Confederate Gold and Silver (46 page)

With Chick’s help, Paul cleared the soil away from the object he had seen protruding from the ground. First with shovels and then carefully with their hands, they cleared the remaining soil away from the object. As they did, Bobby Ray shoveled the soil into the bucket of Duke’s backhoe so it could be moved away from where they were working.

“It’s some kind of cloth, perhaps a shirt or maybe even a blanket.”

After two bucket loads of soil had been taken away, it was easy for Paul to see the object in the ground was actually the remnants of two sets of blankets. The blankets had been rolled up and were over five feet in length. “Chick, we’ve got some remains in here for sure. It appears to be two separate sets of remains. It looks like whomever is here has been carefully wrapped in these blankets. The blankets are in bad shape so we have to be careful. We need to slide a tarp under them as carefully as possible so we can lift the remains out of the grave without damaging them.”

Down on their hands and knees, Paul, Chick, and Bobby Ray carefully worked for almost two hours slowly threading a large black plastic tarp under the remnants of the blankets they had found. Paul made them work slowly so neither the blankets nor the soldier’s remains were harmed. Anxiously, Duke watched as they worked.

When they finally finished and after Paul was satisfied nothing had been damaged, he gave the OK for the tarp to be lifted out of the grave. “Let’s carefully pick this up and move it out of the grave. Remember folks we are doing this slowly and with dignity and respect.” With Duke and Jayne’s help, Paul and Chick lifted one end of the tarp up to them. Carefully they slowly lifted the remains up and out of the grave. The remains were then carried several feet away from where they had lain for almost one hundred and fifty years. Gently they were laid down on the soft grass within Duke’s meadow.

As this was being done, Pete and Jayne documented the removal of the remains everyway they could. After taking numerous digital photos of the process, Jayne walked back towards the grave site to photograph the now empty grave. She was the first one to see the next object. It was barely noticeable as it protruded ever so slightly out of one of the side walls of the grave they had just excavated. “Guys, I think we have something else here, it looks like another blanket!”

It took almost another hour of painstakingly removing the soil by hand to finally clear enough of it from around the third set of blankets. When fully exposed the object Jayne had seen again proved to be two separate blankets, just like the first two sets of remains had been wrapped in. These blankets also appeared to contain the remains of another soldier. After the soil had been cleared away from around the blankets, and with the same care and respect given to the first sets of remains, the plastic tarp they had placed under this set of remains was also carefully lifted from the grave. The tarp was carried to where the remains of the first two soldiers had been placed on the ground. It was the first time the remains had felt fresh air in almost one hundred and fifty years.

For several moments they all stood around the blankets they had just removed from the grave. They each tried to comprehend what it was they had just discovered and who it was that had been wrapped in the blankets; wondering at the same time how each of the soldiers had died. As they solemnly stood there, Duke took off his hat and bowed his head to pray. It was a gesture everyone soon took part in. “I just wish my granddaddy was still alive so he could see what had been buried near this cross for all of them years. This was a special place for him.”

“Duke, I have a feeling the remains would not be the only thing he would have appreciated seeing.” Not understanding what Paul meant by his comment, Duke gave him a quizzical look.

Paul, then Chick, and then the others, with Duke following them, walked back to the grave they had just excavated. Climbing down into the grave and using one of the shovels they had been digging with earlier, Paul quietly dug for several moments. As he dug the shovel hit something hard in the soil. Stopping his digging, he leaned the shovel against the side of the already chest deep grave.

“Jayne, hand me one of those metal detectors please.” Paul barely had time to place the metal detector over the area where his shovel had hit something when it immediately gave a strong beep. The presence of coins came up on the metal detector’s electronic display screen. Seeing the reading on the display screen he knew they had found what so many people over the years had been looking for. When he looked up from where he was standing in the grave, Chick saw a big smile on Paul’s face. It was the biggest smile he had ever seen.

The object he had located was still approximately four inches under the soil according to the reading he saw on the display screen. Kneeling down in the grave and again using his hands to slowly scrape away the soil which still hid the object he had hoped to find, Paul soon determined what the object was. “I think it’s a wooden barrel. The top is decayed and appears to have a hole in it, but I can feel one of the metal hoops still around the top part of the barrel. It appears to be in decent shape considering how long it’s been here.” As he worked the soil away from the top of the barrel, Pete documented the find with the video cameras Bobby Ray and he had been using.

Giving him a couple of moments to clear away more of the soil, Chick asked the question the others had patiently waited for someone else to ask. “Is it what we are looking for?” The smile on Paul’s face was all Chick needed for an answer.

“I haven’t looked inside of it, but I think we found what we had hoped to find!”

As Paul climbed out of the grave, the rest of them were exchanging high fives and back slaps with each other. The only exception was Duke. He was still unaware of what they had found. “Can you believe it has been found after all of these years? And we found it! We found it, not anyone else!” The smiles on their faces added to the confusion Duke was experiencing. He could tell something special had happened, but he was not sure what it was that now made the others so happy.

After a few moments of celebration, Paul calmed them down. “Hey, everyone, listen up for a minute. Take some more video of what we just found and take some digital photos as well, and Chick, plot the wooden barrel on the map for our future needs, but all of you stay out of the grave. I need to talk to Duke for a few minutes.”

Walking Duke away from the grave site, Paul could see from his face he still did not understand what was going on with what they had just found. Now it was time to tell him what had been buried on his property for all of these years. “Duke, when I discovered the remains of the Confederate soldier it was more than just a discovery of the soldier’s remains and a few relics from the war I accidently found. It has proved to be much more than that. The relics I found are all priceless in their own way and the discovery of the soldier, well let’s just say that’s not something that happens everyday. Those items have proved to be just small pieces of an even bigger find, one we have partially found here today. When I found the soldier I also found clues which ultimately have led us here today. We hope other clues will lead us to other places very soon. Are you following me on this so far?”

Still somewhat overwhelmed by finding the remains of the three soldiers on his property, Duke was even more confused by what Paul had found in the grave after the remains had been removed. “I’m trying to stay with you, but I’m confused about what y’all think is still in the grave. You said something about a barrel being in the grave, is that right?”

“Duke, let me ask you a question. Being Southern born and bred, you probably have heard about the legend of the missing Confederate gold and silver from the Civil War, correct?”

“Sure have. My granddaddy and daddy spoke about the legend on many occasions. The money went missing during the war. From what I know it ain’t ever turned up yet.”

Paul could not help but smile. “Duke, I think it just did!”

“What!”

“The soldier I found appears to be the Confederate officer who was charged with moving the gold and silver south out of Richmond. He was likely moving it to either Atlanta or to someplace in Mississippi, but I am not sure of the exact location at this time. What the location was really does not even matter. What matters is I, I mean we, we don’t think he stole the money like some others have suspected he did. What we think happened is that along the way he encountered some difficulties, like three of his men dying here on your property, probably from gunshot wounds after being ambushed or from a fate quite similar to that. We also think because some of his men had died he may have had trouble finishing his mission so he chose to bury some of the money right here. He may have done the same in a couple of other places as well. He likely did this so he could travel faster to where he hoped to get the rest of the money to. That’s all a guess on our part, but it makes sense if you think about it. He probably was the person who made the map I showed you before and quite likely the one who put the wooden cross and rocks on it. The same cross your granddaddy cared for. Most likely he planned on using the cross as a reference point for when he could come back and dig the money up. The CSA that’s carved in the wooden cross did not stand for ‘Old Charley’, it stood for the Confederate States of America. Duke, what the soldier I found did before he died was to leave clues for someone like me to find. If he had stolen the money then I doubt he would have left any clues behind for the money to be found.”

The magnitude of Paul’s news was an obvious shock to Duke. “Are y’all telling me what we just found, really what y’all just found, is the missing Confederate gold and silver?”

“Some of it is. We think it’s at least part of it.”

Duke was overwhelmed by what he had just been told and by what they had just found on his property. It was found on the piece of property his granddaddy had held sacred for so many years. Standing quietly for a few moments, Duke gently shook his head from side to side as he tried to comprehend all that had occurred. The excitement soon caused him to pace back and forth for several additional moments as he processed all that had happened in just one afternoon. “I don’t believe it. I just don’t believe it!” Calming down, he asked the question Paul had been waiting for.

“So whose money is it? Seeing that it’s buried here on my land, is it mine?”

“Duke, I understand how you could think that way and to some regard you have a strong argument to make that it is yours. But as we have come to realize and we were the ones to find it, the money is not ours to lay claim to. We don’t know each other very well, but what I do know about you is that in your heart I believe you already know this money is not yours either. We found it with your help and with your permission, but after you think about it, it’s not yours. I’m sure your granddaddy would tell you the same thing. I did not know the man, but the way you have talked about him and the way I can see how he helped raise you, I believe he would tell you the same as I just did. I have him pictured as an honest and humble man, one who would likely tell you the money still belongs to the people of the Confederacy. I also believe he would tell you the money does not belong to one family or to one person, but rather it belongs to a larger group of people. My guess is he would want it shared by that large group of people, most likely Southern people. Am I right?”

Looking down at the ground as he stood silently for a couple of moments, Duke then looked at Paul. “You know my granddaddy pretty well already, don’t you?”

Smiling at Duke’s comment, Paul shared his thoughts with him. “Duke, I have a plan for the money. I assure you that you are a part of this plan. We don’t know each other very well yet, but I hope you will trust me to do the right thing here.”

“Paul, I’m a country boy, a simple country boy who still believes in a man’s word. You give me your word and we shake on it, then I guess we then have to trust each other, don’t we?”

In front of Chick, who had walked over to where they were talking, Paul and Duke shook hands. It was the time-tested way of doing business between friends. It would be the start of a friendship which would last for many years.

“Duke, before you go and dig this wooden barrel up for us we are going to ask two more things of you. We believe this is the first of at least two, possibly three locations where the missing gold and silver was hidden, so what we find here today is just the start of our hunt for the rest of it. We know it will be hard for you to do, but it will be just as hard for us to do the same thing. What I am trying to say is we need you to keep this as close to the vest as possible, especially no mention of any of this to any reporters. It will only hurt our efforts to find the rest of the missing money. You have my word when we find the next location, and we will, I will call you before we do any digging. We want you to be there when we do.”

Duke nodded his head at Paul’s comments. “We shook hands a couple of minutes ago so you have my word I will keep this quiet. You know, I would like to be there when y’all find the next place you think the money has been buried, so please call me. But you said there were two things y’all needed. What’s the second?”

“Oh, right. Do you have anything we could make a large screen out of? I would like to build a sifting screen so we could run the soil from the grave through it, just in the event we have missed something. I’d like to sift the soil for coins and other items. After that is done, I want to place the remains temporarily back into the grave for now. I’d like the screen to be in the shape of a square, about four to five feet in size so we could set it on blocks, you know concrete blocks or even wooden blocks. It would be easier to sift the soil if the screen was elevated up a few feet off the ground. Can you make something like that up for us?”

“Sure, no problem. I’ll call the guys on my cell phone and have them put it together with some metal screening we use for the hog pens. I’ll have it framed with wood. I also have plenty of concrete blocks to set the screen on. They can call me when it’s ready and I’ll pick it up with the backhoe, this way they won’t know what’s going on down here.” It took only a few seconds for Duke to get one of his foremen on the phone, describing to him what he wanted built.