Every few years you read about a cache of Roman coins dug up somewhere in England, lying in the ground for the last 2,000 years or so.
In Egypt, archaeologists still dig in the sand looking for a hidden pharaoh’s tomb filled with art, mummies and … gold!
And if you’ve heard of Mel Fisher you know he’s the guy that found one of the Spanish Empire’s gold fleet sunken ships, filled with gold taken from the New World and heading to the Old.
Wherever empires, kingdoms or countries have existed there’s been a trail of treasure left behind, especially if there’s a loss along the way. Here in the South, the Confederacy fell and fell hard, and when it was driven down the stories of Civil War treasure rose.
Last week we followed the fleeing Jeff Davis, the one and only president of the Confederate States of America, as he made his way from the fallen Richmond to Georgia, looking for a way out and a way to start over.
He found neither when he was surrounded and run aground by Michigan and Wisconsin cavalrymen in the countryside near Irwinville, Georgia.
In the early morning raid he grabbed a raincoat and tried to ease out of the tent and away from the camp. His wife put her shawl over his head to keep his head warm in the damp, pre-dawn air.
A trooper spotted him trying to walk away and when he was grabbed they realized he was wearing his wife’s shawl and it was her raincoat he had put on. The Northern media made plenty of hay from this, spreading the rumor that he had tried to sneak away dressed like a woman. Jeff Davis was in hand, but the Confederate treasury was not.
When Davis got word back on April 9, 1865, from Robert E. Lee that he was pulling out from the defense of Richmond and that it would fall the next day, Davis and the members of the government left on one train and a second train that followed was loaded with the treasury funds of the Confederacy.
Along with the government funds there were a couple of other fortunes that were loaded for safekeeping as well.
The inventory included a half million in coins and gold bullion (worth more than $10 million today), hundreds of millions in paper currency and bonds, a type of English promissory notes worth up to 18,000 pounds sterling (worth close to $30 million today) but that’s only if you could get them to a British bank to cash them in, a chest of donated jewelry by Southern women to pay for an ironclad battleship and sweepings of gold shavings and gold dust from the mint in Dahlonega. There were also about $450,000 (another $10 million today) from private Richmond banks that was being sent along for safekeeping. And one other possible fortune, 50 kegs of Mexican silver coins. Supposedly the coins were offloaded in Danville but then others were put back on the train and one keg used to pay off debts. Thirty-nine kegs went missing.
Davis was captured on May 10, but a few days earlier on May 6 near Sandersville, Georgia, he had sent the treasury funds with Capt. Micajah Clark onward, to try and keep it intact on the fool’s errand of restarting the rebel cause.
At the end of the journey in Georgia, most of the government’s money had been spent to pay soldiers and other expenses. But at the end of the day, the silver jewelry captured by the North had disappeared, the fate of the 39 kegs of Mexican coins is a question mark, and of the gold and silver hoard of the Richmond banks, while it was still in the backcountry of our state, 20 bandits made a nighttime raid into the camp and made off with almost $200,000 of it (more than $3.5 million today), never to be heard from again!
E = mc2
What does history teach from these examples? The formula seems to be this: emergency (E) retreat equals money (M) for soldiers, multiplied by gold currency (C) lost, and lots of it (squared), or, as I describe it, E = mc2! And that brings us to a story of lost Confederate gold here in Whitfield County.
I live in Crow Valley, which is a north/south running valley north of Dalton. If you’re driving from Dalton to Chattanooga, once you get past Rocky Face on I-75 there is a ridge to your right that runs along the interstate for about five or six miles.
On the other side of that ridge is Crow Valley.
Recently I was talking to a friend in town who also owns property in Crow Valley, about half a mile from my house. He told me this story.
He was working on the property near the road when a van pulled up and parked along the side of the road. The van had all types of antennas on it, and a gentleman climbed out with a handheld radio/antenna gizmo and started waving it around looking for some type of signal.
My friend walked over and asked what the man was doing. He said there was lost Confederate gold somewhere on the ridge and he was using sophisticated and powerful metal-detecting equipment to try and locate it. If he could get a “good reading” for metal along there, he could find the gold.
He didn’t find it at that time.
Could there be truth to the tale? Let’s review the Dalton situation. The Confederate forces were soundly defeated in November 1863 in Chattanooga and retreated to Dalton. While here, the Southern forces built extensive trenches and gun emplacements, making a secure defensive position that was thought of as “Fortress Dalton.” Positions were all over the Crow Valley area and many are still here today.
In a surprise move, Union forces did an end run around Dalton, coming out at Resaca behind the Southern army that was now in danger of getting surrounded. From May 10-12, 1864, the entire Confederate army, 60,000 or more strong, rushed to meet the enemy.
Soooo? With the Union army making an end run, the Dalton garrison had to skeedaddle south. Was there a paymaster in Crow Valley who had to load up the wagon with supplies so he buried gold here thinking they would be back to retrieve it later?
Or did a paymaster, seeing everyone in a panicked rush, bury gold for himself for after the war? If so, who knew where it was buried?
What happened to them over the next bloody, battle-filled months of the war?
Resaca, the Atlanta Campaign, the battle of Nashville and the slaughter at Franklin all provided plenty of risks for whoever may have buried gold here to be killed or wounded. A fall from a horse could induce “gold-forgetting amnesia!”
You might notice I’m putting forth as many fact-less questions as one of those “Ancient Aliens Visited Earth” documentaries, but it’s fun to “what if,” isn’t it? Especially if it means me finding lost rebel gold in the backyard!
But my buddy’s story about the radio van man searching for “gold signals” along the ridge was not the first time I had heard about gold buried on the mountain. Here’s my story!
Rumors of buried gold
Years ago, I happened to be over at the Poplar Springs Baptist Church a little over a mile and a half from my house, looking to see how old the cemetery is (that’s one of the jobs us Town Criers take on from time to time). The church was here during the war and was on the front lines. There was an older gentleman also there and we got to talking.
He was a member of the Crow family and so for the first time I learned Crow Valley was named for the family that owned property there rather than for the birds that chase hawks around above the valley.
In talking about the history of the family and their land he told that he had heard rumors his whole life of Confederate gold buried somewhere up there.
He said one of his relatives believed it so strongly that he spent much of his spare time searching the ridge for the gold.
As a joke, one of the other family members went up on the mountain and dug a large hole.
That’s all, he just dug a hole at a random spot and left it there … empty. Then he waited. Sure enough, after a few weeks, the treasure hunter came off the mountain fuming mad. “Someone found the lost gold! And it wasn’t me!” After a suitable time for the rest of the family to enjoy the joke, he was let in on it, although he probably didn’t think it very funny. I’m not very lucky when it comes to money, so I bet I could search a lifetime up there and couldn’t even find that empty hole.
With the leaves falling and the grass patrol (snakes) heading in to dens for the winter, it’s a good time to look for treasure.
I live in Crow Valley. Do I believe in the legend of the lost Confederate gold on the mountain?
Well, the way things are going these days in the world, I don’t not believe in anything!