Carved stone still unexplained after more than a century
By Kathy McCormack, Associated Press Writer July 4, 2006

CONCORD, N.H. --In 1872, so the story goes, workers digging a hole for a
fence post near Lake Winnipesaukee in Meredith found a lump of clay that
seemed out of place.
There was something inside -- a dark, odd-looking, egg-shaped stone with
a variety of carvings, including a face, teepee, ear of corn and
star-like circles.

And there were lots of questions: Who made the stone and why? How old
was it? How was it carved?
To date, no one's been able to say for sure, and the item has come to be
known as the "Mystery Stone."
Seneca Ladd, a Meredith businessman who hired the workers, was credited
with the discovery.

"As Mr. Ladd is quite a naturalist, and has already an extensive private
collection of relics and specimens, he was delighted with the new
discovery, and exhibited and explained the really remarkable relic with
an enthusiasm which only the genuine student can feel," an article in
"The American Naturalist" said that November.

Ladd died in 1892, and in 1927, one of his daughters donated the stone
to the New Hampshire Historical Society. The stone, surrounded by
mirrors showing off its symbols, recently went on permanent display at
the Museum of New Hampshire History, where it had last been exhibited in
1996.

All the symbols on the 4-inch-long, 2 1/2-inch-thick stone are open to
interpretation. On one side, it has what look like inverted arrows, a
moon, some dots and a spiral. Another side shows the ear of corn and a
depressed circle with three figures, one of which looks like a deer's
leg.
"The American Naturalist" suggested the stone "commemorates a treaty
between two tribes."

Others have guessed the stone is Celtic or Inuit. A letter to the
historical society in 1931 suggested it was a "thunderstone," which, the
writer said, "always present the appearance of having been machined or
hand-worked: frequently they come from deep in the earth, embedded in
lumps of clay, or even surrounded by solid rock or coral."

Another curious detail is that there are holes bored in both ends of the
stone, with different size bits. Each bore is straight, not tapered.
Scratches in the lower bore suggest it was placed on a metal shaft and
removed several times, according to an analysis done by state officials
in 1994.
"I've seen a number of holes bored in stone with technology that you
would associate with prehistoric North America," said Richard Boisvert,
state archaeologist. "There's a certain amount of unevenness ... and
this hole was extremely regular throughout."

Boisvert suggested the holes were drilled by power tools, perhaps from
the 19th or 20th centuries. "What we did not see was variations that
would be consistent with something that was several hundred years old,"
he said.
The analysis, which included comments from geologist Eugene Boudette,
concluded the stone is a type of quartzite, derived from sandstone, or
mylonite, a fine-grained, laminated rock formed by the shifting of rock
layers along faults. The rock type was not familiar to New Hampshire,
but the state could not be ruled out as the source, Boudette said.
Boisvert said to his knowledge, the stone is unique. "That makes it very
hard to figure out where it fits," he said.

One problem is the story of the stone's discovery is fuzzy, he said.
"You couldn't be certain exactly what kind of context it came from.
There's a lot of ambiguity there ... it's very difficult to evaluate
it," he said. "The context of the discovery is sometimes more important
than the item itself."

For example, Boisvert said, if the item had been something used by a
fraternal order that has its own secrets and mysteries, "that means the
information doesn't get out very well, does it? The information may have
been available at one point, but it's really no longer available to us.
Who knows?"

Wesley Balla, the society's director of collections and exhibitions,
said one avenue to explore might be looking for similar symbols. And,
"there's also always the hope that there might be something more in
either newspaper or manuscript form that might discuss the contents," he
said.

Balla said the discovery seems to reflect on the way artifacts were
treated in the 19th century. The focus was more on the object itself,
not on details such as how deep the soil was where it was found, if
anything was found near it, or how far it was from the lake.
"All of that is lost," he said.