: a hoax, or what truly became of the lost colony
Speaker 1: of Roanoke. There's more to this story, and stick around
Speaker 1: after this brief sponsor break to hear all about it.
Speaker 1: Swan J. Turnblad had no idea what to do with
Speaker 1: the letter sitting on his desk. In all his time
Speaker 1: as the editor for Minneapolis's Swedish language newspaper, he had
Speaker 1: never seen anything like it. The author, fifty six year
Speaker 1: old Swedish born J. P. Hedburg, was a successful businessman.
Speaker 1: In his letter, he stated that a local man had
Speaker 1: discovered a stone slab in the roots of a tree
Speaker 1: on his land. While that wasn't entirely unusual, the markings
Speaker 1: on it were. Hedberg included the inscription, which he said
Speaker 1: looked like an unknown alphabet, consisting of two hundred and
Speaker 1: nineteen characters. The three grouped characters, written in Roman letters,
Speaker 1: read a V M, believed to refer to the Virgin Mary.
Speaker 1: Others resembled archaic Greek and Phoenician letters. One set of
Speaker 1: characters bore no resemblance to the others and may have
Speaker 1: been Runic numerals, but most were old Scandinavian ruins. The
Speaker 1: date carved on the stone read thirteen sixty two. Turned
Speaker 1: Blood sent a copy of the letter to the University
Speaker 1: of Minnesota for an expert opinion. There, Norwegian born professor O. J.
Speaker 1: Breda read the letter and examined the stone. His familiarity
Speaker 1: with Scandinavian languages allowed him to transcribe the writings. It
Speaker 1: told the story of eight Swedish and twenty two Norwegian
Speaker 1: men who had set up a camp. Some went fishing,
Speaker 1: and upon their return found ten men dead, and so
Speaker 1: asked the Virgin Mary to save them. Although had translated it,
Speaker 1: Breda was skeptical about the inscriptions authenticity. He suggested that
Speaker 1: a runology expert studied the stone. Breda's translation found its
Speaker 1: way to the Minnesota University Student newspaper. On January fourteenth
Speaker 1: of eight nine. The story appeared, along with the editorial
Speaker 1: comment that further tests should decide whether the discovery should
Speaker 1: be ranked with the Rosetta Stone or the Cardiff Giant.
Speaker 1: A month later, on February twenty second, turn Blood's newspaper
Speaker 1: also published Brata's translation. Turn Blood added comments, sparking rumors
Speaker 1: that the stone had been inscribed during a fourteenth century
Speaker 1: invasion of what now Minnesota. The theory became popular with
Speaker 1: the Swedish newspaper's readership. Other Midwestern Scandinavian papers printed the
Speaker 1: piece too. Eventually, the story made its way to larger
Speaker 1: publications like the Chicago Tribune. Somewhere in the telling, Breta's
Speaker 1: opinion regarding the authenticity became lost. Many with Scandinavian heritage
Speaker 1: wanted to believe the stone was real. To them, it
Speaker 1: would prove that they had discovered America long before other Europeans.
Speaker 1: The Scandinavian immigrants began to boast that not only had
Speaker 1: they discovered the land before anyone else, but had also
Speaker 1: been the first to penetrate the country's interior. Naturally, no
Speaker 1: one stopped to think that indigenous peoples had lived on
Speaker 1: the land, coast and interior long before anyone else. Still,
Speaker 1: for the Scandinavian and other European communities, there was a
Speaker 1: score to settle. The university shipped the stone by rail
Speaker 1: to a philologist at Northwestern University in Illinois. There, Professor
Speaker 1: George Kerm initially thought the stones inscriptions were genuine, but
Speaker 1: the more he considered it, the more the markings confused him.
Speaker 1: Though the stone had survived over five hundred harsh Minnesota winters,
Speaker 1: the edges of the letters looked more like a newly
Speaker 1: carved tombstone. He agreed with Breda that a runologist should
Speaker 1: take a look, and sent copies of the newspaper clippings
Speaker 1: and the inscription to the University of Oslo. Three professors
Speaker 1: there replied that the stone was a fraud. They stated
Speaker 1: that the inscription had been clumsily written by someone with
Speaker 1: barely any knowledge of runic letters or basic history. Northwestern
Speaker 1: returned to the stone to the man who had found it.
Speaker 1: Eight years later, in the summer of seven, a fellow
Speaker 1: Scandinavian hr Holland visited him, seeking materials to use in
Speaker 1: a Norwegian settlement. He had heard about the stone and
Speaker 1: convinced him to give it over. The following year, Holland
Speaker 1: published a book on the runestone. He offered to sell
Speaker 1: the stone to the Minnesota Historical Society, but they refused
Speaker 1: the five thousand dollar asking price, though they also published
Speaker 1: an article declaring the stone's authenticity. They cited several experts opinions,
Speaker 1: though the experts in question denied ever looking at the stone.
Speaker 1: The public seemed less enamored with the story than they
Speaker 1: had previously been, and the stone's popularity faded. But in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty eight, Minnesota established the Runestone Memorial Park in Alexandria.
Speaker 1: Holland found himself in a three way lawsuit over ownerships,
Speaker 1: so contentious that the court ordered the stone locked up
Speaker 1: and bonded for two dollars. Though there's no actual proof
Speaker 1: the stone is genuine, many still believe that the Norse
Speaker 1: people made it to Minnesota before other Europeans. It's a
Speaker 1: mystery that may never be settled. Today, the stone is
Speaker 1: on display at the Ruined Stone Museum. American Shadows as
Speaker 1: hosted by Lauren Vogelbaum. This episode was written by Michelle Muto,
Speaker 1: researched by Ali Steed, and produced by Miranda Hawkins and
Speaker 1: Trevor Young, with executive producers Aaron Mankey, Alex Williams, and
Speaker 1: Matt Frederick. To learn more about the show, visit Grim
Speaker 1: and Mild dot com. From more podcasts from i Heeart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts. M