10/27/2026
n 1867, Dr. Samuel Bean erected a headstone in Rushes Cemetery in Wellesley, Ontario, for his two wives. His first wife, Henrietta, died in 1865, seven months after their wedding, and his second wife, Susanna, died in 1867. They were buried side by side beneath a stone carved with a strange grid of letters that looked like a crossword puzzle.
For over a century, visitors, historians and amateur codebreakers tried to read it. Bean never revealed the key. He later moved to the United States, became an evangelist minister and was lost at sea on the way to Cuba in 1904.
In the 1970s, a 94-year-old woman living in a nearby retirement home cracked the code. The message begins at the seventh letter of the seventh row and spirals outward, reading: “In memoriam Henrietta, 1st wife of S. Bean, M.D. who died 27th Sep. 1865, aged 23 years, 2 months and 17 days and Susanna his 2nd wife who died 27th April, 1867, aged 26 years, 10 months and 15 days, 2 better wives 1 man never had, they were gifts from God but are now in Heaven. May God help me, S.B., to meet them there.” By 1982, years of grave rubbings had worn the original down, and a replica was installed.
