MONEY DIGGING ON MARTHA'S VINEYARD

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V22 2019 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 22, Number 19, May 12, 2019, Article 30

In 1833, newspapers around the country reprinted a story from the New Bedford Gazette titled "Money Digging":

"A few days since, three young men on the south side of the Island of Martha’s Vineyard were engaged in laboring in a field which was once an orchard — two of them ploughing, and the other picking up stones at a distance. As the plough passed over a certain part of the land, the ploughshare started up two or three pieces of silver coin, which were hastily snatched up by the holder and put in his pocket. His companion observed him stoop and pick up something, and when the plough went over the spot again, seeing him repeat the movement, he desired to change situations with him.

"This was done, and he, too, reaped his crop; when each finding that the other was master of the secret, they proposed a manoeuvre to get rid of the third person, so that they could divide the spoil without his coming in for a share. They therefore declared it best to leave off work that forenoon, as it was nearly 12 o’clock, which was readily acquiesced in. What they obtained no one can exactly state — but it is believed not far from two or three thousand dollars were excavated. This was divided between the two; leaving [out] the man in the field with them."

As historian Charles Hine later noted, "the story got out in due time." The original article reported that the treasure had evidently been originally buried in a bag ("ascertained by pieces of cloth adhering to some of the coin"), but a footnote in an 1839 history book by William Dunlap claimed that it was "a pot, containing $1,800, ploughed up in a field upon Martha’s Vineyard," and attributed the loot to the pirate captain William Kidd.

Hines noted, "This is said to be the only case actually known where buried gold has been found" on the Island. But that was not for lack of trying. There were lots of stories of pirates and other mysterious strangers visiting the Island to stash their wealth. An 1811 article in the Boston Palladium reported that three men were sighted stealthily landing a longboat on the Island’s south shore at three o’clock in the morning. They spoke broken English and were thought to be Spaniards, and they carried five or six thousand dollars in coins. "Every appearance indicates them to be villains, who have perpetrated crimes of the deepest dye." They found passage to New Bedford, and vanished before they could be detained and questioned.

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