MenotomyMaps
New member
I posted this story on my site last month:
This is an old buried treasure lead I looked into a few years ago. The information comes from old maps, old diaries and newspaper articles. It took about a year's worth of research to put it together.
Craggy Gulch (not the actual name) is a shallow, rocky, 10 acre gorge located in a town in New England. This section of land is still in the woods today and has not been developed. The area around Craggy Gulch was last farmed in the 1890s.
In 1807 a village west of Boston needed a new steeple for their meeting hall. The townspeople donated their time and materials and built the steeple on the ground, and then had to find someone to place it on top of the meeting house. A resident was sent to the waterfront in Boston to hire some sailors and 'dock rats' to do the work. The resident returned with 5 men. All were young and fit except one. He was about 50 years old and the locals figured he was coming along as a foreman to help supervise the younger men.
The sailors and dock rats stayed in a tavern located across from the meeting house for a few days. When the work was done, the younger men returned to Boston but the older man stayed. He took a permanent room in the tavern, and became known locally as 'The Captain' and was known for his thick French accent and the blue silk scarf he wore. No one ever learned his real name and The Captain kept to himself.
After about a month The Captain began receiving packages via stage coach on a regular basis. A day or so after he would get a package, his horse could be seen at night tied up near the West end of Craggy Gulch. There were many rumors about The Captain but none were ever confirmed. Some folks thought he was a rich sea captain who had come to settle down away from the water. Some folks figured he was a pirate who had retired to this small village and was to live out his life in comfort. Some older folks in town thought they remembered him visiting the village years earlier as a younger man.
Two years went by and The Captain continued his pattern of receiving packages by stage and visiting Craggy Gulch at night when the locals noticed The Captain had not been seen in a while. The tavern owner's maid had mentioned that his room had been unused for several weeks. A few weeks later a stage coach driver found The Captain's bloodied blue silk scarf blowing in the bushes near the Gulch...
Forty-one years later, in 1850, a railroad company was surveying a route for a new rail line. One possible path for this line went through Craggy Gulch toward the center of town. Ultimately the rail route was not built through Craggy Gulch, but was laid about 1.5 miles east of there. As the rail company's surveyors where looking at a potential rail through Craggy Gulch workers with picks and shovels were told to dig into different gravel banks and hillsides to determine how deep the rock ledges were. One group of workers was digging near the west end of the gulch when they came upon a skeleton. Among the bones, workers found four French gold coins.
The discovery of a skeleton and gold coins were a big topic of conversation and speculation in the town for several weeks. The local paper printed townspeoples' thoughts and reactions. Some of the old timers in town figured this was the body of The Captain.
As the story of The Captain was told around town, more and more people figured there would be caches of gold to be found around Craggy Gulch. Townspeople spent days and nights digging and poking around the gulch. A newspaper article from 1902 stated that even then, 50 years later, holes from folks digging in the 1850s could still be seen.
Apparently some of the 1850's treasure hunters found what they were looking for. Two farming families paid off their mortgages and built new barns during the summer of 1851. Newspapers noted there was no particularly good crop or other source of income that would allow these average families to do this. Another local resident, an old 'hermit' who lived in a shack on a bridle path close to the gulch, bought new clothes, a new horse, and moved to Boston during that same summer.
As I said at the beginning of this article, it took me about a year to put the pieces together on this story. It started with one small lead in an old newspaper, then some research in a few books, and then diaries, etc. One of the more difficult parts was to find out exactly where Craggy Gulch was. If you've ever worked with old maps and 'place names', you can appreciate the problems I had. Railroad records didn't specify an area called Craggy Gulch and the old maps I had didn't show it. I started to narrow the location down based on clues like old road names and the gulch's proximity to an old cemetery. Then one day while digging around in the town's historical society's collection, I found a map which identified it.
A few weeks later I drove to Craggy Gulch to check it out. When I got to the area I found the old cemetery and headed into the woods. After walking a few hundred yards, the land dropped off sharply. This was typical second growth New England forest, with a mixture of old hardwood trees and younger pines. There were many blueberry bushes, but overall the area was not overgrown with brush. I walked the gulch for about an hour, closely examining every indentation in the ground looking for signs of people's diggings from 150 years ago. There were a few dozen worn down indentations, about 6 feet across and about 2 feet deep with small rounded mounds around them. It wouldn't take much to make me believe these depressions were made by treasure hunters in the 1850s.
Vin - MenotomyMaps.com
This is an old buried treasure lead I looked into a few years ago. The information comes from old maps, old diaries and newspaper articles. It took about a year's worth of research to put it together.
Craggy Gulch (not the actual name) is a shallow, rocky, 10 acre gorge located in a town in New England. This section of land is still in the woods today and has not been developed. The area around Craggy Gulch was last farmed in the 1890s.
In 1807 a village west of Boston needed a new steeple for their meeting hall. The townspeople donated their time and materials and built the steeple on the ground, and then had to find someone to place it on top of the meeting house. A resident was sent to the waterfront in Boston to hire some sailors and 'dock rats' to do the work. The resident returned with 5 men. All were young and fit except one. He was about 50 years old and the locals figured he was coming along as a foreman to help supervise the younger men.
The sailors and dock rats stayed in a tavern located across from the meeting house for a few days. When the work was done, the younger men returned to Boston but the older man stayed. He took a permanent room in the tavern, and became known locally as 'The Captain' and was known for his thick French accent and the blue silk scarf he wore. No one ever learned his real name and The Captain kept to himself.
After about a month The Captain began receiving packages via stage coach on a regular basis. A day or so after he would get a package, his horse could be seen at night tied up near the West end of Craggy Gulch. There were many rumors about The Captain but none were ever confirmed. Some folks thought he was a rich sea captain who had come to settle down away from the water. Some folks figured he was a pirate who had retired to this small village and was to live out his life in comfort. Some older folks in town thought they remembered him visiting the village years earlier as a younger man.
Two years went by and The Captain continued his pattern of receiving packages by stage and visiting Craggy Gulch at night when the locals noticed The Captain had not been seen in a while. The tavern owner's maid had mentioned that his room had been unused for several weeks. A few weeks later a stage coach driver found The Captain's bloodied blue silk scarf blowing in the bushes near the Gulch...
Forty-one years later, in 1850, a railroad company was surveying a route for a new rail line. One possible path for this line went through Craggy Gulch toward the center of town. Ultimately the rail route was not built through Craggy Gulch, but was laid about 1.5 miles east of there. As the rail company's surveyors where looking at a potential rail through Craggy Gulch workers with picks and shovels were told to dig into different gravel banks and hillsides to determine how deep the rock ledges were. One group of workers was digging near the west end of the gulch when they came upon a skeleton. Among the bones, workers found four French gold coins.
The discovery of a skeleton and gold coins were a big topic of conversation and speculation in the town for several weeks. The local paper printed townspeoples' thoughts and reactions. Some of the old timers in town figured this was the body of The Captain.
As the story of The Captain was told around town, more and more people figured there would be caches of gold to be found around Craggy Gulch. Townspeople spent days and nights digging and poking around the gulch. A newspaper article from 1902 stated that even then, 50 years later, holes from folks digging in the 1850s could still be seen.
Apparently some of the 1850's treasure hunters found what they were looking for. Two farming families paid off their mortgages and built new barns during the summer of 1851. Newspapers noted there was no particularly good crop or other source of income that would allow these average families to do this. Another local resident, an old 'hermit' who lived in a shack on a bridle path close to the gulch, bought new clothes, a new horse, and moved to Boston during that same summer.
As I said at the beginning of this article, it took me about a year to put the pieces together on this story. It started with one small lead in an old newspaper, then some research in a few books, and then diaries, etc. One of the more difficult parts was to find out exactly where Craggy Gulch was. If you've ever worked with old maps and 'place names', you can appreciate the problems I had. Railroad records didn't specify an area called Craggy Gulch and the old maps I had didn't show it. I started to narrow the location down based on clues like old road names and the gulch's proximity to an old cemetery. Then one day while digging around in the town's historical society's collection, I found a map which identified it.
A few weeks later I drove to Craggy Gulch to check it out. When I got to the area I found the old cemetery and headed into the woods. After walking a few hundred yards, the land dropped off sharply. This was typical second growth New England forest, with a mixture of old hardwood trees and younger pines. There were many blueberry bushes, but overall the area was not overgrown with brush. I walked the gulch for about an hour, closely examining every indentation in the ground looking for signs of people's diggings from 150 years ago. There were a few dozen worn down indentations, about 6 feet across and about 2 feet deep with small rounded mounds around them. It wouldn't take much to make me believe these depressions were made by treasure hunters in the 1850s.
Vin - MenotomyMaps.com
