1. Lost plantations

By 1622 the outlying plantations of the Jamestown Colony stretched more than 100 miles along the James River. The great chief Powhatan, father of Pochohantas, had died and the new chief, Opechancanough, was not of a mind to allow any further incursion by the white man into Indian lands.

To Opechancanough? mind, the problem of the colonists was a simple one with an obvious, straightforward solution. No matter what anyone said or wanted, the white man and the Indian were destined to be mortal enemies. There was only one sure way to deal with an enemy ·kill them. The chief planned for a total massacre of every white man, woman, and child in Virginia and set the date for March 22, 1622. There would be no exceptions ·all of the whites must be killed, even the chief? good friend, George Thorpe. Fortunately for the colonists at Jamestown, a planter named Richard Pace, also made friends among the Indians. Included among those friends was a young Indian named Chanco whom Richard had more or less adopted. The night before the massacre began, Chanco warned his adoptive father. Pace jumped into a boat and rowed himself to Jamestown and woke the governor. The guard was assembled and a runner was sent to nearby plantations to warn the inhabitants. There was no time to warn the outlying plantations.

The next morning 347 of the 1,200 colonists in Virginia were killed, but at Jamestown the Indians were driven off. None of the inhabitants of the town or the nearby plantations who sought refuge there were killed, but on the outlying plantations there were few survivors. With the families that owned them gone, many of the plantations themselves disappeared ·sunk back into the forest from which they were carved. A large number are still lost today. Who knows what secrets lie buried along the banks of the James.

2. Pirate mystery

In 1688, four men ·Edward Davis, Lionel Delawafer, John Hison, and Davis· servant, Peter Cleiss ·were arrested near the mouth of the James River. On board the small boat in which they traveled, were almost 2,000 pieces of eight and several hundred pounds of silver plate. Davis, Delawafer, and Hison all claimed to have come by their wealth legitimately after many years of trading in the West Indies. However, Peter Cleiss told authorities that Davis was a pirate captain who for the last nine years (a tremendously long time by pirate standards) had commanded a ship of 14 guns and 100 men. Davis, Hison, and Delawafer, according to Cleiss, had taken a great number of ships and plundered many Spanish towns.

The three were arrested, but before the case could come to trial Peter Cleiss was dead. Legal maneuvers dragged on for years. Eventually, the three pirates saved their lives by admitting to piracy while taking advantage of the King? amnesty. After their release, they were forced to sue for the return of their treasure which was eventually restored on condition that they make a donation of 300 pounds ?or the building of a college in Virginia.·The donation towards the establishment of William and Mary College was made, and the pirates hastily departed for England. As anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the history of piracy must realize, there is something wrong with this story.

Most pirates ?ent on account for a period of two or three years at best.· Blackbeard lasted two ·Steed Bonnet, less than that. But, as would later come to light, Captain Davis·pirates had been raiding continuously for nine years prior to their attempt to relocate to Point Comfort, Va. As Delawafer would later write, ?here I thought to settle, but meeting with some troubles there... I came home to England in the year 1690.·In his book The Description of the Isthmus of Panama, Delawafer details this final five-year long orgy of pillaging which included raids on Spanish shipping on the Pacific and attacks on coastal towns in Panama, Peru, and Chile. Yet the list of the booty seized by Virginia authorities totaled 1,900 pieces of eight and 264 pounds of plate silver ·not one single ounce of gold. It is inconceivable that five years of raiding on the Pacific coast of South America produced not a single gold doubloon for the captain? share.

In 1897 John Fiske wrote that when Davis divided his booty at Juan Fernandez every man got a share equivalent to $20,000. The Captain? share would have been twice that amount or more, so the question any treasure hunter has to ask is: what became of the gold? Simple explanations are usually the best. Since the pirates were attempting to resume normal lives under the guise of legitimate businessmen, they hid their gold to avoid calling attention to themselves by ostentatious display. The bulk of it might be 1,000s of miles away from the Virginia coast, but some of it (at least enough to finance a trip to retrieve the rest) must have been hidden close by. After their release from jail, in 1689 or 1690, the pirates dared not dig it up and attract fresh charges against themselves; therefore, they were forced to enter into a deal whereby their silver would be returned in exchange for their ?onation·to William and Mary College. Their dreams of a quiet life in the Old Dominion gone, they set sail for England, where Delawafer, at least, prospered as his book was well received.

Whatever gold (and there must have been some) they had secreted in the area is not recorded as ever being recovered.

3. Depressions cache

In Buchanan County, an undetermined amount of money was cached by a man named Hurley on a hill behind his house at Mill Creek Hollow near Kelsa. Three half-gallon fruit jars of gold coins are reportedly hidden on the former Cousins farm south of Hopewell in Prince George County. Cousins buried the coins in 1929 in anticipation of the Depression but did not reveal the exact location to his family. When he was later killed in a farm accident, the cache could not be found.

4. Cavalier cache

In 1649, after the execution of Charles I by the victorious Roundheads, colonial Virginia experienced a mass immigration of prominent Cavalier families who kept the cause and the traditions of the monarchy alive in their hearts. It was, therefore, quite natural for Charles II upon his restoration in 1660, to chose Virginia as a place to maintain a large cache of treasure in anticipation of the day when the tide of events might turn against him. When the king later found out that the party that he sent to the New World had buried the gold and jewels he entrusted to them in a secret area near the mouth of the White Creek, later known as the ?aunted Woods,·instead of near Jamestown, as instructed, he was understandably outraged. All members of the advance party were reportedly put to death. Charles II never had the need to resort to his American cache. Through many tribulations and plots, both real and imagined, he maintained his grip on the throne and died the King of England, having spent many thousand times the value of his paltry American cache. It has not, that I know of, ever been found.

The same area is said to be the location of the hiding place of a large cache of coins and jewelry and other valuables buried by soldiers under British General Cornwallis during the Revolution. The cache, which was said to be comprised of the best part of the plunder taken during the second southern campaign, was buried somewhere in the Haunted Woods area in 1781. After Cornwallis·surrender at Yorktown in October of that year, he and his army were held as prisoners of war until the details of the peace and prisoner exchanges could be worked out. The cache, which they would not have been permitted to take with them in any event, was never recovered. The Haunted Woods is located about five miles from the town of Matthews Courthouse near the mouth of the White Creek.

Please Note: It is the responsibility of the treasure hunter to gain permission before detecting.

SOURCES:

Bingldine, Raymond C., Jr. and Lena Barksdale and Marion Belt Nesbit. Virginia? History, Chas. Scribners Sons, 1956.

Fisk, John. Old Virginia and Her Neighbors. Houghton Mifflin, 1997.

Terry, Thomas P. U.S. Treasure Atlas. Specialty Publications, 1985.

Williams, Lloyd Haynes. Pirates of Colonial Virginia. Deitz Press, 1937.