Pastimes: A Civil War Cipher

I took my first teaching position in 1975 when Minden’s Glenbrook School hired me to teach social studies and be the assistant basketball coach. Although my contribution was small, I am proud to say that we won the state championship the following year.

One of the schools we played was in Granada, Mississippi. The restaurant at the motel the team stayed in was decorated with numerous Civil War prints, and my players told the owner, William Crawford, that I was a Civil War buff. He introduced himself and showed me a two-volume diary that had belonged to his late wife’s ancestor. While thumbing through the pages, Crawford pointed out a couple of the diary entries that were written in a strange cipher, or type of code.

When I was working on my master’s degree in history at Louisiana Tech University a couple of years later, I contacted Crawford and asked if he would let me use the diary as the basis for my thesis. He graciously agreed and said that if I could locate any of the soldier’s descendants, he would return the diary to the family. He also requested that I let him know if I was able to break the mysterious cipher.

The diary belonged to Joseph W. Ely of Allegan, Michigan. Ely, a corporal in the 19th Michigan Infantry, was captured at Thompson’s Station, Tennessee, and was held for a time in the infamous Libby Prison before being exchanged. After returning to his regiment, he had his left ring finger shot off in the Atlanta Campaign but survived the March to the Sea and the Carolinas Campaign to return home and live well into the twentieth century.

During my research, I discovered that Ely’s granddaughter, Leona Farnsworth, lived in Michigan and had fond memories of her grandfather. She also taught genealogy and was thrilled when I mentioned the diary because she never knew it existed.

Carol and I drove to Michigan to meet Mrs. Farnsworth and she shared photographs, letters, and memories of Ely that enriched my thesis. Curious, I asked her if she had any idea why her grandfather would make two diary entries in a secret cipher but she did not.

After returning home, I put Crawford and Mrs. Farnsworth in touch, and, true to his word, Crawford sent her the diary.

I conducted some cursory research but was unable to break the cipher before finishing my degree and heading to Texas A&M University for my doctoral studies. For two years I wondered what Ely had written in his diary that he did not want anyone to read. Did he lose faith in the cause, write ill of loved ones, or spend money on pleasures of the flesh? It gnawed at me not to know.

At College Station, I had a break from my studies on some afternoons and usually spent that time napping in my recliner while watching a children’s show that ran old Looney Tunes cartoons. The program also included short segments that presented little-known, interesting facts.

One day I was half asleep when I heard the announcer declare, “Hey, kids! Did you know that Civil War soldiers often wrote in secret codes?” I opened one eye to see Joseph W. Ely’s mysterious cipher on the screen.

I later discovered that Ely’s cipher is actually well known, and if the Internet had existed in the 1970s I could have easily broken it. It is sometimes referred to as the pigpen cipher or the Freemason Cipher, because Masons used it early in their history. I never discovered whether Ely was a Mason or if he learned the cipher from comrades and just wanted to experiment with it, but I suspect it was the latter.

The cipher is based on two tic-tac-toe grids and two X’s, with letters being placed within each. There are nine individual spaces in each grid and four spaces in each X, thus providing twenty-six spaces for the alphabet. Dots are added in the second grid and X to distinguish them from the first two. When using the cipher, the space encompassing the letter is used instead of the letter itself.  

The order of the grids and X’s can be rearranged in different ways (for example using grid, X, grid, X or grid, grid, X, X) and the letters can be placed in a different order. The arrangement does not matter as long as those using the cipher know what it is.

As soon as I saw Ely’s cipher on television, I grabbed a pencil and began working to translate the diary entries. It took a little while because Ely made a couple of transcribing errors, but I finally figured them out.

And what dark secrets did I learn about Joseph W. Ely after cracking his cipher? He had simply written that he visited his friend Henry Brown in the hospital and bought a watch for five dollars.

Dr. Terry L. Jones is a professor emeritus of history at the University of Louisiana at Monroe. For an autographed copy of “Louisiana Pastimes,” a collection of the author’s stories, send $25 to Terry L. Jones, P.O Box 1581, West Monroe, LA 71294.