How can you tell???

[swizzle]

How can you tell if someone distrusted banks? Where do you find information on personal bank records from 1800's to 1900's? Where do you find information on how much they made and how they spent it? I've found limited information on factory worker's from the 1870's who made $8 a month. It seems like searching these properties would be a waste of time? What do I look for and where do I find it? Jason

 

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[Darren in NC]

Won't find much in a book. Gotta talk to people about what you're doing - even if they look at you funny I usually don't get much response - "Hmmm, interestesing" is about it. But every now and then, someone's heard about some old miser... Almost every lead I've gotten has been in conversation. And it doesn't matter if they're old or young. Even the young have family legends.

 

[warsawdaddy]

I had an uncle that kept 5000.00 buried and that was in the late 40's/50's.Our family settled most of the area between Indep/KC in 1827.Not many banks then plus many episodes of border bandits.My family also came thru the depression and lost mucho! I'm almost 70 and I still want a little stash just in case! You need to talk to the ol' timers about their family history and traits and don't find fault with the habits they reveal or they will become even more closed mouth.

 

[Donna 2]

I recall a statement by Karl Von Mueller that "more money is being stashed away right now than ever was in the depression years".
Suppose that a major calamity started a run on the banks today. The result could be much more devastating than the bank run that occured in the depression.
I have recently read a little booklet called "Economic Solutions" authored by Peter Kershaw who describes the portent of such a situation. It makes a lot of sense with the paper and plastic world that we live in economically today. How many of us have "hard" assets such as silver or gold, or even commodities?? An interesting question to ask ourselves is this "what would I do if I could no longer trade my paper for the stuff of life?? Sorry if this sounds like the voice from the tomb - the little booklet has made me stop and
take stock and it kind of scares me.? ? ?Donna

 

[alec]

I agree with everybody else that it's mostly about going out and talking to people. You can also read the old newspapers of the time you are interested in to see what the wages were and the kinds of stories about the economy and the banks of the area you are wanting to search in. You can pretty much bet that for several years after the depression most people distrusted banks. If you are looking out in the countryside at old homesteads, think about how far they were from the nearest town. The farther out, the more likely they would have a stash of cash around the home.

As for whether or not a spot is worth checking, if you have someone that just cached $50 of gold in the 1800s then it would be well worth finding today. Even a nice silver cache is going to be worth 3-5 times more than the face value. Maybe you'll be lucky and find a rare coin that sells for more than a whole jar of coins. Even if you have a map that tells you what you are looking for you never know exactly what is in the cache until it's recovered.

 

[spotz]

Remember that personal possession of gold coins or gold certificates was made illeagle in 1933. Do you think people turned it all in? Where would they keep it? It sure wasan't the bank. Yes there are caches out there. We just have to find them. Spotz

 

[nick1878]

Almost everyone distrusted banks and it was alot more convenient to keep it around where you could watch over it.

I would bet that there is propbably a cache of some sort or another on every property over a hundred years olf or more. It may be buried deep in the ground, or inside the house. In the walls or floor.

The house where I found my cache of silver and gold coins had 3 generations of hoarders. I found 3 separate cache places. 2 of them were empty, 1 in the floor and one in a fake ceiling. This house has been in the family for 29 years and I am still finding its secrets

 

[Monty]

Various eras in history have lended themselves to mistrust of banks. Any time there was a depression, war, etc. that caused people to hoard. The stock market crash in the 20's, right after the civil war, the great depression, etc were all such eras. I remember that back in the LBJ presidency there was a lot of people hoarding gold and silver fearing the collapse of the economy. Remember the Texas Hunt brothers who tried to manipulate the silver market? Anything associated with any of those times should be considered potential cache sites.

 

[Kentucky Kache]

During the Civil war era, some old timers hid money, fearing raiders/looters. Check local history, you will probably such a story.

 

[swizzle]

O.K. lets take this thread into a different direction now. How would a person go around and get percentages. For instance where is the 10 most common area's that caches are recovered. Say maybe, in the cellar hole, a nearby boulder, the chimney..ect...ect... How could I go abouts getting exact numbers? Ok, lets say I go on a 10 mile round trip hike to a potential spot and there are ten abondoned settlements. I can only spend 2 or 3 hours searching before I have to go home and I may never have the chance to go back to that spot again. How would I increase my chances of caching in? I wouldn't want to waste all my time on 1 dead site and I may not have a chance to hit them all. Where would you start? If I'm (unfortunately) speed hunting and 20% of caches are found by the boulder and 10% are found in the hollow tree, I'd try to hit all the boulders first and If I did find something good. That would be the place to slow down. Am I making an sence? I know its skimming the top but Its also saving places for the future, even if I don't have the chance to go back myself. Swiz

 

[cachenut]

Wrong Approach

I think you'd be better off searching for the homes of criminals in the past and searching around their houses. Or searching around the houses of people before there were banks. Any criminals are okay including whores who may have buried stuff in the back yard flower bed to keep it safe. Before there were banks eveyone buried stuff.

 

[Monty]

Swizzle I'm not sure I understand your question but you really can't tell for sure. I would think a cache hunter would spend about 80% of his time researching and only about 20% actual searching.

 

[cachenut]

How to find potential caches?

I've done research in many areas.

1. I reserached thru old criminal court records from 1700 to 1880 to see who stole coins in the county I lived and if the coins were recovered or not. I then located their old houses to go have a look see/dig.

2. I looked thru records of the US mint circa 1792 to 1860 for records of lost shipments of coins or other good leads.

3. I searched old maps and archives for records of turnpikes companies and their tollgates. Most of the original roads in the US were turnpikes.

4. other ideas I had that would work) look into archives of old insurance companies. etc ..

old newspapers are your best source of information but there ar so many and it takes to long to read them all.
If a company made something back then that is collectable today you can research it and maybe find a cache.
Any place that traded in oney will be good to check. banks, taverns, tollgates, pony express.

Before there were banks everyone buried their money.

Joe.