Written by the Treasiureguide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report.
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| Clipping of 1927 Article About Treasures of Padre Island and Money Hill |
With Beryl heading towards Texas, the Treasures of Padre Island come to mind. And as I said yesterday, you can find plenty of good information if you search the newspaper archives. Here is one such article. Padre Island, as this article suggests. has a lot of treasure, but the Padre Island National Seashore is off limits for treasure hunting. Nonetheless, treasure will be found after Beryl passes through.
There are many more newspaper articles about the treasures of Padre Island. I just selected one of the older ones, which, as you can see from the excerpt, is full of good information.
To access the newspaper archives you can sign-up for a trial subscription.
Here is the link to the above excerpted article.
Tulia Herald, Nov 10, 1927, p. 10 | NewspaperArchive
There are many more articles about the treasures of Padre Island in the newspaper archives. Many were from the 1960s, just like the many 1960s articles about Fort Pierce treasure finds.
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Before the mafia there was the La Mano Negra (Black Hand Society), which was primarily an extortion ring of Italian immigrants that operated in the United State in the early 1900s. The victims were primarily other Italian immigrants but before the group was eliminated they began to victimize successful native-born families. See Black Hand (extortion) - Wikipedia
Typical Black Hand tactics involved sending a letter to a victim threatening bodily harm, kidnapping, arson, or murder. The letter demanded a specified amount of money to be delivered to a specific place. It was decorated with threatening symbols such as a smoking gun, hangman's noose, skull, or knife dripping with blood or piercing a human heart, and was frequently signed with a hand, "held up in the universal gesture of warning", imprinted or drawn in thick black ink.
My wife was doing some family research and learned about this from research into her own family. Her grandfather was a victim who ended up shooting a member of the Black Hand Society but was found innocent by self-defense and the officials being happy to be rid of the nuisance criminal. I am telling about this for two reasons. First, you will learn a lot of interesting history by researching your own family, and second, it ended up being a treasure story worth investigating with a metal detector. Investigating your own family history can lead to some good treasure leads.
I won't tell the whole story, but my wife had previously found evidence that suggested her grandfather may have been involved with a shooting, but she knew nothing of the details or if it was indeed her grandfather. She recently found an envelope addressed to her grandfather (in cursive, of course) that was addressed to her grandfather at the same address that was listed in the old newspaper account of the crime, which assured her that her grandfather was the person involved.
Her grandfather was told to leave $300 (quite a lot of money in those days) on a particular bridge. The bridge was near a gang headquarters.
The area of the bridge should be an interesting area for metal detecting. If one man was told to leave money there, I am sure there were others. So I looked up the bridge, which, it turns out, was destroyed by a flood. Only the stone piers now remain on an abandoned road. And the town, after being cut off, is now a ghost town.
I found a YouTube video showing the abandoned road leading to the location of the old bridge and the remaining stone piers. It looks like a very interesting metal detecting site.
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| Remains of Bridge Used as Drop Point by Member of Infamous Black Hand Gang. YouTube link: Abandoned Road (Revised!) Blairsville Cokeville Bridge Near Torrence State Hospital PA (youtube.com) |
One thing that has impressed me lately is how treasure is all around you and how so much of it will be found close to home. It is sometimes an exciting adventure to go to distant places to metal detect, but you'll find treasure not far from home. I often don't even get in my car to go treasure hunting anymore. A short walk provides access to a lot. Treasure is close in a physical sense, but some of your best treasures will also be close to you in another way. They are treasures that have a family connection.
I've hunted woodland hills where my ancestors roamed in the 1700s. I've hunted my yard, the yard where my dad built a house and where I was raised as well as other family farms and homesteads, and today I mentioned a story from the life and times of my wife's grandfather.
If you research your family, you'll find interesting stories as well as treasure leads. I have no doubt about it.
My wife said several times that the best stories are real stories, and what I learned about the La Mano Negra and her grandfather is one good example. It brought a dramatic and informative bit of history alive and provided a great metal detecting prospect for the future.
When you research your family and follow up on the treasure leads you discover, the treasures might seem more meaningful to you and your family.
One of my main points today is the value of research and the newspaper archives as a research resource for treasure leads.
I've also shown how you can use YouTube videos to explore sites, including locations that you might want to visit in the future. Many of those videos don't get many views views, but they might be just what you need.
Yesterday I posted an article on the discovery of the Santa Margarita. That was just one of many articles you can find in the archives on sunken treasure.
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Yesterday I also talked about the importance of being able to read cursive handwriting and also mentioned the penmanship skills that were taught in the schools. I mentioned the pens and ink wells that I used in some of my classes.
I once found a ink bottle exactly like the ones that were in our student desks. I couldn't find the exact match today, but I know I have it somewhere. Below is shown a very similar one. It is different in two main ways. First, it isn't round, and secondly, it is a Swan ink bottle. In the next few days, I'll probably find the one exactly like the one that would have been in my school desk, but below is the similar bottle.
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| Swan Ink Jar. |
And below is a nib very much like the ones we used in school. It fit into a slot of the wood pen.
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| Spencerian Forty Ink Pen Nib. |
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| Source: nhc.noaa.gov |