Woman Buys Vintage Dress, Finds 19th-Century Coded Note Hidden Inside—Here’s What It Says:

Courtesy of Sara Rivers Cofield

An archaeologist by trade, Sara Colfield, 46, has always loved to collect vintage clothing as a hobby. Both in her work and spare time, she seeks to understand the lives of people now long gone.

In 2013, a vintage dress she had bought in a boutique led to her finding a coded message hidden inside a secret pocket. It opened a window into the past for a whole community.

Buying the Dress

After her parents had retired to Searsport, Maine, Ms. Colfield traveled from her home in Maryland to see them. There, she made the cryptic discovery.

Visiting her folks during Christmas of 2013, Ms. Colfield and her mother were rifling through wares at a local antique shop in Searsport. That’s when the unique vintage dress came to light.

The vintage 19th-century dress Sara Colfield bought at an antique store in Searsport, Maine. Courtesy of Sara Rivers Cofield

“I paid $100 for it, which was a huge splurge for me at the time,” Ms. Colfield told The Epoch Times. “But it was one of those things where I was like, ‘Oh, I can’t not do it!’ It was just too good.”

Discovering a Coded Message

Shortly after purchasing the dress, she realized there was a secret pocket that could only be accessed when the dress was hiked up. On investigation, the pocket was found to contain a paper with a message that somehow hadn’t been damaged, even after being inside the article for well over a century.

Ms. Colfield and her mother scrambled to decipher what the message said, but it seemed nonsensical. They were bewildered by it.

“I started reading. It didn’t make any sense at all,” Ms. Colfield told the newspaper.

Photos showing different aspects of the dress, which include a hidden pocket where the secret message was discovered. Courtesy of Sara Rivers Cofield

The name "Bennet" was found written on the vintage dress. Courtesy of Sara Rivers Cofield

The words were obviously some kind of code containing combinations of words, including: “Bismark, omit, leafage, buck, bank, miss, nostril, linnet, ink.”

Documenting her discovery, Ms. Colfield wrote about the dress and code on her personal blog, which her friends and family follow. It was subsequently shared to a codebreaking page on Reddit.

A Challenge to Codebreakers

The process of trying to break this particular code apparently involved many historical nuances that made it seem impossible. It was thought that the code was a form of 19th-century telegraph message.

“It turns out that during this time of the telegraph, the code books were often proprietary … So, if you’re in the mining industry, you had your own code book, if you’re in the train industry, you have your own code book,” Ms. Colfield said. “Finding the right codebook is a total needle in the haystack. And I just kind of assumed that we would never find it.”

A photo showing part of the secret message. Courtesy of Sara Rivers Cofield

A paper note that is part of a secret message found inside a 19th-century dress. Courtesy of Sara Rivers Cofield

Unbeknownst to her, though, the codebreaking community on Reddit that had been introduced to the puzzle from her vintage dress wouldn’t give up so easily.

Solving the puzzle had been accepted as a challenge by the dedicated codebreakers, she said. And they weren’t going to let this one go.

Nearly 10 years after her vintage dress purchase, a man named Wayne Chan, who works for the the University of Manitoba’s Centre for Earth Observation Science, contacted her.

Cracking the Code

The man from Manitoba let her know that he had cracked the code and was publishing a paper on the discovery. After several years and one initial failed attempt, Mr. Chan discovered that the original content of the message was, actually, a weather report for Carol, Illinois, dated May 27, 1888.

Details of the vintage dress. Courtesy of Sara Rivers Cofield

Mr. Chan also pinned down the individual who had originally encoded the weather report. When she first got the dress, Ms. Colfield noted that the name “Bennett” was printed on the article. After doing some research, Mr. Chan found there was a woman by the last name Bennett working in the telegraph offices in Illinois in the late 19^th century; though there was also a married man with the same last name in Washington D.C. So the origins of how the message ended up in the dress and how it got to Maine remained a mystery.

Connecting With the Past

Ms. Colfield says she now gets asked if it disappoints her that it was just a weather report. And she points out that, to the contrary, that’s exactly what excites her about archeology and collecting vintage textiles as a hobby.

“On one hand, I don’t care what the weather was that day,” Ms. Colfield said. “On the other hand, I do care.”

(Courtesy of Sara Rivers Cofield)

In a video, Sara Colfield shows her vintage dress along with the hidden pocket and the secret coded message from 1888 she found inside.

She said, “I fundamentally care, and I have devoted my whole career and my hobby to understanding the daily life of people in the past. So that’s what archaeology is: we take people’s trash, tiny little things they left behind.”

Although many aspects of the dress still remain shrouded in mystery—where it came from, whether it was simply recycled paper, who wrote it—the investigation into some hidden aspects of life has fueled the interest of a whole community.

For Ms. Colfield, uncovering some little details of humanity from the past has been most fascinating.

“They become artifacts, and then we need to understand people’s daily lives,” she said. “And, really, what could be more fundamental to people than knowing what the weather’s going to be?”

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