He bought some steam engines and pumps, had a months worth of logs to keep the steam engines going and was gonna drain the lake. <>/Border[0 0 0]/Contents()/Rect[72.0 594.2333 124.3037 607.124]/StructParent 1/Subtype/Link/Type/Annot>> As a young girl, Diana pushed the plunger to set off dynamite. The legend says that in 1816, Laffite and his fellow pirates plundered six wagon loads worth of silver from the Spanish. <>/Border[0 0 0]/Contents(cdsscholarworks@sfasu.edu)/Rect[183.5112 72.3516 299.2412 82.8984]/StructParent 10/Subtype/Link/Type/Annot>> Legend remains victorious in spite of history and it just attests to the power that legends have over people when the facts may not necessarily support something, Pinkerton said. The lake is located in the extreme northeastern part of the county along the boundary between Rusk and Panola. 0000001829 00000 n Pinkerton. Boise County - Close to 3,000,000 troy ounces of gold have been removed from the gravels of the Bose Basin and according to treasure hunters, there is plenty more to be found. In fact, this same story about Lafitte treasure being lost somewhere, was repeated over and over in almost the same pattern from the Gulf Coast all the way up into Arkansas and Missouri.. In the early 1800s, Stephen F. Austin, on his first trip to Texas, also heard about a rich silver mine on the San Saba River and a gold mine on the Llano. 2. Their father, Barnie Waldrop, was the most active local treasure hunter. His main focus is on Jean Lafittes treasure, His body was buried at sea in the Gulf of Honduras. TYLER, Texas (KETK) Legends of buried treasure have fascinated people around the world since time immemorial. The last. Other stories of Pirate Treasures are discussed. The real story of Hendricks Lake is not the legend alone, it is about the people who believed it fervently enough to put their time and money on the line in the hope of recovering it. It was a cloudy evening with low visibility, and Laffite attempted to capture what appeared to be two Spanish merchant vessels. Palm City. That set off a huge treasure hunting stampede. There will be people still in town who will remember Barnie Waldrop, Pinkerton said. Barnie was a TV repair man, and he had built this underwater metal detector, like the size of a washing machine. The first episode premiered on Tuesday November 17 at 10PM EST on the History Channel. A.C. SoRelle, Jr., and his brother, Henry, were oilmen who brought detection equipment, draglines, and other heavy machinery to dig into the gumbo mud on the bottom of the lake. Little is known about his origins, but he was probably born either in Basque-France or in the French colony Saint-Domingue. 1. In 1884, the guy Tatum is named after thought he would drain the lake, Pinkerton said. Adams was a Rusk County backwoodsman who wears an old slouch felt hat, bib overalls, and a denim jacket, buttoned at the throat even in hot weather, and a favorite character of columnist Frank X. Tolbert for many of his Tolberts Texas articles over the years. Any "COB" finds in Texas I was just wondering if any member in Texas has found any cobs, reales, etc. There are two legends in particular that seem to have found purchase in the minds of East Texas treasure hunters. Pinkerton is hoping to publish his book some time in the new year and is interested in finding more people with first and second hand accounts of the treasure hunting. They say this inspired them to reach out to other treasure hunters and hear their stories. Houston oil men began a search for Spanish silver-thelegendary treasure of Hendricks Lake.! xref . If pirate plunder and sunken silver hidden in a lake seem like the elements of folklore, they are. 146 0 obj 161 0 obj The box was hidden by millionaire art dealer. The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this entry. People from Texas, Louisiana, Iowa, Michigan, Mississippi, Wisconsin, Kentucky, California, and even England wanted to find that treasure. Brackston has been on board about 12 of those months. Lake Ridge (5) Las Olas Isles (5) Las Olas by the Sea (0) Lauder Gate Isles (2) . James Bowie went on an expedition to find it. During 1957 and 1958 the most significant attempts to locate the treasure took place at the lake. The son of the founder of the town of Tatum. He gave the loot to smugglers who were attempting to transport six wagonloads of silver ingots to St. Louis where the treasure would presumably be minted into coins. We need your support because we are a non-profit organization that relies upon contributions from our community in order to record and preserve the history of our state. <>/Border[0 0 0]/Contents(www.easttexashistorical.org)/Rect[308.5376 282.2367 447.0903 295.1273]/StructParent 4/Subtype/Link/Type/Annot>> When we were looking through the story and seeing some of the characters that got interested in it, seeing some of the nations most prominent treasure hunters getting interested in the story, the story being picked up by some of the largest magazines and news outlets across the country in the 50s and 60s, seeing involvement from one of the worlds most famous psychicsits an incredible story, Roper noted. A TV repairman. In a location on the lake, matching the tale, with a sloped This is the list to receive occasional emails containing special offers, deals and promotions (like contests). Fire Ants Have Unleashed Chaos in Texas for Decades. Im going to talk to his son, who was 14 or so when they were out at the lake. Its got quite a long story in the community. endobj Patricia Sharpe writes a regular restaurant column, Pats Pick, for Texas Monthly. Joe spent many hours growing up around Milzie Williamson and later used his Fisher M-Scope metal detector to search those mysterious holes. endobj An electrical engineer and MIT grad who before coming to Hendricks Lake to look for treasure had found the Union navys ironclad Tecumseh in Mobile Bay. Gary L. Pinkerton, And if so is the treasure still there? The man who found a hidden treasure chest said to be worth about $2 million last summer in the Rocky Mountains one that had tantalized fortune seekers for a decade, led to at least two deaths. As of May 2022, she resides in Austin and does media relations for TCEQ. Christian and the treasure hunting team are looking forward to using new technology to scan the bottom of the lake for possible anomalies, and hope to find a treasure which was missed in past searchers. Maybe they can help them in their search from the insights learned from their own pursuit of the Money Pit. Pickering, a veteran diver, has made it his mission to recover all things odd and ordinary lurking in the lake to keep Georgia families safe. the new book is available in paperback. Since that time, many parties and individuals have endeavored to find the Lost Treasure of Hendricks Lake, with searches as early as 1884 and as recently as the 1970s. To contact Pinkerton, call (409) 201-8026 or email gary.pinkerton@outlook.com. Boise County - Near the Nevada state line at Rye Flats, a shipment of newly-minted gold coins . Pinkerton himself doesnt personally believe there was any silver brought through East Texas during the time in which the legend takes place because the roads were little more than Indian trails. See the BLOG here for more details. Access to those treasure seekers was largely through land owned by a former Panola County sheriff, Corbett Akins, and one of his deputies, L.E. In the early 1820s, Great Colombia under the government of Simon Bolivar had begun commissioning former privateers as officers in their newly formed navy. Thats the one thing we all agree on about Sunken Silver, is that legend is a very powerful thing.. Hits are sounded off. He was now legally authorized by Great Colombia to take Spanish ships. Some fishermen in the last century pulled several silver bars from those very waters with a hoop net. Every penny counts! <>/Metadata 144 0 R/Outlines 97 0 R/Pages 141 0 R/StructTreeRoot 102 0 R/Type/Catalog/ViewerPreferences<>>> March 11 Saturday Daylight Wasting C-tier . 0000002763 00000 n Although they attended different universities, Roper reconnected with high school friends Brackston McKnight and Ryan Travis and the three now work together on the project. Read More about Jean Laffites treasure in the Sabine River, USS Hatteras (formerly St. Mary) was a 1,126-ton steamer purchased by the Union Navy during the early part of the American Civil War. One of Hendricks's biggest contributions was financing the excavation of Hawikku, an ancestral village in New Mexico, where the A:shiwi (Zuni) first made contact with Europeans. A nearby lake fed by the Sabine River also caught their attention, since the silver might have been transported there by the current. Just another myth? Captain Blackbeard's Lost Silver, said to be $1.5 million worth of silver bars. Lived at the lake, rented boats to people who wanted to fish. The July 17, 1958 edition of the Panola Watchman includes this update on a search for Jean LaFittes treasure at Hendricks Lake near Tatum. (Image credit: Pictorial Press Ltd./Alamy) British . To make this film a reality, we are seeking donors to help us meet our minimum budget goal. The legend has taken many twists over the years. It was one of the first times I met with Brackston after we graduated university last summer, Roper recalled. <>/Border[0 0 0]/Contents()/Rect[493.2393 594.2333 540.0 607.124]/StructParent 3/Subtype/Link/Type/Annot>> One person who is still committed to the Hendricks Lake legend is Jacksonville documentary film maker and treasure hunter, Christian B. Roper. Clarksville Standard, August 29, 1884. <>stream IXK\!%X[CQq tfI&JA PAefQj$9k,HmN}) n1jXb#,L5N_T U7VOn'u[^cW c{*`!+?@6rJQ|n ;fr4a}_OM%)t0 HUn>>IudFn _IXEvFmoj8!~X!HL: Tales of pirate booty and Mexican gold have captivated minds for generations, and it all could be closer than you might think. endobj Hughes Springs up in Cass County was founded by two brothers looking for a treasure in the 1850s or 60s. Six wagon loads of silver carried north along Trammel's Trace. According to reports, the total bounty would be worth more than $1.36 million today. This is the place where six wagon loads of silver stolen by Jean Lafitte from a ship called the Santa Rosa were supposedly dumped, according to HendricksLake.com, a website run by author and independent researcher, Gary L. Pinkerton. I spent the majority of the summer of 2020 organizing expeditions into the lake, through sonar we had come up with quite a few hits of things that were very interesting, Roper said. It led all the way back to an 1884 account where the guy who was the son of the founder of Tatum, Texas in East Texas decided he was going to drain the lake. Pinkerton had to get special permission to visit for research and to take pictures. In the 1950s, the Sabine River and the nearby lake (Hendricks Lake) experienced a new onslaught of treasure seekers when the story of Laffites silver was published by the True West magazine.