Templars in America: The Secret Legacy of Voyages to America Before Columbus

Using archival and archaeological sources, two historians reveal the hidden history of the Knights Templar and their travels to pre-Columbian America . . . and their influence on the Founding Fathers.

Templars in America reveals the story of two leading European Templar families who combined forces to create a new commonwealth in America nearly a century before the voyages of Christopher Columbus. Henry St. Clair of the Orkney Islands, then part of Normandy, and Carlo Zeno, a Venetian trader, made peaceful and mutually beneficial contact with the Mi'qmaq people of what is now Canada. Proof of their travels is carved in stone on both sides of the Atlantic and can be found in documentary evidence borne out by a strong oral tradition that has withstood the test of time. Historians Tim Wallace-Murphy and Marilyn Hopkins demonstrate how this early contact with the Americas ties into the centuries-long development of the Templars and Freemasonry, which in turn shaped the thinking of the Founding Fathers--and the American Constitution.

Wallace-Murphy and Hopkins also reveal the continuous history of American exploration from the time of ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, through the age of the Vikings. Templars in America is a wild ride from the golden age of exploration to the founding of the United States.