MISSING GOLD and a MIDNIGHT RAID by Marisa Masterson

 

https://southernsentinel.wordpress.com/the-lost-confederate-treasure/

The war between the states had ended. The Confederacy was toppling. Jefferson Davis remained steadfast that the cause for states' rights was a just one. He prepared to head south, wanting to reach Texas. 

Davis's plans reached the ears of bankers in Richmond, Virginia. They emptied their bank vaults of gold, entrusting it to Davis and his enterage to keep safe for a later time. After all, Union troops were near Richmond, ready to take the capital of the Confederacy. Too, Confederate soldiers planned to burn the city so that nothing remained for Yankee invaders. The gold was best removed and safeguard somewhere else.

By the time that gold reached Georgia, the plan fell apart. Davis was captured, along with his family. The gold from the Richmond banks had moved further south, no longer traveling with him by that time. Even so, Union soldiers took control of it soon after.

End of story, right? Not so quick.

In the dead of night, a group of approximately twenty-five riders swept into the camp. They surprised sleeping soldiers and seized the gold. The raiders stuffed as much of it as they could carry into saddlebags and left as rapidly as they had arrived.

Union forces took after them. Much of the gold was recaptured immediately. Some was found in later years stuffed in the knotholes of trees. However, a small amount of the gold was never recovered.

Too me, that makes for a great mystery in a historical novel. In fact, I have based an entire series around the search for this missing gold. I call it The Confederate Gold Widows.

The first in the series is already available. Here's what one reviewer had to say about Mail Order Marietta:

This sweet novella kicks off the Confederate Gold Widows series. I love mail order bride stories, and this one is rather unique. The smoothly flowing, intriguing plot grabbed me from the beginning and held me to the “to be continued” ending. The characters are diverse and compelling. I loved Marietta and Riley individually and as a couple. Interesting history adds depth and interest to the story. A gentle faith element and sweet romance temper the villainous activities. I enjoyed this quick, satisfying read and look forward to the next book in the series. (Carolyn, Amazon Review)

Buy it at Amazon!

Marietta is panicked after her husband’s execution. Her best choice is to marry a stranger. 

Her future with her sheriff husband hints at love until a desperate man tracks her down, intent on forcing her to give up the stolen Confederate gold. One problem – she doesn’t have it! 

Will this treasure hunter ruin Marietta’s chance at a home and family?

Lost gold legends from the Civil War

By Ciara Gold

I'm so excited to have been invited to participate in this blog. Since this is my first post, I'll begin with a very short introduction. I write historical western romances but I also write fantasy, time-travels and sci-fi romances. Right now, I've been focusing most of my energy on my first love; historical westerns. Being a native Texan, there's just something comforting in the genre.

When I first started writing Texas Forged, my first thought was to have the hero and his half brothers be involved with a missing confederate gold shipment. Thus began my research into this possibility. I stumbled upon a story that would have been great to incorporate if I could have made the dates match up right. Alas, I abandoned the idea and went a different direction with my bad-boy hero.

However, the story is still interesting enough to make note of here about The Lost Legend of Keel Mountain. I don’t want to rewrite the story as it’s told so well at the link provided, but legends of this nature always provide fodder for story ideas.  Somewhere at the base of Keel Mountain in Alabama there could be hidden gold.

Unfortunately, the location didn’t work well with my story line so I continued to hunt for stories of lost gold and came across another interesting tale.  Supposedly there are buried gold ingots somewhere in the Elk-Cameron County area of Pennsylvania.  A very young lieutenant in the Union Army was given an important mission; to see to the delivery of a wagon load of gold bullion. He was given a wagon with a false bottom, an escort of 8 soldiers and orders to avoid the enemy as he travelled from Wheeling, West Virginia to Washington, DC.

Blue Knob (Pennsylvania)

Somehow in the course of trying to stay hidden from enemy eyes, he took the caravan through the very remote regions of Pennsylvania. In Ridgeway, their reception was rather hostile. Then they headed toward St. Mary’s. There, the lieutenant took ill. He’d been fighting bouts of fever throughout the journey but this time, his fever caused him to blurt out the purpose of his mission. Until this point, he was the only one in the group that knew of the gold. Their civilian guide took over as the lieutenant was too ill. They left St. Mary’s for Driftwood and that was the last anyone heard of the caravan until the guide showed up a month later with a fantastical tale of the loss of every man on the convoy and the loss of the cargo.

The guide was questioned extensively but the gold was never found. To this day, many believe $1,500,000 in gold still remains lost in the mountains of Pennsylvania.  Read the full story here.

Again, I couldn’t make the time frame for this story work with mine so I eventually made up my own tale of stolen loot.  As horrid as the Civil War was for both sides, it has given writers a wealth of intrigue to pull from. For those of us writing historical westerns around the 1870s, it's a great way to give our heroes and heroines a background rich in angst.

During the war, the hero in Texas Forged steals from his father, a man who won't claim the relationship. Years later, he still feels guilt for the crime. Eventually, circumstances force him to make things right and he goes in search of the buried loot only to come face to face with a past he'd rather forget.

Please enjoy an excerpt from Texas Forged:

“Care to explain this?”

Galin Walker took the rumpled, thirteen-year-old wanted poster and stared at an image that was both familiar and foreign.

“Looks just like you.” Deputy Nate Brisco rocked back and forth on his dusty boots. “Well, minus the scar on your forehead.”

Galin studied the drawing with an impassive face, but inside, volcanic heat rivaling the high temperatures in his forge threatened to consume his every breath. The likeness on the worn placard captured the stupidity and cocky confidence of youth. His hand shook ever so slightly when he handed the paper back to Nate. “You need a pair of those new-fangled eyeglasses the mercantile’s been advertisin’.”

The law official presented an imposing figure with his Colt strapped low on his hip and his brass badge polished to a shine. Galin swiped his forehead with a damp rag and waited for the man to pull out his cuffs.

“Found it wedged against the side of the new saloon. A few years old but…”

Was it Galin’s imagination, or had the smithy grown hotter? He tugged at the collar of his chambray shirt and licked the salty moisture from his lips. “But?”

Nate shook his head and tapped the thick paper. “Man on the poster has your last name. Know anything about him? Relative perhaps?”

He peered at the rumpled sheet, fear rushing through his veins like a river during a flood. “Lots of folks own that handle.” Why the hell was that document surfacing now?

“True.” Nate spit a wad of tobacco onto the dirt floor and used the toe of his worn boot to cover the evidence of his bad habit. “Didn’t I hear you say you were from Alabama?”

“Along with about a fourth of the town’s population, I reckon.” Would the law official buy that nonchalant bullshit?

“I sincerely doubt many Alabamians found their way here. In fact, I only know of one ornery cuss, and that’s you. Regardless, the face sure bears a resemblance to your ugly mug.”

The knot around Galin’s intestines tightened. “If you think I’m the person they’re lookin’ for, just arrest me and get it done with.” Maybe it was time to stop looking over his shoulder.

www.ciaragold.com

 

 

LOST AND FOUND

By Guest Author Suzie Grant

Thank you to the ladies of the Sweethearts of the West blog for asking me to join them today. Being here with like-minded western lovers is a real pleasure.

My kids and I are planning our bucket list trip to find buried treasure. We’ve listed all the important things we’ll need for our trip, a list of possible places to go, and now all we need to do is make a decision. What brought all this on? Well, we were discussing past vacations to ho-hum places like the beach or the mountains, and we decided that next year we’re totally going to blow the lid off our vacation and do something incredibly crazy: like search for buried treasure. How cool is that? I mean how many people can say they’ve done that?

Forget the fact that we’ve never done anything remotely exciting before in our lives, other than camping for boy scouts, and forget the fact that we have no clue what we’re searching for, we’re going for it.

Luckily, we have at least one of us who has done some kind of survival training in their lives. Hubby is ex Cavalry in the military and I love his military speak. I mean how sexy is it when he answers me with a “negative,” or even when he’s spelling something out using the military phonetic alphabet. I love it. But I digress.

He’s trained in special operations stuff…mumbo jumbo…and luckily has taken control of the “what-we-need-to-survive-in-the-wilds list” because obviously the hair dryer I decided to bring doesn’t quite fit with his idea of “roughing it.” Sigh. I’m not sure I like this idea anymore, but I’m trying to stay optimistic here.

Do keep in mind I’ve only been out of my home state of NC a handful of times so any trip is an adventure for me. My kids are 20, 16, and 4 yrs old. All boys. So needless to say they’re all for the “roughing it” mantra that has sprung up in our conversations as of late. Me…not so much. I like to write about epic cowboy adventures but I don’t like to live them. So I’m letting you all know beforehand if I happen to keel over during next year’s vacation, you’ll all know exactly who to blame. *Points finger at the military drill sergeant who lives in my house.*

So where are we going? Well, I just released my new book THE DEVIL’S DEFIANCE, book two in the Devil Ryder series, and it’s an Indiana Jones meets the Wild, Wild West story. I researched and fell in love with the legend of the “San Saba Mines.” So we’re discussing a trip to San Antonio. We’re definitely going to see the river walk, the Alamo, and while we’re there we’re going to search for buried treasure in Meynard county near the San Saba river. Of course, we really don’t expect to find anything but it’ll be fun just to go hiking near the river and pretend. I do have a fairly vivid imagination if I do say so myself.

What is the San Saba mine? A military expedition from Spain headed by one Lieutenant-General Don Bernado de Miranda was sent north from San Fernando (now known as San Antonio) to search for minerals and assess the strength of the local tribes. The slow moving expedition set up camp near Honey Creek and several of his men found a natural cave and cavern, discovering several thick veins of silver inside. While Miranda sent samples back to his superiors in San Fernando, the Presidio was built, as well as a mission, although Miranda was sent off to another military expedition before he could see his venture to fruition.

Though it has never been confirmed, legend has it that the Spanish missionaries started the extracting and smelting of the ore without Spain’s approval, and so, the legend begins. On the morning of March 16th, 1758 the mission was attacked by a large force of Comanche Indians, burning it to the ground. The Presidio was manned by only a small number of men and was incapable of sending help to the missionaries. So the secrets of the San Saba mine are forever lost. There are more rumors that the cave has been found over the years, once in the 1830’s, again in 1878 by a drifter named Medlin, and once more in 1887 as you can read here in a New York Times article written in June 18th 1887.

The history is fascinating behind this little mystery and hundreds, perhaps thousands of treasure hunters, geologists, prospectors, and adventurers have searched for the lost mine. So you can imagine that little old me, three rowdy boys, one drill sergeant, and a tiny three-legged Shih-tzhu will likely never find the cave. But! We’re happy to go exploring, camping, and just plain searching out the wonders of history while we try. As of now we’re still in the planning stages of our trip and the drill sergeant has a heck of a fight if he thinks for one rotten, stinkin’ second that I am not going to find somewhere to camp where I can at least have a decent shower! ☺

Here’s a blurb of THE DEVIL’S DEFIANCE and I hope you enjoy my ragged, hair pulling, planning of a future-trip that is looking less and less likely as a go. So tell me what is the most unusual family trip you’ve ever taken?

                                                        THE DEVIL’S DEFIANCE

New York City Lawyer Garret Ryder takes the law into his own hands when a vicious killer gets away with murdering his family. Nothing will stop him from delivering the justice denied him by the law he vowed to uphold. But when the killer kidnaps a judge’s daughter, his childhood sweetheart, he must decide if any price is too high to exact revenge.

San Antonio socialite Sophia Maria Osbourne doesn’t trust easily. With a dirty politician and a blackmailing judge for a father, she learned not to rely on anyone but herself. But when her father’s shady dealings lead to her kidnapping, she must place her faith in the man who stole her heart long ago, if she hopes to survive.

Suzie’s life has been one big adventure. Her childhood was full of reading the classics like TREASURE ISLAND, ROBINSON CRUSOE, and THE SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON tales. In fact her mother has another word for her “stories” but to this day, Suzie continues to dream up adventures of her own.

As a pregnant teen her adventure became a life-defining moment as she struggled to survive and raise a child on her own. During those rocky years writing became an emotional outlet. After a very long divorce she again found herself climbing that rocky path of life and learned to live by a single quote: “Obstacles are placed in our path to determine whether we really wanted something, or just thought we did.” By Dr. Harold Smith. Suzie looks forward to each new obstacle.

Taking life by the proverbial horns, Suzie now lives happily ever after with her husband, three boys and one little Shih tzu named Peppy Le’Pew in NC. One day she plans to retire and sail along the east coast, an adventurer to the end.