Any Rode Island Treasures Waiting to be Found?

[soccer]

I'm new to detecting and just wondering if there are and tales of treasure waiting to be found in Rhode Island or any neighboring areas.

 

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[Glenn-RI]

Hi soccer,

We've had our share of stories over the years as Rhode Island was one of Captain Kidds favorite hideouts. He also stopped here shortly before turning himself in in Boston. There was other pirate activity in Rhode Island as well in the late 1600's early 1700's. The stories mainly involved Block Island and Jamestown. It was a good place to hide with easy access to the sea. There's plenty of information in books, libraries and on the web.

Glenn

 

[soccer]

Hey Glenn, thank you for the response. I saw Cranston in your nameplate and I'm from Cranston too. My Girlfriend and I visited Jamestown many times over the summer. Supposedly Captain Kidd visited his friend Thomas Tew and could have buried something near a place called Pirate's cave. There is a picture of it on a site and a map on how to find it : strangene.com. The cliffs are rocky and dangerous and you need a buddy to go with. We also found a ghost town in Bristol that is described in that site. There are some good places shown in that site. Good luck with your hunting.

Thanks

Brett

 

[Cave Man]

The website strangene.com describes a site on the Newport shores. The site of Captain Kidd's 'cave' on Jamestown seems to be somewhat indefinite. I would take all such reports with a certain amount of a 'grain of salt' as a popular author on treasure sites list a cave on Hog (or Hogg) Island off Essex Massachusetts as a possible treasure site. The island neither contains any caves or is it geologically possible for caves to be here.

 

[treasurekidd]

Hi Soccer, greeting from another Rhode Islander! I'm from Warwick, and hunt all around the area. Here are some stories I've accumualted:

1. In the old days Mohegan Bluff on Block Island was known as "Money Bluff" because of the huge treasure that everyone "knew" was buried there. Stories of the origins of that treasure are as varied and diverse as the variations of human imagination. One possible source is traced back to a group of French privateers that set up a base on the island in 1689, which they were later forced to abandon in a hurry. There are at least two other stories of pirate treasure on Block Island.

2. The late Thomas Penfield wrote that both Captain Kidd and Joe Bradish had buried treasure on Block Island. According to Penfield, Bradish made a map of the location which he passed on to a companion before being taken to England and hanged. However, said companion accompanied Bradish to England to testify at the trial and never returned to America. My friend on Block Island maintains that there is a map leading to William Kidd's Block Island treasure as well.

3. RHODE ISLAND
By Michael Paul Henson

From page 19 of the August issue of Lost Treasure magazine.
Copyright © 1992, 2001 Lost Treasure, Inc.

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Buried gold, silver and jewels. I quote the following from THE GOLD BUG, a treasure hunters' monthly tabloid for April 1965. This information has never, to my knowledge, been printed in any other publication.

"Tiny Rhode Island sits on a buried hoard of treasure, waiting for an adventurous treasure hunter. (Author's note: Interested persons should contact the League of R. I. Historical Societies, 458 Wayland Avenue, Providence, R. I. 02906 for possible information orhelp on this site), The buried loot includes '50 Barrs of Gould, 20 Wedges of Gould, Jacobesus, 11 Plain Rings, 4 Dubel D Loons, 1 Brasel, 1 Silver Plat, 1 Silver Candlestick, 2200 Pieces of Eight, Silver, 3 Diamonds, 1 Ruby.' Clifford P. Monahan, Director of the Society, says that many people have shown interest since the directions to the treasure were first published in 1949.

They are thought to have been written between 1700 and 1750, by someone in the bucaneering Greene or Arnold families of East Greenwich, R. I. and are extremely precise:

"`att JL att BO,' the directions read: `Atthe SE side ofthe Bay there is a Creek and on the South side of the bay: 50 yards from the waters side there is a Large hollow oake Tree with one Limbe cut off 11 yds from the tree their is a Rock andfrom the Rock NW: 6 yds and from the tree: 14 yds the within sum is his.'

"The 'within sum" already has been listed above to whet the digger's appetite. Equipped with a compass and a yardstick, a tenderfoot Boy Scout could find the hoard...but there is one small detail that this treasure burying old sea dog neglected to mention: The locality of the landmarks described. Most Rhode Islanders are convinced he describes a local site in Naragansett Bay area, where pirates were known to gather in colonial times.

Others can choose any other site that suits their fancy from Maine to the Gulf of Mexico. While the Society's director can give no additional clues, he says that he's quite certain the 'goodies' are still waiting to be dug.

A treasure hunter, by using maps of the time period 1700-1750, could possibly get lucky on this one


4. Chatham Beach treasure
From State Treasure Tales By Anthony J. Pallante

From page 18 of the June 1997 issue of Lost Treasure magazine.
Copyright ©1997, 1998 Lost Treasure, Inc.

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In 1831 Chatham Beach fisherman Arthur Doane received permission to go ashore for a short visit with his fiance with the understanding that he would be rejoining his ship at four o'clock in the morning at North Chatham Beach. Sometime after midnight, Doane was making his way along the shoreline when he came upon a group of men who were obviously pirates burying a large iron chest. Doane hid himself among the dunes until dawn when he emerged and used a piece of driftwood to unearth the chest. It turned out to be filled with numerous sacks of gold Spanish coins.

The fisherman was now a millionaire, and he immediately began to think like one. Lucky Arthur Doane removed the sacks of gold, then dragged the chest to a new location, and reburied it and replaced most of the loot. Later Doane worked out an arrangement with John Eldridge to sell a few coins out of state each month, thereby avoiding undue attention. The arrangement lasted 49 years until Doane became too ill to retrieve the coins himself and had to confide the secret of the cache to Eldridge. When Eldridge was finally given directions to the treasure location, greed got the better of him, and he removed and sold an entire sack of coins, leaving only six sacks of gold in the dwindling cache.

A very angry and upset Arthur Doane died a short time later. However, when Eldridge returned to Chatham Beach to reclaim the remaining six sacks for himself, he found that a severe storm had completely re-arranged the beach, and he was unable to relocate the chest. He searched for several years but never found the treasure. From time to time golden coins of Spanish origin have been found along the beach near old Chatham Lighthouse after storms. No one knows if the source of these finds is some off shore shipwreck or Arthur Doane's storm-tossed cache.


Best of luck to you, and if you ever want to get together for a hunt, my buddy and I have a few other leads we're tracking down out in the Danielson CT area.

 

[stud564]

does anyone know about lost treasure in iowa as well.

 

[laralucine]

Treasurekidd,
That second story is actually about Chatham, Mass, on Cape Cod. A longer version of the story is in a book about state treasure tales (not sure of the name, but saw it in Barnes & Noble a few weeks ago)
Lara