Family Stories

[Ray Ford]

I'm sure that a good many of us have heard old family stories about "finding treasure."  I have been told by my elderly sister about my family's experiences at the place where I was born, a rented farm adjacent to a wooded creek and with an upland field.

First, she told me that, one year, they cleared "new ground" for a garden.  They removed trees and brush from a previously un-gardened area of the creek bottom.  In the "new ground," they found numerous Indian-head pennies.  I can still remember my mother having a few of those old pennies.

Second, she told me that, every Spring when my father plowed the field, he would find one or two half-dollar coins--and bring them to the house to my mother.  Finding fifty cents, in those days, was like finding a treasure.

My supposition has been that, as for the half-dollar coins, someone had hidden a container of such and that, after being lost or forgotten, they were scattered by the cultivation process.  Something similar probably resulted in the pennies being in the woods.

I have a cousin who lives close to that old place, and I am told that he has a metal detector.  I've been "laying off" to tell him about my father finding the coins.  He might want to check that field.  It has been between 60 and 70 years since....

One other note about the "new ground."  My mother told me several times about clearing that area.  She remembered it well because, when they burned the brush, she got a severe case of poison ivy.  There were vines in the brush, and, when they burned, the smoke contained the vaporized substance to which people are generally allergic.  She got in the smoke.  Her eyes, she told me, swelled shut so that she could not see for two weeks.  My father had to do the cooking.  Such vapors, if inhaled, can be deadly.

[lance]

 Well this ain't a family story,but it's my favorite "finding treasure story". When i was 12 years old living down in North Carolina every free moment was spent metal detecting. One day my dad said let's play hooky, me from school,him from the army, and go detecting. we went to a small town, Spring Lake N.C. my dad stopped at the Sheriff office and asked if we could hunt the lake in the center of town,why sure,just don't tear up anything said the sheriff. this lake shore had never been hunted, lot's of folks over the years held picnics there. after about an hour both my pants pockets were full of coins and jewelry. some coins dating back to the late 1800's. a woman walked up to me with a camera, she was the town newspaper reporter, her office was the next room to the sheriff.he told her some guys were hunting treasure and might make a good news story. she put three pictures of me on the front page of the newspaper and a rather nice story, my dad wouldn't let her take a picture of him cause he was awol from the army that day. the paper came out on a thursday so i got to take it to school for show and tell. that very saturday me and my dad wanted to hunt the lake again. when we got to the lake there was about 200 old coot's with metal detectors. guess they was mad a 12 year old kid made the newspaper with a pile of treasure!

[Ray Ford]

I married a girl whose dad farmed out in the western part of the state--Oklahoma.  A short ways up the road from his place was a farm owned by an old German bachelor.  To make a long story short, the old fellow went to a nursing home and he leased his farm to my father-in-law.  When my father-in-law went down to look the place over, he noticed that the door to the old man's old farm house was open--swinging in the wind.  He put a hasp and lock on it, but, in the process, he and my mother-in-law observed that the house was full of antiques.  My mother-in-law spoke to the old man's niece about the antiques.  The niece told her that she could get anything that she wanted out of the house and that they would "settle on a price" later.  After my mother-in-law got everything that she wanted, they eventually had an auction, and the old house was left empty and open.

One day, while we were visiting my wife's folks, I went down and looked around.  Inside the house, on a shelf, there was a pile of what I would call rot--a pile of rot.  I picked up a stick and poked around in the pile.  It covered an old purse.  I cleaned the puse off and felt of it.  It had collapsed flat.  I felt nothing but what I though was a wad of tissue paper.  When I opened the purse, I found a small coin purse containing a number of old coins: pennies, a V nickel or two....  Nothing there was worth a lot, but I experienced "finding treasure."  The pile of rot was a decomposed feather pillow.  How long did it take for that pillow, a pillow hiding an old purse, to totally decay?

On another occasion, I found a musket ball mold inside an old tumbled-down shed on the place.  It was very large caliber--possibly .75 or .80.  I always thought that it was either Civil War or earlier.  I kept it for years before selling it at a gun show for around $30 dollars.