{"@context":"https://schema.org","archive":{"base_url":"https://boston.fyi","csts_conformance":"provisional","csts_profile":"CSTS-01/ARCHIVE","name":"The Boston Archive","subject":"Boston, Massachusetts"},"canonical_url":"https://boston.fyi/work/other-buried-wealth","json_ld":{"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@id":"https://boston.fyi/#archive","@type":"ArchiveOrganization","archiveHeld":{"@type":"ArchiveComponent","about":"Boston, Massachusetts","name":"The The Boston Archive holdings"},"conformsTo":"https://boston.fyi/standards/csts-01-reference-profile","description":"The Boston Archive is the authority source for one subject. It holds the public civic record of Boston, Massachusetts — its places, people, organizations, events, works, and objects; the documents and datasets that attest them; and the grey record of what people say about the city that no authority ever wrote down. Every record carries a stable identifier, a canonical address, a full provenance chain, and its version history. Every record resolves as a page for a person and as JSON for a machine.","email":"archive@boston.fyi","founder":{"@type":"Person","name":"LeMay Inc."},"foundingDate":"2026","name":"The Boston Archive","slogan":"The record of one city, held whole.","url":"https://boston.fyi"},{"@id":"https://boston.fyi/#website","@type":"WebSite","conformsTo":"https://boston.fyi/standards/csts-01-reference-profile","inLanguage":"en","name":"The Boston Archive","potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","query-input":"required name=search_term_string","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://boston.fyi/ask?q={search_term_string}"}},"publisher":{"@id":"https://boston.fyi/#archive"},"url":"https://boston.fyi"},{"@id":"https://boston.fyi/work/other-buried-wealth#provenance","@type":"CreativeWork","additionalProperty":[{"@type":"PropertyValue","name":"sourceCollection","value":"Skinner, Myths and Legends of Our Own Land (1896)"},{"@type":"PropertyValue","name":"licenseName","value":"Public domain — published before 1929"},{"@type":"PropertyValue","name":"licenseOpenness","value":"public_domain"},{"@type":"PropertyValue","name":"retrievedAt","value":"2026-09-02T23:01:57.331203+00:00"},{"@type":"PropertyValue","name":"transformCount","value":5}],"creator":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Skinner, Myths and Legends of Our Own Land (1896)"},"creditText":"Charles M. Skinner","dateCreated":"2026-09-02T23:01:57.331203+00:00","isBasedOn":"https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/6615/pg6615.txt","license":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain_in_the_United_States","name":"Provenance of Other Buried Wealth"},{"@id":"https://boston.fyi/work/other-buried-wealth","@type":"CreativeWork","additionalProperty":[{"@type":"PropertyValue","name":"recordType","value":"Work"},{"@type":"PropertyValue","name":"workType","value":"folk_narrative"},{"@type":"PropertyValue","name":"narrativeType","value":"ghost_story"},{"@type":"PropertyValue","name":"firstAttestationInPrint","value":"Charles M. Skinner, Myths and Legends of Our Own Land (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1896)"},{"@type":"PropertyValue","name":"firstAttestationYear","value":1896}],"conformsTo":"https://boston.fyi/standards/csts-01-reference-profile","contentLocation":{"@type":"Place","name":"Boston and eastern Massachusetts"},"creator":{"@type":"Person","name":"Charles M. Skinner"},"dateCreated":"2026-09-02T23:02:20.257585+00:00","dateModified":"2026-09-02T23:02:20.257585+00:00","description":"The wealth of the Astors hardly exceeds the treasure that is supposed to be secreted here and there about the country, and thousands of dollars have been expended in dredging rivers and shallow seas, and in blasting caves and cellars. Certain promoters of these schemes have…","encoding":{"@type":"MediaObject","contentUrl":"https://boston.fyi/work/other-buried-wealth.json","encodingFormat":"application/json"},"genre":"ghost_story","identifier":"urn:lemay:boston:entity:other-buried-wealth","inLanguage":"en","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://boston.fyi/#archive"},"license":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain_in_the_United_States","name":"Other Buried Wealth","provenance":{"@id":"https://boston.fyi/work/other-buried-wealth#provenance"},"temporalCoverage":"1896","url":"https://boston.fyi/work/other-buried-wealth","version":1,"workExample":[{"@type":"CreativeWork","citation":"Charles M. Skinner, Myths and Legends of Our Own Land (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1896)","creator":{"@type":"Person","name":"unattributed — the collector names no informant"},"name":"As printed in Charles M. Skinner (1896)"}]},{"@id":"https://boston.fyi/work/other-buried-wealth#breadcrumbs","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","item":"https://boston.fyi","name":"The Boston Archive","position":1},{"@type":"ListItem","item":"https://boston.fyi/work","name":"Works","position":2},{"@type":"ListItem","item":"https://boston.fyi/work/other-buried-wealth","name":"Other Buried Wealth","position":3}]}]},"json_url":"https://boston.fyi/work/other-buried-wealth.json","record":{"alternate_names":[],"canonical_name":"Other Buried Wealth","canonical_path":"/work/other-buried-wealth","created_at":"2026-09-02T23:02:20.257585Z","description":"The wealth of the Astors hardly exceeds the treasure that is supposed to be secreted here and there about the country, and thousands of dollars have been expended in dredging rivers and shallow seas, and in blasting caves and cellars. Certain promoters of these schemes have…","detail":{"creator_person_id":null,"creator_text":"Charles M. Skinner","date_created":null,"date_created_text":"1896","detail_type":"Work","folk":{"atu_type":null,"first_print_citation":"Charles M. Skinner, Myths and Legends of Our Own Land (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1896)","first_print_document_id":"c4a78f90-f128-4110-8d37-ed1ca3e1d82b","first_print_year":1896,"motifs":[],"narrative_type":"ghost_story","place_id":null,"place_text":"Boston and eastern Massachusetts","summary_text":"The wealth of the Astors hardly exceeds the treasure that is supposed to be secreted here and there about the country, and thousands of dollars have been expended in dredging rivers and shallow seas, and in blasting caves and cellars. Certain promoters of these schemes have enjoyed salaries as officers in the stock companies organized for their furtherance, and they have seen the only tangible results from such enterprises. One summer evening, in the middle of the seventeenth century, a bark dropped anchor at the mouth of Saugus River, Massachusetts, and four of the crew rowed to the woods that skirt its banks and made a landing. The vessel had disappeared on the following morning, but in the forge at the settlement was found a paper stating that if a certain number of shackles and handcuffs were made and secretly deposited at a specified place in the forest, a sum of money equal to their value would be found in their stead on the next day. The order was filled and the silver was found, as promised, but, though a watch was set, nothing further was seen of men or ship for several months. The four men did return, however, and lived by themselves amid the woods of Saugus, the…","variants":[{"citation":"Charles M. Skinner, Myths and Legends of Our Own Land (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1896)","collected_by":"Charles M. Skinner","collected_place":"Boston and eastern Massachusetts","collected_year":1896,"source_document_id":"c4a78f90-f128-4110-8d37-ed1ca3e1d82b","teller_person_id":null,"teller_text":"unattributed — the collector names no informant","variant_label":"As printed in Charles M. Skinner (1896)","variant_text":"The wealth of the Astors hardly exceeds the treasure that is supposed to be secreted here and there about the country, and thousands of dollars have been expended in dredging rivers and shallow seas, and in blasting caves and cellars. Certain promoters of these schemes have enjoyed salaries as officers in the stock companies organized for their furtherance, and they have seen the only tangible results from such enterprises. One summer evening, in the middle of the seventeenth century, a bark dropped anchor at the mouth of Saugus River, Massachusetts, and four of the crew rowed to the woods that skirt its banks and made a landing. The vessel had disappeared on the following morning, but in the forge at the settlement was found a paper stating that if a certain number of shackles and handcuffs were made and secretly deposited at a specified place in the forest, a sum of money equal to their value would be found in their stead on the next day. The order was filled and the silver was found, as promised, but, though a watch was set, nothing further was seen of men or ship for several months. The four men did return, however, and lived by themselves amid the woods of Saugus, the gossips reporting that a beautiful woman had been seen in their company--the mistress of the pirate chief, for, of course, the mysterious quartette had followed the trade of robbery on the high seas. Three of these men were captured, taken to England, and hanged, but the fourth-Thomas Veale--escaped to a cavern in the wood, where, it was reputed, great treasures were concealed, and there he lived until the earthquake of 1658, when a rock fell from the roof of the cave, closing the entrance and burying the guilty man in a tomb where, it is presumed, he perished of thirst and hunger. Dungeon Rock, of Lynn, is the name that the place has borne ever since. In 1852 Hiram Marble announced that he had been visited by spirits, who not only told him that the pirates' spoils were still in their olden hiding-place, but pointed out the spot where the work of excavation should begin. Aided by his son he tunnelled the solid granite for a distance of one hundred and thirty-five feet, the passage being seven feet high and seven wide. Whenever he was wearied the “mediums” that he consulted would tell him to make cuttings to the right or left, and for every fresh discouragement they found fresh work. For thirty years this task was carried on, both father and son dying without gaining any practical result, other than the discovery of an ancient scabbard in a rift. The heiress of the house of Marble alone reaped benefit from their labors, for-resuming on a petty scale the levies of the first dwellers in the rock--she boldly placarded the entrance to the workings “Ye who enter here leave twenty-five cents behind.” In several cases the chasms that have been caused by wear of water or convulsions of nature (their opposite sides being matched) were believed to have been hiding-places, but, in the old days in New England, it was believed that all such fractures were caused by the earthquake at the time of the crucifixion--a testimony of the power of God to shake sinners. The Heart of Greylock is the name given to the crater-like recess, a thousand feet deep, in the tallest of the Berkshire peaks, but it was formerly best known as Money Hole, and the stream that courses through it as Money Brook, for a gang of counterfeiters worked in that recess, and there some spurious coinage may still be concealed. The stream is also known as Spectre Brook, for late wandering hunters and scouting soldiers, seeing the forgers moving to and fro about their furnaces, took them for ghosts. Province Island, in Lake Memphremagog, Vermont, is believed to contain some of the profits of an extensive smuggling enterprise that was carried on near the lake for several years. A little company of Spanish adventurers passed along the base of the Green Mountains early in the last century, expecting to return after having some dealings with the trading stations on the St. Lawrence; so they deposited a part of their gold on Ludlow Mountain, Vermont, and another pot of it on Camel's Hump. They agreed that none should return without his companions, but they were detained in the north and separated, some of them going home to Spain. Late in life the sole survivor of the company went to Camel's Hump and tried to recall where the treasure had been hidden, but in vain. While flying from the people whose declaration of independence had already been written in the blood of the king's troops at Concord, the royal governor--Wentworth--was embarrassed by a wife and a treasure-chest. He had left his mansion, at Smith's Pond, New Hampshire, and was making toward Portsmouth, where he was to enjoy the protection of the British fleet, but the country was up in arms, time was important, and as his wearied horses could not go on without a lightening of the burden, he was forced to leave behind either Lady Wentworth or his other riches. As the lady properly objected to any risk of her own safety, the chest was buried at an unknown spot in the forest, and for a century and more the whereabouts of the Wentworth plate and money-bags have been a matter of search and conjecture. When the Hessian troops marched from Saratoga to Boston, to take ship after Burgoyne's surrender, they were in wretched condition-war-worn, ragged, and ill fed,--and having much with them in the form of plate and jewels that had been spared by their conquerors, together with some of the money sent from England for their hire, they were in constant fear of attack from the farmers, who, though they had been beaten, continued to regard them with an unfavorable eye. On reaching Dalton, Massachusetts, the Hessians agreed among themselves to put their valuables into a howitzer, which they buried in the woods, intending that some of their number should come back at the close of the war and recover it. An Indian had silently…"}]},"work_type":"folk_narrative"},"entity_type":"Work","external_ids":{"collection":"skinner-myths-legends-1896","first_print_year":1896,"title_as_printed_at_chapter_head":null},"id":"bd847ae3-b827-4517-bcd0-614237c62ee1","kind":"entity","provenance":{"attribution":"Charles M. Skinner","license_id":"public-domain-pre-1929","license_name":"Public domain — published before 1929","license_url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain_in_the_United_States","openness":"public_domain","retrieved_at":"2026-09-02T23:01:57.331203Z","rights_statement":"Published 1896 and in the public domain in the United States.","source_id":"skinner-myths-legends-1896","source_identifier":"OTHER BURIED WEALTH","source_name":"Skinner, Myths and Legends of Our Own Land (1896)","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/6615/pg6615.txt","transforms":[{"description":"retrieved the full text of the collection from its public-domain holding institution","input_sha256":null,"operation":"fetch","output_sha256":null,"parameters":{},"performed_at":"2026-09-02T23:02:20.357836Z","seq":1,"tool":"archive-ingest 0.1.0"},{"description":"split the volume into chapters at its own printed headings; the first occurrence of a heading opens the chapter and later occurrences are the running header, which is discarded","input_sha256":null,"operation":"segment","output_sha256":null,"parameters":{},"performed_at":"2026-09-02T23:02:20.394464Z","seq":2,"tool":"archive-ingest 0.1.0"},{"description":"matched each heading against the book's own table of contents and took the index's spelling as the title; a heading the index does not carry was refused as a caption, a byline, or scanner noise","input_sha256":null,"operation":"corroborate","output_sha256":null,"parameters":{},"performed_at":"2026-09-02T23:02:20.430895Z","seq":3,"tool":"archive-ingest 0.1.0"},{"description":"retained the chapters that name a Boston-area place, by the tale's own words","input_sha256":null,"operation":"filter","output_sha256":null,"parameters":{},"performed_at":"2026-09-02T23:02:20.465423Z","seq":4,"tool":"archive-ingest 0.1.0"},{"description":"collapsed the scan's line breaks; not one word of the telling was altered, added, or removed","input_sha256":null,"operation":"normalize","output_sha256":null,"parameters":{},"performed_at":"2026-09-02T23:02:20.502750Z","seq":5,"tool":"archive-ingest 0.1.0"}]},"record_kind":"entity","slug":"other-buried-wealth","status":"published","summary":"The wealth of the Astors hardly exceeds the treasure that is supposed to be secreted here and there about the country, and thousands of dollars have been expended in dredging rivers and shallow seas, and in blasting caves and cellars. Certain promoters of these schemes have…","title":"Other Buried Wealth","updated_at":"2026-09-02T23:02:20.257585Z","urn":"urn:lemay:boston:entity:other-buried-wealth","version":1,"withdrawn_reason":null},"related":[{"record":{"canonical_path":"/document/skinner-myths-legends-1896","id":"c4a78f90-f128-4110-8d37-ed1ca3e1d82b","kind":"document","title":"Myths and Legends of Our Own Land","urn":"urn:lemay:boston:document:skinner-myths-legends-1896"},"relation":"documents"}],"urn":"urn:lemay:boston:entity:other-buried-wealth","version_history":[{"change_note":"accessioned from Charles M. Skinner, Myths and Legends of Our Own Land (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1896)","changed_by":"archive-ingest 0.1.0","recorded_at":"2026-09-02T23:02:20.540580Z","version":1}]}