“Treasure!”
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Barbara
Rumsey
The first time a youngster gets fired up about local history, the spark
is often a romantic tale, and just as often the story involves treasure, or
pirates, or ghosts. Some people remain fixed on those subjects as the only
paths they're willing to take to something resembling history. My earnest
imparting of Boothbay demographics surely lacks a certain punch, while
"treasure-pirates-ghosts" carries its own enthusiasm and drama. But
I see things differently, valuing more highly the real daily hum-drum
activities of our forebears to fiction. However, most people prefer their
history packaged and commoditized as entertainment.
Many reporters have called
or come to our society and Southport's to investigate romantic tales.
Unfortunately, there is no way to help them for the stories defy
substantiation; there is simply no historical information to give because the
stories are not historical. Usually when I ask the reporters to cover true
local history, I get a blank stare. It's treasure, pirates, and ghosts or
nothing! The stories, quelled or not, keep reappearing since they
spontaneously spring from the wishing side of humans. The sameness and the
vagueness of all the stories give away their common mythic origin.
If you've read more than
one story or book in the treasure/romance vein, you see a pattern in the
treasure stories—they remain essentially the same, but the sites are
moveable. Some of the usual elements in treasure stories follow.
Common
Elements of Treasure Stories
1) Strange men come to a
town or island and ask to dig, or—mysterious, furtive men appear, and
without a word from them, digging is observed at night and lanterns are seen
moving about.
2) The strange men vanish
but left behind are traces of their activities. . .
3) Usually an oak tree
with a block and tackle and/or rope hanging from it, above. . .
4) A hole in the ground,
in the bottom of which is the imprint of a chest with its bolt heads outlined
in the sand.
5) Sometimes one or two
gold coins are laying about.
Common variations on these
elements: if the treasure hunters are local or become known to the local
townspeople, just as the treasure is within reach, though perhaps not yet
seen. . . . The men are scared away by ghosts and/or horrible wild
creatures—or the treasure keeps sinking, receding from their reach.
In Shipping Days of Old Boothbay, Rice related an 1836 magazine article
about Monhegan treasure with such elements: strangers, old map, remarkable
rock, spells and incantations, goblins, midnight digging, "frequent
recourses to the brandy bottle," and an empty jar. The December 1, 1888 Register
also covered a Monhegan ghost and treasure story at Deadman's Cove. Moans and
thuds at night and a flat rock over a dead body that kept sinking as fast as
they dug. Another—an adventurer came and dug under a woodpile all night,
then disappeared, leaving a deep hole and two empty urns.
What drives the treasure
stories? I'd say one element is a longing for adventure and a connection,
however remote, with romanticized exploits. Another—a simple longing for
riches, sometimes interpreted as hope and sometimes as greed, depending on how
likable the longing person is. Alan Taylor wrote a terrific, Pulitzer
Prize-winning book, Liberty Men and
Great Proprietors, in which he covered mid-Maine's interior settlement
from 1760 to 1820. The Kennebec Proprietors, who bedeviled our region in the
mid-1700s, play a large part in the book. However, of interest here is
post-Revolutionary treasure hunting.
Taylor's
"Almost Wealthy, Rather than Permanently Poor."
Taylor described mid-Maine
as "a place of modest expectations and hard labor." He explained,
"The settlers' economic marginality encouraged a pervasive fantasy that
their farms lay atop treasure troves buried by pirates and guarded by evil
spirits. The fantasy flourished even among settlers who lived dozens of miles
from the coast." Taylor summarized, "Treasure chests symbolized the
longed-for prosperity that settlers hoped lay all about them beneath the stony
soil that so slowed their advance." Taylor went on, "Vulnerable to
nature, settlers supposed they were buffeted by powerful, supernatural
forces." Taylor gives many instances of the superstitions prevalent on
the frontier.
Taylor listed some of the
elements of circa 1800 treasure fever. Many of them conform to those listed
above or seen later. Dreams and diving rods often located the supposed site of
the buried treasure. Certain rituals ensured success and prevented the
treasure from sinking. To keep out evil spirits: magic circles of animal blood
were either dripped around the digging area or dug with a silver spoon, only
night digging took place, and silence while digging was necessary. Despite
such measures, the diggers' countermagic could not "break the protective
enchantment: spirits attacked, and the chest plunged from reach." Taylor
theorized that the elaborate rituals, cold, dark, silence, tension, flickering
lantern light, drinking, and fear caused group hallucinations—apparitions
and phantoms created with the slightest suggestion or unexpected noise.
But the need to believe in
potential future wealth is powerful, and treasure fever is never fully
extinguished. The phenomenon sounds very much like the present-day, and
probably eternal, fascination with lotteries and gambling. Taylor skillfully
wrote, "The promise of imminent riches helped many settlers cope with
sustained hardships by assuring them that they were almost wealthy, rather
than permanently poor."
Benoit's
Jewell Island
A well-documented book, History
of Jewell Island, Maine, was written about the Casco Bay island by Peter
Benoit, who is the brother of our local doctor, Andy Benoit. Peter found the
same problems I noticed with the many treasure stories about his favorite
island.
Peter believes the
treasure stories arose from the island's name. Though presumably named for
1630s fisherman George Jewell, people later assumed there were jewels on it.
Also Peter thinks that mining ventures on the island, with the digging and
focus on iron pyrite, or "pyrite gold," led people to transform
mining holes into treasure holes, and "pyrite" into
"pirate" gold.
Reminiscent of Alan
Taylor's noting the post-Revolutionary treasure fever and right in that time
frame, Captain Kidd was rumored to have left treasure on Jewell Island, just
as he was rumored to have left treasure on nearly every Maine island before
1700.
Peter found there were
periods of treasure hunting fever, as elsewhere, in Casco Bay about 1800, in
the 1840s, 1870, and 1891. Traditional features of treasure hunting abound in
the Jewell Island stories. Rituals, like sprinkling lamb's blood in a circle
to keep evil spirits away, were used. Those spirits that scared Jewell Island
treasure hunters were often in the form of pirate ghosts, supernatural pigs,
or big black dogs. Most of the Jewell Island stories were of unrecovered
treasure, and they did not deviate from the familiar story pattern. Peter
wrote, "Invariably, the stories of all these digs end in much the same
way. Just as the digger's probe has struck the treasure chest with a hollow
thud, the searchers are all chased off or, in some cases, transported off the
island by one supernatural force or another."
In retelling one story,
Peter invoked the classic romantic treasure story punch line, "The
imprint of each rivet and stout iron band that held the bulging chest together
clearly showed in the damp soil at the bottom of the pit!" Similarly
Edward Rowe Snow wrote in True Tales of
Buried Treasure, "the outline of a chest, about 14" long and
8" wide, with the rust from the hinges still clinging to the dirt"
was seen at the bottom of the pit. And Edwin Mitchell, in Maine Summer, related the hoax of Deer Isle and its element of,
"the impression of a row of bolt heads by a heavy iron chest" in the
soft sand.
Do you detect a suspicious
pattern here?
“Treasure! Part II”
Barbara
Rumsey
Last week I wrote about people's fascination with treasure stories, and
I defined many of the story elements: the mysterious strangers who search for
treasure by lantern light; the rituals to ward off the evil spirits; the forms
the spirits take, commonly pirates, pigs, and dogs; the tell-tale clues of the
rope or block hanging over the empty hole the chest occupied; and the favorite
story device of the imprint in the sand of the chest's bolt heads. I also
discussed Alan Taylor's explanation of post-Revolutionary treasure hunting
fever and described Peter Benoit's tales of Jewell Island.
In corresponding with
Peter about these articles in March, he brought up two excellent points. He
wrote, "I think another essential element of treasure/ghost stories is
the constant switching from providing minute accurate details about relatively
unimportant facts, such as the bolt heads, to stating vague generalities when
it comes to important information, such as "somewhere near the punch bowl
[a location on Jewell Island]." Also he wrote, "I believe that the
idea of vacations or leisure activities, was foreign to all but the upper
classes. For the average coast dweller an exciting new project with potential
reward [a treasure hunt] was legitimate, while taking time off for recreating
was not." Like Peter, I knew oldtimers were uncomfortable if not being
productive, and I thought he made a good point that treasure-seeking was a
kind of legitimate working vacation.
In Boothbay just about
every island is reputed to have treasure buried on it, and I suppose the same
is true of all the other seaside communities. Many people are unwilling to
give up the fantasy of pirate treasure dotting our islands, or don't even
allow it may be fanciful. I don't agree but I try not to be a spoilsport every
waking minute. I do agree with Edwin Mitchell (who devoted part of his book Maine Summer to treasure stories) that when it can be proved that
"treasure" has been found, it has consisted of modest potfuls of
money, buried by people who feared it might be taken from them by thieves or
in wartime.
Little
River
Simeon Van Horn, born 1875
toward Ocean Point, wrote many of his remembrances in 1948. He later lived in
East Boothbay where Neil and Joan Jones now do. I've placed some of Simeon's
memories in this newspaper and in a book, Boothbay
Region Historical Sketches, II. The below story includes many familiar
treasure motifs: the dream of the location, the searching at night, and the
ghost scaring them off.
"It was while the
cousins Gil and Charles Van Horn were working at the factory [pogie] that Gil
dreamed about the treasure buried at Little River beneath a flat rock beside a
birch tree. So Gil and Charles, and two or three other factory workers set out
one night to dig up the treasure. Taking shovel, pick axe, crowbar and
lantern, they went up the road, through the White Gate [just south of the turn
to Little River], down across the old bridge and way down on Little River
Point. They found the flat rock beside a birch tree, just as Gil had dreamed.
They struck the rock—it sounded hollow—and they had just got the crowbar
under it, ready to pry it out, when a ghostly voice said, 'What are you doing
here? Get out of here, get out of here.' And they did. Another version says
the noise was like bullets whizzing over their heads. They came back in the
daytime but couldn’t even find the place!"
White
Island and Outer Heron
In his fourth volume of The
Islands of Mid-Coast Maine, Charles McLane mentions a familiar story about
White Island. After the location of a buried chest of gold pieces was revealed
to a Bristol fisherman, he went out to the island only to discover an empty
cavity where the chest had clearly been a few hours earlier. Here we have an
echo of the "bolt heads in the sand" element.
I asked Lester Barter
about any local treasure stories he had heard. He said his friend Walter
Marshall (born 1896) told him he'd heard there was treasure on White Island
and tried to bail a pond there with a bucket to locate it. Walter was Lester's
plumber's helper, the best he ever had, when he worked at Walbridge Brothers.
Lester also mentioned that
during the 1930s many islands were investigated by treasure hunters. He
specifically remembers rumors of digging on Outer Heron and people digging on
Squirrel, Reed (also Ocean, also Indian) Island at Little River, and Treasure
Island at Little River—though Lester noted there was hardly enough dirt on
Treasure Island to bury anything! He remembers Reed Island totally potholed
with treasure hunters' holes. That period of the 1930s, the Depression years,
was a time of economic hard times, which conforms with Taylor's description of
treasure hunting as a result of lack of economic hope through normal channels.
Charles McLane, in his
above book, listed references to accounts of some of the Outer Heron myths and
legends. I visited Charlie Pinkham a number of years ago at his home on
Eastern Avenue. As a young man, he'd lived on both Outer Heron Island and
Fisherman's Island. One year while he lived on Outer Heron, men came in a
yacht, stayed a few days, and tried to drain the pond in order to find
treasure.
The
Cave
The stories Lester heard
about Outer Heron aren't treasure stories, but they share elements in their
ghostly encounters that scare visitors. Zina Reed lived out on Outer Heron
about 1900 and his stepson Walter Marshall lived there too. Lester heard from
Walter that there was a cave on the southeast side on the high part, and the
owner wanted a mason to block it up to stop a legend. The mason was working
along to close the entrance when a long slimy arm came out of the cave. The
mason took off in his boat and never went back. The owner had to deliver the
man's tools to him.
Lester heard another Outer
Heron story while working at the Norweb place on Road's End about 1955. Norman
Kimball of Barters Island (born 1904), caretaker for Norweb, took his three
teenage sons on a camping expedition to Outer Heron. They had settled down in
the house and gone to sleep when something woke them up. They got up, went
out, and heard something going out through the woods. Staying the night didn't
seem so inviting anymore, so they made for their boat in the west side cove
just below the house, leaving their equipment behind. A little long ledge juts
out on the west side of the cove, and as they pulled away, something followed
along down the ledge, squealing and screeching like a pig at them. Three men
went out the next day to retrieve the supplies, roamed all over the island,
but found nothing. Lester speculated that it might have been a pig that fell
off a scow or, to make a better story, a banshee!
Lester also heard a
Monhegan story. Two men who were strangers landed, went up in village and
asked a man who owned house, "Can we dig over there?" They went off
and dug and disappeared. A couple of gold pieces were found that the strangers
overlooked.
Treasure stories are
tempting—they pull you in and they're meant to, like ghost stories. In a May
10, 1999 New Yorker article,
historical consultant Eric Foner wrote about the entertainment industry's
treatment of history. "Hollywood wants the imprimatur of history but not
the responsibility." Foner asked a producer why television docudramas
were presented as "true stories," and was told that if you claim
it's true, "you get five extra rating points. In other words,
authenticity sells more soap." Similarly, my years in local history have
taught me that most people don't like their history unadorned. Our local
pirates normally stole salt fish and/or flour. Funny, but I've never seen
people's eyes sparkle when I pass on that insight into local history.