Legacy

Well readers; this tale is a little involved and weaves some tangled webs.  Its best for me to begin with some historic background information, which will be referred to now and again.  My name is Garvin Williams, I’m married and retired.  I pass time by among other things watching a lot of the Historical Channel on TV.

One program segment was extra fascinating because it dealt with a lot of yet to be uncovered  Confederate treasure.  Treasure like we all wish we could find.  As the story unfolded, it said that in the days getting close to the end of the Civil War, that Jefferson Davis ordered the entire Confederate gold and silver holdings to be moved to an unknown location in the West.

Allegedly to finance another uprising later on with the support of western states like Texas and a few others.  However, somewhere near Danville, South Carolina the weight was too great for the floor of the train carrying the Confederate States equivalent of a mini Fort Knox. The booty fell through and caused the train to wreck.

Needless to say some of it which was packed in large barrels that broke open scattered all over.  As a result odd coins have showed up here and there frequently on the banks of a creek where erosion probably uncovered them.

Well the Confederate troops that had been guarding the train recovered all they could and took  many barrels of gold and silver to the front yard of  a Southern farmhouse within a half mile of the train wreck.  Having no way to load the treasure on to anything else, they left a small cadre of soldiers to guard the treasure.

As the story goes, within a few days a troop of Union Soldiers who just happened to have numerous wagons, raided the sight and made off with the entire Confederate Treasury.  When a Confederate Troop showed up a few days after that with their own wagons, everything was gone.

The farmer and his wife were suspected of having stolen it and hidden it.  So in an effort to get them to talk, the soldiers burned their house and beat them badly.  After much ado about it all it was determined the farmer and his wife were innocent and the tale of Union Troops probably true.

The farmer and his wife were probably glad to be exonerated; however that didn’t heal their bruises, replace their teeth, or rebuild their house.  They of course were not too happy about any of it.

Now to fast forward the story just a wee bit, history has determined that the Union Troops weren’t Union Troops at all, but disguised members and operatives of the Knights of The Golden Circle, a secret society of unknown membership.  We all know that secret societies have existed in one place or another around the globe for centuries and still do, even in this country.  They have their various agendas.  The Knights of The Golden Circle may have had a wide spread membership of individuals with varied interests.

It is said its primary core was Sugar Plantation owners.  The Circle representing the deep South on the North side of the circle and extending southward into the Caribbean, primarily to take in Cuba, Haiti, and numerous other colonized islands whose primary crop was sugar.  The idea was allegedly to have control of that vast area of sugar plantations, and the “Golden” part was the anticipated wealth from such control.

It is even thought that Jesse James may have been a KGC operative.  What gives rise to that I suppose is the fact he used the ground at the base of trees as a money post office drop, to distribute what he’d robbed from trains to certain others.  Why not sure, he wasn’t another Robin Hood in any case.

Now back to the tree business.  The KGC would frequently use trees as maps to guide their operatives to safe houses and cash caches.  An “H” carved into a tree with the left side of the H being wider than the right side.  Why an H? not sure except that  the KGC was known to be very cryptographic in it markers and clues.

Fast forward now to modern times; there was a guided tour for the people putting on the TV program by an experienced KGC code breaker and treasure hunter with several finds to his credit.  That gave him credibility even though as we watched him decipher code, it made no sense to anyone but him.  Yet he had a good track record of finds.

So now we are back in the Danville, South Carolina area looking for the bulk of the lost/stolen Confederate Treasury.  The first clue was on a tombstone of a soldier that had been killed in the raid of the farmhouse and may have helped haul off of the loot.  Its said he was killed in a Battle at Sailor.  That was spelled wrong.  It should have read Sayler. Same sound and no one could have mistakenly misspelled a town so near by.

So the expert decoded the misspelling which allegedly meant South rail; which led to a Gazebo in the same cemetery with a marker pointing towards a tree.  The tree had an “H” carved into it and on its backside a marker indicating the direction of the railroad tracks.

Now sometimes the trail would end in a find or another marker.  In this case, no find and no other markers;

Dead end; boo hoo disappointment for everyone, including the program viewers.  The expert said, well we are short a marker, but I’m sure the huge pile of gold and silver is somewhere within  an eighteen mile radius of that Gazebo.

That was thrilling news, he might have just as well said duh! Some where in the United States.

Now fast forward again to the point of where I become active and the big story starts.  I noticed that while they showed the railroad tracks, including the South rail, which they said is the original railway bed as was then and is still in use.  That in the background of the picture on the North side of the railroad tracks and up an embankment of about six feet, partially obscured by brush, was a very old split rail fence.

I said to myself, the KGB was not only cryptographic in it clues, some of them may have had a double meaning.  I concluded that the South rail may not have been a railroad indicator, but an indicator of a fence rail instead. I couldn’t get that idea out of my mind. And since I’d learned a little from the program about reading and following KGC markers, I decide that next spring after the winter thaw; the wife and I would take a little vacation.

By now I’m sure you know where I’m going. You are so right. It’s Danville and that cemetery.  Well Spring came and I went. I didn’t stop at the South railroad track; I crossed over and up that embankment to the split rail fence.

It took a bit of weed pulling, brush cutting  and just pushing bushes aside so I could see better.  But I finally found it, another marker.  Carved into the rail was an arrow pointing up and something that halfway looked like a tree carved besides it.  Well straight up usually means straight ahead.  I looked and out in the pasture about one hundred yards away was a lone tree.  So my wife and I and our metal detector headed toward the tree.  The detector didn’t detect anything.  Then the wife said look at this, and she pointed to an arrow pointing right and ten hash marks cut into the tree.

Well more directions to follow, I wasn’t sure what the ten hash marks meant. Was it a cryptographical thing or more simple?  I decided it might mean ten paces.  So I went the direction the arrow pointed for ten paces.  I lowered my metal detector and turned it on.

My hair just about stood on end, the detector was going bananas, I’d found the mother lode.  I knew that I was now richer than King Midas.  That idea was short lived. Oh it was the mother lode alright, the bulk of the lost Confederate Treasury.

`But it seems the government had a big sudden interest and started quoting law this and that.  To make a story reach its conclusion, all I can say was I got ten percent finders right, the pasture owner got ten percent also since the find was on his land.  He was happy, and I was a bit disappointed.

However on the upside, my ten percent came to four hundred million dollars.  That allows me to live rather opulently; give much to charity, and leave my children so well fixed that they and several generations won’t have to worry about a thing. Oh almost forgot to say, the original treasure hunting expert showed up at the dig, and seemed very unreasonable, as if I had taken overt advantage of his knowledge gained in directly.  Indeed he was madder than a wet hen. I don’t think it was a money thing for him, just injured pride.