Today I was doing some research on the Civil War and came across a letter written by John C. Fremont to John G. Nicolay (Abraham Lincoln’s personal secretary) dated August 6, 1861. It says the following:

Our position in that region good enemy very much superior in force, eighteen thousand between Birds Point and New Madrid, under Pillow and Jeff. Thompson strong in Cavalry and Artillery. We are reinforcing & entrenching Ironton, Cape Girardeau, & Birds Point. Night of my arrival at Birds Point enemy burnt bridges of Fulton & Cairo railroad. We are not losing a moment but distressed by rawness of troops and want of arms shall I give details of relative forces by telegraph.

This letter is in reference to Missouri. John C. Fremont was a Major General serving as commander of the Union Army’s Department of the West and described in his letter two specific places with 18,000 Confederate soldiers between them. According to Google Maps, the distance between Birds Point and New Madrid is about 36.5 miles walking. It borders the Mississippi river and has two notable places in between. The first place, on the Kentucky side of the river, is Columbus.  On November 7, 1861 Brigadier General Ulysses S. Grant had his first combat test by sailing from Cairo, Illinois downriver to attack the Confederate fortress at Columbus, Kentucky. The next morning he discovered the Confederate troops had crossed the river to Belmont, Missouri. He crossed to the other side and over ran the Confederate camp destroying it. The scattered Confederate forces quickly reorganized and counter-attacked from Columbus with heavy artillery fire across the river. Grant retreated to Paducah, Kentucky. When the Confederates learned of Grant’s departure, they ordered 2,700 men under General Gideon J. Pillow to Belmont.

Why is this important you may ask?

If you go into Google Maps and search for Belmont, Missouri you will get a point sitting in the middle of a field across the river from Columbus, Kentucky. In fact, you zoom out farther and all you get is MORE fields with hardly any houses around at all. This location, with a high potential for thousands of relics both Union and Confederate, is sitting there concealed under corn stalks just waiting for the right people to come along, request permission from the landowner, and find some treasure!

A map in the David Rumsey Collection has a section showing the Belmont battlefield area across the river from Columbus, KY and how it was potentially laid out. Again, I remind you – it is all farm fields now! If somebody is able to go out there or knows more about this area, I’d love to hear about it!

At one time considered the most sought after gold legend in the world, the Lost Adams Diggings seem to have faded into history. It is known by many names such as Lost Adams Gold Canyon, Sno-Ta-Hay, Zigzag Canyon, and the Lost Cabin Mine and claims to be a rich untouched source of gold. According to Wikipedia:

In 1864, a teamster named Adams (no sources disclose his first name) and some prospectors in Gila Bend, Arizona were approached by a Mexican Indian named Gotch Ear, who offered to show them a canyon filled with gold only 10 days ride away. The miners accepted and together they rode to find the gold. They crossed a road on the way which Gotch Ear said would lead back to Fort Wingate, and that they should remember it so they could go back that way for supplies when needed. They soon arrived at a canyon with a blind entrance. At the bottom of a Z-shaped narrow canyon trail they found a creek rich with gold.

The men paid Gotch Ear and began panning for gold. However, a force of Apaches, led by a chief named Nana, confronted the miners. Nana allowed them to mine the creek, provided they did not venture up past the waterfall. The miners obeyed at first, but eventually several miners began mining near the waterfall and discovered two rich veins of gold. The diggings were very rich, with some gold nuggets described as being the size of hens’ eggs.

The miners stored their gold under a stone in the hearth of the cabin they built near the creek. One miner, a German, kept his gold separate. He soon collected all the gold he wanted and left the camp.

Some of the miners were sent to Fort Wingate for more supplies. When this group did not return after eight days, Adams and a man named Davidson rode out to investigate. From the top of the Z-shaped trail, they found five dead men and three dead horses, all that was left of the party that had set out for the fort. Adams and Davidson then returned to their cabin by the creek and found that the Apaches had returned, set fire to their cabin and killed the remaining miners. Adams and Davidson narrowly escaped and walked twelve days through the desert until they stumbled on an army patrol, which took them to the nearest fort. Davidson died there. It was 10 years until Adams overcame his fear and returned to New Mexico to look for the diggings. Adams spent the rest of his life trying to relocate the hidden canyon.

I stumbled across an interesting website by man named Ron Jensen who claimed to have found the exact location of the Lost Adams Diggings in 2001. His last entry on his site says he plans to go back out there in Spring 2002 to begin recovering gold but there was no further update listed.  It’s  a very interesting read to say the least with pictures and research that makes it sound pretty legit. Read his full story at: http://www.lostadams.com/

1774 Exquemelin, A.O. French Pirate History Books

Main author: Exquemelin, A. O (Alexandre Olivier)

Title details: Histoire des aventuriers filibustiers qui se sont signalés dans les Indes : contenant ce qu’ils y ont fait de remarquable, avec la vie, les mœurs & les coutumes des boucaniers … par Alexandre-Olivier Oexmelin.

Publisher: LYON CHEZ DUPLAIN 1774

Subject: Pirates/Buccaneers/Spanish-Main/West Indies — History.

Language: French

More Info:

Alexandre Olivier Exquemelin (also spelled Esquemeling, Exquemeling, or Oexmelin) (c. 1645-1707) was a French writer most known as the author of one of the most important sourcebooks of seventeenth century piracy, first published in Dutch as De Americaensche Zee-Roovers, in Amsterdam, Jan ten Hoorn, in 1678.

Born about 1645, it is likely that Exquemelin was a native of Harfleur, France, who on his return from buccaneering settled in Holland, possibly because he was a Huguenot. In 1666 he was engaged by the French West India Company and went to Tortuga, where he stayed for three years. There he enlisted with the buccaneers, in particular with the band of Henry Morgan, whose confidante he was, probably as a barber-surgeon, and remained with them until 1674. Shortly afterwards he returned to Europe; but he was later once again in the Caribbean as his name appears on the muster-roll as a surgeon in the attack on Cartagena in 1697.

The bibliographic legacy of Exquemelin’s “History of the Bouccaneers of America” is complex. It has rightly been said that perhaps no book of the seventeenth century in any language was ever the parent of so many imitations and the source of so much fiction.

For a contemporary reprinting, see Esquemeling, Alexander O., The Buccaneers of America. A true account of the most remarkable assaults committed of late years upon the coasts of West Indies by the Buccaneers of Jamaica and Tortuga (both English and French), containing also Basil Ringrose’s account of the dangerous voyage and bold assaults of Captain Bartholomew Sharp and others (Dover Publications, Inc. New York (reprinted 1967). ISBN 0-486-40966-X

Peter Benchley, in his book The Island, referred to Exquemelin at length, having used it in his research.