golden cannon lost in swamp

Union county Ohio,

During the War of 1812, a cannon was lost in a swamp at Rayls Corners close to hwy. 739 and the RR crossing near Raymond.
 

Hey there... I live in southern WV... I have heard of Lost Cannon on Gauley Mountain, near Fayetteville. A Lot of people have looked for it over the years. I think I heard that it was stashed with payroll or gold higgen inside. Has anyone heard this before??
 

that is one story of them but it was also said the melted the payroll gold down and made it into a cannon The story that i have heard said it was traveling and was one of them was lost first then the second later in there travels do you know where they where headed or started from?
 

Now that you mention it, I have heard of gold stashed in a cannon, but I don't think I ever heard where, or I wasn't paying attention.

What county is that? I've just been going through listings from a treasure book that has all WV counties listed. Fayette county maybe?
 

From the list, note- GT stands for ghost town.

Nicholas county, West Virginia: 1. GT Bays in the extreme N corner of the county, 5 miles S Little Birch. 2. GT Dade on W county line, 2 miles SE Enoch. 3. GT Harriet near W county line, 4 miles NW Gilboa. 4. GT Opal 3 miles E Hookersville. 5. GT Kirkwood 2 ½ miles E Muddlety. 6. GT Conrad 2 ½ miles NW Persinger. 7. GT Delphi 3 miles S Tioga. 8. GT Holcomb 3 miles NW Fenwick. 9. Site: Carnifex Ferry Battlefield, 15 miles SW Summersville, the scene of a Civil War engagement in 1861. Relics and artifacts can be found in the surrounding area of the park. 9A). While trying to float a cannon down the Gauley River on a log raft, the gun was lost overboard in 1861. The site is said to be near the Carnifex Ferry Battlefield. Another source claims that the location is about ½ mile E of the Meadow River where it empties into the Gauley River. 10. GT Sparks 3 miles W Mt. Nebo. 11. GT Fowler Knob 2 ½ miles SE Mt. Nebo. 12. GT Bruce 4 miles W Hominey Falls. 13. GT Ophelia 2 miles S Nettie.
 

First I've seen about that one. Should be easy enough to find a topographical map of that area, the poster says the one location is easy to spot. I have several county and stream maps, but no topos.
 

I wonder if any WV counties have been renamed? In the paragraph below, there's a listing of Cotton Hill, and reference to a counterfeiter making coins from the Gauley silver, and it mentions Fayetteville county. A misprint or renamed county, I have found some places mis-spelled.

Fayette county, West Virginia: 1. Site: Indian relics and artifacts can be found in the bottom lands of the Kanawha River near Montgomery. 2. Site: Civil War relics can be recovered at Gauley Bridge, scene of a battle in 1861. 3. GT Cotton Hill on RR, 2 ½ miles NW Beckwith. 3A). Site: Civil War relics can be found at Cotton Hill, the location of an engagement in 1862. 3B). Legend states that a cannon was hidden during the Civil War on Cotton Hill Mountain and never recovered. 4. There is a legend of a lost silver mine in the Gauley River section of Fayette county. 4A). In the late 1700’s, a counterfeiter supposedly made his silver dollars from silver obtained in the vicinity. 4B). As recently as 1970, silver ore has been found in this section of the county. 5. GT Lucas on RR and N county line, 2 miles NNE Ramsey. 6. GT Elliott near the county line, 2 miles N Clifty. 7. Site: Half Way House on the E edge of Ansted, was a stopping place on the Kanawha Road from 1775-1870’s. 8. GT Hawks Nest on RR, 2 miles S Ansted. 9. GT Eldridge Mines 4 miles W Page. 10. 2 RR cars loaded with whiskey reportedly lie in the bottom of the river below the bridge at River Gorge. 11. Site: Civil War relics can be found near Fayetteville. Both armies occupied the town and it was the scene of a number of battles in 1862-1863. 11A). Legends claim that a Civil War cannon was buried in a well, supposedly on the courthouse lawn in Fayetteville. 12. In 1863, Union troops buried an army payroll of gold coins somewhere in Fayetteville county. All the soldiers were killed in battle a short time later and the cache was never recovered. Some sources place the location of this treasure near Oak Hill. 13. GT Pax in the extreme SW corner of the county, 5 miles W Mount Hope. 14. GT Thurmond 5 miles E Oak Hill on the New River, the town was the gambling capital of the East in the late 1800’s. Shootings and killings were commonplace and it is believed that much treasure was buried here and never recovered. 15. GT Claremont 2 miles N (GT) Thayer. 16. GT Thayer 3 miles W Layland. 17. GT Russellville on E county line, 2 miles S Nallen. 18. In the late 1800’s bandits who robbed travelers and payroll trains used a cave near a place called Island-in-the-Sky in Babcock State Park S of Lookout. It is believed that loot of this gang is buried somewhere in or near this cave hideout that has yet to be recovered. 19. GT Mine No. 2, 2 miles S Clifftop. 20. GT Maywood on E county line, 2 miles W Rainelle. 21. GT Glade a/k/a Krise, on the S county line and RR, 2 ½ miles S Lawton. 22. GT Backus on the S county line, 4 miles WSW Meadow Bridge. 23. GT Red Spring 3 miles S Danese.
 

Hi,

I might can help with that one. If I remember correctly, and I may be wrong, but West VA didn't become a state until the time of the Civil War. In the years following, several counties were re-divided (sub-divided?) and anyhow, new counties were formed. There are historical maps of WV, so those would probably be the most useful for finding the cannons.

Cavers5
 

I live in Raleigh County, next to Fayette, and prior to Civil War Fayette County was much larger, and parts of Raleigh came from Fayette. I used to tramp around in the Thurmond, Lansing and Pax areas, and there are a lot of caves, crevices, etc. along the gorge. I would be up for some additional research. I may have access to recent GIS surveys of the area.
 

Sounds good! As Scrooge says, maybe we can get a group together to go scouting and/or detecting!

Cavers5
 

Hello again, I was wondering if any of you have heard of a confederate silver payroll that was lost in Randolph, or Barbour county I believe it was to have occurred on the laural mt. campaign. As the family story goes it was to have been buried by my great cousin Daniel Canfield but he died before he could tell were it was buried. I remember that at one time I read a white history marker that stated that it was lost but I can not find it now and in the Elkins post office his name is listed under civil war soldiers. As history goes they said even air planes have flown over the area, and people have searched for years. My husband just laughs at me because he knows I’m going hunting. I just bought my detector and it’s snowed ever since, and we are under an advisor now for 6 inches, I guess it can stay buried for a few more days’ lol
 

CANNON STORY CAUTIONS: Hey folks... if I had a buck for every treasure related cannon story over the past 35 years I have heard and/or researched myself I would take them all and finance some serious field searching of other treasures having nothing to do with a buried cannon.

Here's why... Lost cannon and treasure/cannon stories breed like rabbits in both the profession and hobby of treasure hunting. They almost always fall into 3 basic categories in this order of frequency... 1. Simply a cannon buried at a battle site or on a retreat path from a lost battle to keep it out of the enemies hands. 2. A cannon filled with a gold or silver payroll and hidden with all the buriers killed by Indians or other enemy troops shortly thereafter thus no one able to return and dig it up. 3. A cannon made out of gold from A "payroll" or other sourced quantity of gold melted down and cast into the shape of a cannon then painted black and hidden.

In these stories the cannon are almost always in hidden in one of 3 ways. 1. Most often in a swamp. 2. Secondly, dumped in a river, 3. Buried in the ground in a hurry so they are not supposed to be buried very deep and... I'll mention a forth less frequent location... 4. Thrown down a well.

Now... with that info in mind please consider the following... 1. Consider the PSYCHOLOGY of this kind of treasure... cannon stories enflame the minds of both cache hunters and relic hunters so they APPEAL to nearly all of us... emotionally speaking, we really WANT to believe the stories are true. 2. This causes MOST to think with their hearts and not their heads when pursuing these stories and their sub-conscious literally blocks out the information about these stories that would normally tell them the story is first... probably not true and secondly... the details are too vague to make it worth your time to pursue... in other words... the ODDS are STACKED GREATLY against you making a recovery (I do speak from experience... in my early years of hunting I too wasted time and resources pursuing several cannon stories).

Keep in mind as you read this... I am NOT saying all treasure cannon stories are un-true... only that the VAST MAJORITY are. Your only real chance of recovering one of the real ones is to SEPARATE FACT FROM FICTION in your research.

Here are some of the facts about "cannon hunting" that the EMOTIONALLY driven hunter does NOT WANT TO HEAR. 1. Takes time to bury a cannon... more than retreating troops generally had. 2. Soldiers of any of our U.S. wars were rarely if ever paid in gold... sometimes in small denomination silver coins... soldiers wages were low... and often paid in currency or scrip. So... where did all the gold and silver... enough to fill a big cannon barrel come from? 3. Cannons were rarely deployed in or near swamps so swamps were rarely available when a cannon needed to be hidden. Virtually all of the TRULY lost cannons waiting to be found today were either buried in the ground near an old road or pushed off a river bank into deep water or fell off a pontoon bridge while crossing a river. 4. Have you given any thought to just how much time, effort and expense it would take to make the mold to cast a cannon out of melted down gold?5. Have you thought about just how much that cannon would weigh, gold being one of the heaviest metals? Who would have THAT much gold way back then... it would take a LOT more gold than an army payroll... assuming someone had a payroll made of gold... to make a cannon.
Also... along those lines... how much sense does it make to cast the gold into the shape of something that would be a desirable prize to be taken by your enemies even it was only made of iron or brass? 6. Just how many times would the hiders of all these golden cannons or gold filled cannons be conveniently wiped out to the last man leaving no one to return to the burial site?
7. To hide a cannon in a swamp you would have to pick a spot VERY SOFT... practically or literally quicksand. How would the hiders ever return to retrieve a cannon that might have sunk to really deep depths due to its weight with the technology of their time? I know that even today its EXTREMELY difficult to recover anything from quicksand or deep mud even with the technology of our time available. The hiders would have little way of knowing how deep the mud/sand in the swamp was when they pushed their cannons into it. So... IF the cannon is in the swamp in all likelihood it just the cannon itself without any treasure inside it... hidden to keep the enemy from capturing it.

Finding JUST a cannon would not be so bad, you say? After all, depending on the type and state of preservation it could be worth $10,000 to $30,000. Well, dearhearts, gird up your loins cause there's more bad news... the US gummint claims that all buried and lost cannons BELONG TO THEM no matter where they are. THEY SAY that legally... sigh... All U.S. army or navy cannons are still the property of the United States... said title NEVER leaving their clutching little hands. All other cannons, i.e. CONFEDERATE... are considered by the gummint to be SPOILS OF WAR and their property also.

So... your recovery and disposal of the cannon for profit is likely to land you... by their definition... in violation of ARPA and open you to seizure of your cannon AND all your personal property (read HOUSE, VEHICLES and BANK ACCOUNTS and any CASH found when they "attack' your home without warning.

Speaking from 35 years of TH'ing in 42 states and 6 countries I strongly encourage all of my fellow West Virginia hunters to think twice before chasing too many treasure cannons.

There are other ways MUCH MORE likely to put REAL treasure in your pocket a lot quicker and... without fear of the gummint taking it and sending you to the "big house" in the process.

If you want to know AnOldPros take on the way YOU can most likely find REAL treasure just let me know. I can't dig it all... there's PLENTY to go around. Hunt with your HEART and you will be a "treasurer HUNTER" for sure. Hunt with your HEAD and you will be a "treasure FINDER"!

Happy trails to all!

DC
 

That some great writing DC. I have heard so many buried cannon stories over the years I dint pay much attention to them. The ones that have been found that I know of had been in rivers that took a small army to recover! Then there is all the cannons that are in the ocean but thats a whole nother story.

T
 

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