Confederate Gold and Silver (37 page)

“Captain Baldwin, it was indeed an honor to meet you. I thank you for your valuable assistance. I shall indeed let General Lee know of your help and of your high regard for him.”

That said, and with the wagons now unloaded from the train, they again shook hands. The wagons slowly started their move east towards Georgetown. As he watched them move away from the train, Baldwin signaled for the train to start moving. Holding onto the side of the open door of one of the boxcars, he braced himself as the train lurched forward as it started moving. He watched as Francis moved out of sight, partially obscured from view by the many pine trees along the side of the rough trail he now travelled on. As he stood there on the straw covered floor of the boxcar, Baldwin reached down and picked up a single gold coin, an 1861 Quarter Eagle. He had seen it mixed in with the straw on the floor of the boxcar. Fingering the almost new gold coin, he finally realized what Francis’ mission was about. “I hope he makes it. We need that money to fight the damn Yankees with!” Silently he stood there for a few minutes, wishing his new friend well. He hoped they would see each other after the war.

The war would continue to rage for well over another year, but Baldwin would not see the full year unfold. The gold and silver would last for many more years. It would only take someone to finally find it.

Summer,
2011

17
Looking
For
Gold.
 

“When
Johnny
comes
marching
home
again,
Hurrah!
Hurrah!
We’ll
give
him
a
hearty
welcome
then,
Hurrah!
Hurrah!”
Lyrics
to
‘When
Johnny
Comes
Marching
Home’,
a
Union
Civil
War
song.

Like it is for most people the night before they get married or the night before they start a new job, it was the same for Chick the night before he was to meet with Paul and Jayne to learn the clues Paul had uncovered regarding the missing Confederate treasury. The excitement of what the following day would bring denied him any chance at sleep and he spent most of the night tossing, turning, and thinking of what he would learn in the morning.

As he lay in bed, Chick ran many questions through his head. “Does Paul really have the clues needed to find the missing gold and silver? Is the legend of the missing money really true or are we just chasing a myth? What are we going to find?” As Paul had no answers to the many questions that had run through his mind, Chick also had no answers to the many questions he asked himself during his sleepless night.

Just before 6:00 a.m. he gave up any hopes of falling asleep. After getting dressed, Chick made a pot of coffee and sat down at his kitchen table with his books, hoping to find some answers about the missing treasury.

Before trying to fall asleep, Chick had picked through a small mountain of books he had piled in his den. He had pulled three books out of the piles. Each contained information on the legend of the missing Confederate treasury. Now over several cups of coffee, he read what he could find on the missing gold and silver. He hoped to find some innocuous clue about the missing money which could help them. He found nothing.

Four hours later, Paul greeted Chick and Jayne as they walked up the steps to his front door. “Are you excited, nervous, or both?”

“I’m both, but surprisingly I slept like a baby last night!”

Chick was jealous of Jayne’s response as he had tried everything to fall asleep during the night, but counting sheep, and even gold coins, had brought no success. He was working on adrenaline now and was not sure how long it would last, but he knew the suspense would keep him going for as long as it took Paul to tell them what he knew about the missing money.

After ushering them into his kitchen, Paul turned on his
Keurig
coffee maker. Soon they were sitting at his kitchen table, talking over their coffee. “Look, I have a couple of items I want to show you before I let you read the letters I found. I think it’s important for me to show you how I found them so you have a mental picture of the scene as I found it.”

With coffee cups left behind on Paul’s orders, they both followed him into the garage. Patiently they waited as he unpacked a cardboard moving box containing some of the items he had yet to tell the authorities about. First they were shown the Confederate tail coat, the blouse which had held the coins and bottles Paul had found. It was a coat with several of its original buttons still sewn in place.

Handing them each a pair of white cotton gloves he had picked up the previous afternoon from the Dollar General Store not far from his house, Paul gave them some simple instructions to follow. “Before you touch anything you need to put these on. We don’t want the perspiration from your hands to damage the items I am going to show you.” Chick and Jayne both donned the gloves without saying a word as they stared at the blouse carefully laid out on a blanket. The blanket was spread out on top of a sheet of plywood which rested on two wooden sawhorses.

“For being in a tree for so long, exposed to all types of weather, as well as insects and whatever else, this is in amazing condition.” Jayne barely took her eyes off the blouse as she unpacked her Nikon camera from its case.

With Paul’s permission she took photos of the blouse from all angles and from all sides. She even had Chick carefully hold the blouse up so she could photograph the backside of it as well. After she finished, Paul directed their attention to the bottles he had set up on his work bench, the bottles that had held the letters for so many years. “These bottles contained four letters and a small map I have found. You can see I drilled the bottoms of the bottles out so I could get the letters out.” The click of Jayne’s camera was the only noise in the garage as they all stared at the bottles and at the holes which had been made in them. Paul then showed them copies of the photos Donna had taken when he had drilled the holes in the bottom of the bottles. “My wife took these photos to document the finds we made when we took the letters out of the bottles. We also ran a video camera at the same time. I have the video ready to show you later when we are done in here. If we do decide to do a documentary on this, I was thinking the video we took, and possibly these photos as well, could easily be incorporated into our finished product.”

Setting her camera down on a nearby folding table, Jayne complimented Paul for having the foresight to document what he had done with the bottles. “Taking the video and the digital pictures was a wise idea as it showed not only what you found, but it also shows how your soldier had packaged the letters so many years ago to protect them. I agree with you, the pictures and the video are things we should definitely think about including in our documentary.”

While he appreciated the compliment Jayne had directed at him for documenting what he had found, Paul had done so without even thinking about it. From the crime scenes he had worked at, documenting those scenes with both photographs and videotape was a routine task which needed to be done at each scene. Looking at Jayne as she held the pictures Donna had taken, Paul gave her a zing. “Thanks for the compliment, but it’s not my first time at the rodeo!”

Grasping the meaning of his somewhat sarcastic comment, and then remembering what Paul had done previously in life, Jayne’s face turned a somewhat embarrassed shade of red. Chick smiled at Paul’s comment, but remained quiet as his eyes slowly scanned the photos he was looking at. “Amazing stuff, just amazing.”

“What about . . . .”

Paul cut Jayne off in mid-sentence. “I know, I know. You want to see the letters. I would too!”

Moving back into the kitchen, Paul refreshed their cups of coffee as they again sat down at his kitchen table. “Don’t get upset with me, but we are going to do this piecemeal. I am going to show you three letters today. I promise I will show you the fourth letter very soon, but not today. That letter is perhaps the best of the four letters. Again, I promise you will see it sometime very soon. You have to trust me on this, just like we talked about when we first met, OK?”

Obviously disappointed, Chick asked the same question Jayne had poised on the tip of her tongue. “If we are going to find the missing gold and silver, and who knows what else, don’t we need to know what the contents of the fourth letter are?” It was a question Paul had anticipated they would be asking.

“I understand your point, and you are absolutely correct, but you have to trust me on this. It will all make sense very shortly, I promise. And one more thing, while I am going to show you the other three letters, when we are done they stay with me. When you leave they go back under lock and key again. Don’t ask me if you can take them with you as it ain’t gonna happen. One more thing as well, no pictures get taken of the letters today. Deal?”

Frustrated by the conditions he had placed upon them, but still eager to see what clues the letters contained, Chick and Jayne were forced to accept Paul’s conditions. “OK, deal.” It was a reluctant response, but it was one they both knew they were now forced to accept.

The conditions understood and agreed upon, Paul had them clear the table of their coffee cups. Then he wiped the table down to make sure it was completely dry. Confident it was, he covered the table with a large blue table cloth and then spread out a large white towel down on top of the tablecloth. Retrieving a small gold colored metal lock box he had hidden in one of the kitchen cabinets, Paul set it down on the kitchen table. After unlocking the box, he carefully placed down on the white towel the original letters which had been signed by President Davis and Treasury Secretary Memminger. Next to those letters he placed the letter written from Captain Judiah Francis to his father. “Please be careful around these letters, they are the originals. Don’t even think of touching them without wearing your gloves.”

Chick and Jayne jockeyed for position around the table for several minutes in complete silence as they slowly read the letters. Previously having the opportunity to view several other letters written and signed by President Davis, Chick told Paul these letters appeared to be original documents, especially the one written and signed by Davis.

“Paul, these two letters, the ones signed by Davis and Memminger, they are clearly talking about the missing Confederate treasury. They are referring to the money without actually calling it what it is, gold and silver, but that’s what they are talking about. I have no doubt about it. Wow, what a find!”

Jayne had focused her attention on the letter written by Francis to his father and now started crying as she finished reading it for the second time. As she finished reading the letter, her fingers were poised on her lips as tears streamed down her face. Seeing she was crying, her tears both scared and confused Chick at first. Paul gently calmed her down by patting her on the back. “Donna had the same reaction when she read the letter. It is obviously a very emotional letter.” Handing her a napkin, Jayne wiped away her tears as best as she could, but she was still upset from reading the letter a dying Judiah Francis had written.

Having been lost in his own concentration as he read the Davis and Memminger letters, Chick now read the Francis letter. Quickly he understood what had moved Jayne to tears. “Simply amazing! A piece of history no one has ever seen or even knew existed. Paul, if the fourth letter is the best of the bunch as you say it is, I cannot wait to see it!”

After the letters had been read and reread a countless number of times, and talked about even more, Paul secured them back in the metal lock box until he could place them back in his safety deposit box later in the day. As he finished doing this, Chick and Jayne sat at the kitchen table sipping their lukewarm coffee in total silence. After a few more minutes of silence, Chick was the first to speak. “Paul, these letters, you said you know where the gold and silver is from reading the letters, but from what we’ve read they give no indication of where the money is. It has to be the fourth letter which told you where the money is.”

“Somewhat.”

“Somewhat? What kind of an answer is that? You told us you know where the money is. Either you know or you don’t know. What is it?” The tone in Chick’s voice demanded an answer. Before Paul could respond, Jayne gave her interpretation of where they now stood with him.

“My guess is Paul has an idea or two as to where the money may be, but he still needs to figure out, possibly with our help, how to decipher a clue or two from one of the letters so the money can be found. Is that a good guess?”

Paul nodded back at Jayne, smiling as he did as she had been pretty close in her estimation of what was still needed to find the gold and silver. “Not bad, not a bad guess at all.”

“Say, what is this,” Chick asked, “an Indiana Jones movie or what?”

His comment made Paul laugh as they sat around his kitchen table. “Pretty much that’s exactly what it is, Chick. You still in?” As he waited for his answer, Paul laughed again as he liked the analogy Chick had used.

“I guess I am. I mean, I guess we still are.” Chick was now somewhat disappointed from not being able to see the fourth letter and from not learning exactly where the gold and silver was buried. His disappointment now caused him to feel his fatigue from not being able to sleep last night. Needing another cup of coffee to keep him going, he stood up from the table and dropped in another pod of
Green
Mountain
coffee into the
Keurig
coffee maker.

Now they all exchanged weak, but excited smiles with each other. Paul then surprised them by giving them one final piece of information for the day. As he spoke to them he referenced the fourth letter in his comments, doing so caused Chick’s earlier disappointment to be pushed to the side for now. Quietly he moved his chair closer to the table as Paul was talking to them.