Gypsy Heart
Gold Member
Rose Plantation Has a Golden Secret.....Victoria Texas
Victoria Advocate Sept 2007
There is an intriguing story about buried treasure on the old Rose Plantation south of Victoria.
Whether the treasure is still there or was ever there remains as much a mystery today as it was after a mysterious man named Moro showed up at the plantation seven miles south of Victoria one summer afternoon in 1859.
That began the legend of Moro's Gold as it would be related years later by Fannie Ratchford, a granddaughter of Preston R. Rose, in the annual publication of the Texas Folklore Society for 1924, and again by the editor, J. Frank Dobie, six years later in his widely read "Coronado's Children: Tales of Lost Mines and Buried Treasures of the Southwest."
Nobody ever sparked more interest in treasure hunting in Texas than Dobie and it was just such stories that whetted the appetites for finding lost riches during the early years of the Great Depression.
According to Ratchford, Moro arrived under the pretense of needing a night's hospitality after his pack mule had run away from him. Instead he would stay for several months and the mule was found partly buried in the Guadalupe River with a bullet hole through his head.
At any rate, Moro was made welcome in spite of these and other suspicious circumstances like his distributing gold coins to the servants and offering lavish gifts to the host family even when they continued to refuse to accept his offers. Ratchford said Moro once urged her grandfather to allow him to build the Rose family a stone mansion "of feudal magnificence" to replace their colonial frame home.
Another time, when Rose and Moro were walking about the plantation, Moro told her grandfather that they were standing within 50 feet of enough gold for him to pay off all his debts and still be a rich man. The only nearby landmark was a large fig tree. During this time, Ratchford said slaves on the plantation reported seeing Moro digging about the place at night and that a guest had reported seeing him "painfully heaving a small chest up the stairway, step at a time."
A man who had gone to the California gold fields in 1849, Rose was apparently intrigued himself by Moro's claims and helped to organize a party of friends and neighbors who accompanied Moro to the Mexican border where he claimed to know of other buried treasure.
There was one man with the group that Moro objected to having with them and, apparently as a consequence, Moro left the group by jumping into the Rio Grande near where he claimed the treasure would be.
That left nothing for the rest to do but return home and Moro would never be seen again.
It was during the expedition to the Rio Grande that Rose caught a case of what his granddaughter described as "galloping consumption," from which he would die a few months later, at the time being only 32 years of age.
A few weeks before his death, according to Ratchford, some of the slaves on the plantation "came to the house, begging for relief from Moro's ghost." They reported seeing it at night digging at various spots, but mostly around the aforementioned fig tree.
She said her grandfather questioned the slaves thoroughly and came to the conclusion that Moro had likely returned to recover money that he had buried on the place.
The legend of Moro's Gold spread and for years afterwards the family would be annoyed by treasure seekers asking to dig on the plantation or sneaking in during the dark of night to do their digging.
To this day nobody can say for sure if there ever was any gold, or what may have happened to it.
That was known only to Moro and his ghost.
Notes:
ROSE, PRESTON ROBINSON (1828-1860). Preston Robinson Rose, rancher and cotton planter, was reportedly born on April 20, 1828, in Washington Parish, Louisiana, where his parents, Mary (Vardeman) and William Pinckney Rose,qv lived before moving to Copiah County, Mississippi. He moved to Texas in the spring of 1840 with a large family group and settled in Harrison County, where he stood trial in 1842 with his father and a brother-in-law, John W. Scott, for the killing of Robert Potterqv during the Regulator-Moderator War.qv He married Mary Ann Scott in 1845 and in the spring of 1846 followed his older brother, John Washington Rose,qv father of historian Victor Marion Rose,qv to Victoria County, where he purchased approximately 12,000 acres about nine miles south of Victoria on the Indianola road. Buena Vista, his plantation on the Guadalupe River, with both bottomland for crops and prairie for stock, was the largest in the county. At first Rose shipped native products-pecans, prairie grass baled as hay, and corn-but within a few years he became a major cotton grower. The 1850 census reported that he owned thirty-two slaves and 270 acres of improved land that produced a cotton crop of 100 bales in 1849. In 1859, however, he shipped ninety-one bales in March alone, for which he netted $3,670. In 1849 Rose went to California to search for gold with a party headed by Ben McCulloch,qv but he returned to his Texas plantation in the fall of 1850. He was one of the first Texas cattlemen to become interested in improving his stock; in 1855 he drew up detailed plans for a $50,000 ranch. By 1858 he had enclosed 10,000 acres in plank fencing, very likely the earliest fencing project of such magnitude in Texas, and had brought in blooded stallions and bulls from Kentucky. An inventory of Buena Vista's stock immediately after his death recorded 2,500 cattle and 200 horses. The 1860 census listed Rose as the third-wealthiest man in Victoria County, with $135,000 in property, including forty-one slaves. He also employed numerous paid laborers and built on his plantation a neighborhood school, for which he hired teachers from Hampton-Sydney College, Virginia.
In September 1856 Rose secured a charter with John J. Linn, Jesse O. Wheeler,qv and others to build the Powderhorn, Victoria, and Gonzales railroad in order to secure the welfare of the port of Indianola (Powderhorn), which was threatened by the completion of the San Antonio and Mexican Gulf Railway to Port Lavaca. Rose frequently used Indianola facilities to ship and receive his plantation products and supplies. The railroad, however, was never built. In 1858 Rose was one of the organizers of the Gulf Coast Fair Association, the object of which, according to its constitution, was "to promote the improvement of the breed of useful domestic animals" and to encourage "agriculture, horticulture and the domestic and mechanic arts." He was also elected Victoria county commissioner, on August 2, 1858. In 1859 a chance guest induced Rose to organize a party of neighbors to go treasure hunting for gold coins that he had buried on the bank of the Rio Grande. On this expedition Rose contracted a deep cold, from which he died on December 18, 1860. His widow survived Reconstructionqv with $15,195 worth of property and moved in 1880 to West Texas, where she died in 1905. She was survived by three daughters.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Laura Ratchford Fromme, "Some Old Letters," Frontier Times, December 1933. Roy Grimes, ed., 300 Years in Victoria County (Victoria, Texas: Victoria Advocate, 1968; rpt., Austin: Nortex, 1985). Preston Rose Papers, Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin. Victor Marion Rose, History of Victoria (Laredo, 1883; rpt., Victoria, Texas: Book Mart, 1961).
John W. ROSE built one of the oldest grinders on the Old Guadalupe River in connection with his gin. This was on the plantation known first as “Vinagras” in 1836 when owned by CARABAJAL. During the ROSE ownership the land was known as “Forest Grove.” The Civil War ended this as a great plantation. It was here that Victor ROSE grew to manhood. Today this is the home of the WEDEMEIER families.
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Excerpt from Preston Rose Papers .....
Preston Rose died on the eve of the Civil War and his plantation was wrecked, the plank fences torn down and used to build shelters for Federal troops, the fine Durham cattle he raised were used to provision the soldiers and all that was left was Buena Vista, the plantation homestead. The old house and Preston Rose's grave are all that remain of the once flourishing plantation.
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Victoria Advocate Sept 2007
There is an intriguing story about buried treasure on the old Rose Plantation south of Victoria.
Whether the treasure is still there or was ever there remains as much a mystery today as it was after a mysterious man named Moro showed up at the plantation seven miles south of Victoria one summer afternoon in 1859.
That began the legend of Moro's Gold as it would be related years later by Fannie Ratchford, a granddaughter of Preston R. Rose, in the annual publication of the Texas Folklore Society for 1924, and again by the editor, J. Frank Dobie, six years later in his widely read "Coronado's Children: Tales of Lost Mines and Buried Treasures of the Southwest."
Nobody ever sparked more interest in treasure hunting in Texas than Dobie and it was just such stories that whetted the appetites for finding lost riches during the early years of the Great Depression.
According to Ratchford, Moro arrived under the pretense of needing a night's hospitality after his pack mule had run away from him. Instead he would stay for several months and the mule was found partly buried in the Guadalupe River with a bullet hole through his head.
At any rate, Moro was made welcome in spite of these and other suspicious circumstances like his distributing gold coins to the servants and offering lavish gifts to the host family even when they continued to refuse to accept his offers. Ratchford said Moro once urged her grandfather to allow him to build the Rose family a stone mansion "of feudal magnificence" to replace their colonial frame home.
Another time, when Rose and Moro were walking about the plantation, Moro told her grandfather that they were standing within 50 feet of enough gold for him to pay off all his debts and still be a rich man. The only nearby landmark was a large fig tree. During this time, Ratchford said slaves on the plantation reported seeing Moro digging about the place at night and that a guest had reported seeing him "painfully heaving a small chest up the stairway, step at a time."
A man who had gone to the California gold fields in 1849, Rose was apparently intrigued himself by Moro's claims and helped to organize a party of friends and neighbors who accompanied Moro to the Mexican border where he claimed to know of other buried treasure.
There was one man with the group that Moro objected to having with them and, apparently as a consequence, Moro left the group by jumping into the Rio Grande near where he claimed the treasure would be.
That left nothing for the rest to do but return home and Moro would never be seen again.
It was during the expedition to the Rio Grande that Rose caught a case of what his granddaughter described as "galloping consumption," from which he would die a few months later, at the time being only 32 years of age.
A few weeks before his death, according to Ratchford, some of the slaves on the plantation "came to the house, begging for relief from Moro's ghost." They reported seeing it at night digging at various spots, but mostly around the aforementioned fig tree.
She said her grandfather questioned the slaves thoroughly and came to the conclusion that Moro had likely returned to recover money that he had buried on the place.
The legend of Moro's Gold spread and for years afterwards the family would be annoyed by treasure seekers asking to dig on the plantation or sneaking in during the dark of night to do their digging.
To this day nobody can say for sure if there ever was any gold, or what may have happened to it.
That was known only to Moro and his ghost.
Notes:
ROSE, PRESTON ROBINSON (1828-1860). Preston Robinson Rose, rancher and cotton planter, was reportedly born on April 20, 1828, in Washington Parish, Louisiana, where his parents, Mary (Vardeman) and William Pinckney Rose,qv lived before moving to Copiah County, Mississippi. He moved to Texas in the spring of 1840 with a large family group and settled in Harrison County, where he stood trial in 1842 with his father and a brother-in-law, John W. Scott, for the killing of Robert Potterqv during the Regulator-Moderator War.qv He married Mary Ann Scott in 1845 and in the spring of 1846 followed his older brother, John Washington Rose,qv father of historian Victor Marion Rose,qv to Victoria County, where he purchased approximately 12,000 acres about nine miles south of Victoria on the Indianola road. Buena Vista, his plantation on the Guadalupe River, with both bottomland for crops and prairie for stock, was the largest in the county. At first Rose shipped native products-pecans, prairie grass baled as hay, and corn-but within a few years he became a major cotton grower. The 1850 census reported that he owned thirty-two slaves and 270 acres of improved land that produced a cotton crop of 100 bales in 1849. In 1859, however, he shipped ninety-one bales in March alone, for which he netted $3,670. In 1849 Rose went to California to search for gold with a party headed by Ben McCulloch,qv but he returned to his Texas plantation in the fall of 1850. He was one of the first Texas cattlemen to become interested in improving his stock; in 1855 he drew up detailed plans for a $50,000 ranch. By 1858 he had enclosed 10,000 acres in plank fencing, very likely the earliest fencing project of such magnitude in Texas, and had brought in blooded stallions and bulls from Kentucky. An inventory of Buena Vista's stock immediately after his death recorded 2,500 cattle and 200 horses. The 1860 census listed Rose as the third-wealthiest man in Victoria County, with $135,000 in property, including forty-one slaves. He also employed numerous paid laborers and built on his plantation a neighborhood school, for which he hired teachers from Hampton-Sydney College, Virginia.
In September 1856 Rose secured a charter with John J. Linn, Jesse O. Wheeler,qv and others to build the Powderhorn, Victoria, and Gonzales railroad in order to secure the welfare of the port of Indianola (Powderhorn), which was threatened by the completion of the San Antonio and Mexican Gulf Railway to Port Lavaca. Rose frequently used Indianola facilities to ship and receive his plantation products and supplies. The railroad, however, was never built. In 1858 Rose was one of the organizers of the Gulf Coast Fair Association, the object of which, according to its constitution, was "to promote the improvement of the breed of useful domestic animals" and to encourage "agriculture, horticulture and the domestic and mechanic arts." He was also elected Victoria county commissioner, on August 2, 1858. In 1859 a chance guest induced Rose to organize a party of neighbors to go treasure hunting for gold coins that he had buried on the bank of the Rio Grande. On this expedition Rose contracted a deep cold, from which he died on December 18, 1860. His widow survived Reconstructionqv with $15,195 worth of property and moved in 1880 to West Texas, where she died in 1905. She was survived by three daughters.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Laura Ratchford Fromme, "Some Old Letters," Frontier Times, December 1933. Roy Grimes, ed., 300 Years in Victoria County (Victoria, Texas: Victoria Advocate, 1968; rpt., Austin: Nortex, 1985). Preston Rose Papers, Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin. Victor Marion Rose, History of Victoria (Laredo, 1883; rpt., Victoria, Texas: Book Mart, 1961).
John W. ROSE built one of the oldest grinders on the Old Guadalupe River in connection with his gin. This was on the plantation known first as “Vinagras” in 1836 when owned by CARABAJAL. During the ROSE ownership the land was known as “Forest Grove.” The Civil War ended this as a great plantation. It was here that Victor ROSE grew to manhood. Today this is the home of the WEDEMEIER families.
..................................................................
Excerpt from Preston Rose Papers .....
Preston Rose died on the eve of the Civil War and his plantation was wrecked, the plank fences torn down and used to build shelters for Federal troops, the fine Durham cattle he raised were used to provision the soldiers and all that was left was Buena Vista, the plantation homestead. The old house and Preston Rose's grave are all that remain of the once flourishing plantation.
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