Any one interested you might like the following. Aberdare newspaper article dated 28th July 1888. It tells the following story.
HIDDEN TREASURE. Who would have dreamed that a huge chest containing nearly a million of francs in gold and silver coinage could have been peacefully reposing for the last 78 years a foot or two underground, within a stone's-throw of an important highway, without any- one having the good luck to spot" it! There will be some gnashing of teeth among the inhabitants in the neighbourhood of Bielostock, in the Grodno district, in the Empire of All the Russias, if it be demonstrated by ocular testimony that this chest with its treasure has escaped their notice and that of their fathers and grandfathers before them.
At any rate, the Czar's Minister of the Interior has just despatched a special committee to dig up the chest and its precious contents at the exact point indicated. If the treasure is really found it will be' a very romantic affair. It is a relic of the Retreat of Napoleon's Grande Army." This research is due to the initiative of a Frenchman, M. Villebaude Jonnich, who has been ransacking some manuscripts left by his grandfather, one of the stoutest troopers in the Emperor's host. The old gentleman related that he was with a detachment acting as escort to this chest, which contained the sum of £ 34,000 sterling, when the convoy was pursued by a strong force of Cossacks. Seeing that escape was impossible, the party hastily buried the chest close to the Bielostock- road, along which it was riding, and soon afterwards every man was cut to pieces with the exception of Jonnich, who lived to tell the tale in some memoirs penned for the benefit of his relatives.
It is to be feared that the family did not take much interest in the journal, or possibly it may not have been of a very energetic turn of mind. Be this as it may, it has been left to a grandson, M. Villebaude Jonnich, after a lapse of 76 years, to undertake a hunt after the treasure, the precise whereabouts of which is carefully and specially indicated by his glorious but defunct ancestor. He has applied to the Russian Minister of the Interior, who, as I have already stated, has taken the matter up. If the chest be really found, M. Villebaude Jonnich will, according to Russian law, be entitled as informer to a third of the booty, or JE 10,000. Persons blessed with grandfathers who beheld the Kremlin in flames will then be searching among old scrap- books and moldy papers for possible hints as to the existence of other chests in the highways and byeways of the Czar's European dominions.
Question remains did he every recover it? No metal detectors back in 1888. and of course a lot of history has passed since then Perhaps it still lies buried out there?
Amy
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