Gold Washington Dollar cache: clue inquiry

Being from Ct, I also read about this story. From what I remember, the coins were special coins made by the french. Not anything in circulation. Read one story of a women who in 1980"s who had a flat tire on rt 20 and went to the stream to wash her hands and notice a shiny object near her. It was supposed to be one of the coins. The thing is I haven't seen one of these coins anywhere, have any of you?

Any new info about this subject?

For guys that know this story is untrue, you and your brother from another mother sure do seem very interested in other folk's research on the subject. Seems like you two are trying really hard to talk everybody else out of looking for it...

Right!! Personally, I researched a lost cache of $50 gold "slugs" for about 25 years.
I'm pretty sure that I have narrowed it down to within about 100 yds. But, that's
beside the point. Knowing that eventually somebody would find them, for the first 20 yyears of my research, I tried to discourage anyone who was looking for them,
by telling them that they had been found and melted down, that it was just a hoax,  etc. Now that I am of an age that I doubt that I'll ever go after them, I would just like SOMEBODY to find them to see if my research was valid. (lol)

There is one point of order that seems to have been overlooked so far in this story in the determination if it is true or not.

The original story states that 13 wagons loaded with gold and guarded by British troops stayed over night at a tavern, during the night the guards were killed and robbers took off with the loot. Am I correct or did i miss something???

First off lets get an approximate size of the escort in numbers. 13 wagons means atleast 13 drivers. there would be probably one outrider per wagon, that makes 26. With 26 men you would have atleast 3 Sargents because this is almost company size at the time. A company needs an officer and of course his batman and runner that now brings the total to 32 men in the very least. All members of the escort would be regular British soldiers as civilians would not be allowed anywhere near such a valuable shipment.

Reguardless of the time period if a full company of regular soldiers were over come and killed during a skirmish it would be news everywhere it would also not be called a skirmish for the pride of the British Army would not allow them to admit that a full company of regulars was desimated overnight by bandits this would have rated the title of a major action.

this is just an idea that I had to throw out there

Merlin,
Having been military myself ,  (long ago)
I would not doubt too much the possibility that it was hushed out of embarrassment.
This kind of thing, (being a victory for the enemy) would certainly encourage them to bigger and braver exploits.

Wait a minute, wasn't the shipment for the colonials? Why would the British want anything with washington's image on it?

either way it is one heck of an embarassing loss.
The us government has a history of this kind of coverup.

Your right Old Dog but my point (which I did not put across so well) is that 32 men died in a single day! Find their burial place and you have proof that the story is true. They certainly would have been interred some where close by and a number that large would not have been ignored by the community in the area. Someone would have recorded the fact that so many men were buried on the same day.

And Curtis you are absolutely right how stupid of me not to notice that single fact. If the Colonial Army were guarding the wagons then who could get up enough men to do the job of robbing them?

I now have my doubts that the amount of gold being transported was as large as mentioned. I think it was a much smaller amount something that a few good men could move and protect say 13 small boxes of coins in the back of one wagon.

I LIVE IN DANBURY AND AM EXTREMELY FRUSTRATED TRYING TO FIND  SALMON BROOKS LOCATION.. AND THE AREA OF THE TREASURE STREAM THAT COINS HAVE "ALLEGEDLY" TURNED UP. HELL ID LIKE TO TRY IT WALK THE STREAM BANK.. IS THIS THE STREAM THAT SHOOTS OFF THE CT RIVER AND GOES WEST.. I SEE A HIGHWAY 20? NEAR THE AIRPORT? WHATS A GOOD LOCATION TO PARK AND START TO PEEK AROUND. HELP MUCH APPRECIATED.. THANKS

Bates Tarvern was on South Main Street in East Granby, before it was removed. From that location, you can see the brook. Best of Luck to you.

lovejoydc@att.net

Best of luck to all of you and hope you find a pot of gold.  Just not the pot that I am looking for.

This story has been and always will be talked about. I have yet to find any concrete evidence about the so called few coins found. One I no was about a women who go a flat tire near the bridge on Rt. 20. After changing the tire she went down to the stream to clean off her hands and in the process noticed a shiny object near her in the stream which was found to be a gold coin. There was no name attached to the find nor a picture of the coin. This seems to be true for the others who claim they have found one.

If it was me, it would be in the paper and forums. Then a gain. when was the last time one was found? Before the internet?

I read that they were special coins made by the( French?) to pay our government for our help dealing with the british. Anyone hear about that story? Why would a country give another country gold to watch over, especially that much.  No one to my knowledge have ever produced a picture of the coin or info. of the people who found one. If you ever look at old maps the waterways are always different at certain points.
Find a spot up stream and canoe yor way down looking for dried up areas and shallow spots to detect. Oh yeah look for waterfalls cuz I know theres one down stream about  a 4-6 foot drop. Google Earth could be very usefull.

 This is exactly why alot of treasure stories are given away to legend or being considered ficticous material,Take the legand of DB cooper for instance,Everyone assumed he survived the jump and dissappeared or that he died lost in the mountains and the cash was recovered by a partner or stolen,That Was believe for years until a young teenage fisherman pulled an old rotted stack of twebty dollar bills from the nearby creek.one of those visible serial numbers matching none other than the stolen money of one DB cooper. If you think its plausible to search for it,dont let anyone else discourage you and when you find it come back here and say, Treasure? What Treasure? There IS NO treasure!! and then sail away on your new found yacht into the sunset.Thats what id do. In my opinion though,this story sounds way to good to be true and if it were true it would have been damn hard to stash that amount of gold i such a short period of time without someone recovering it afterward.I mean if someone stole two million dollars ad hid it within a quarter mile or so of my house,Id damn sure find it eventually,even if i had to dig up the whole fuc*in county. But thats just me.
Good Luck and Happy Hunting.

I found a story by a guy that researched that whole story and he proved it was untrue.
Now Tommy L (the original poster) if you head to Litchfield and locate Spruce Brook, somewhere along this brook there is the hidden Cache of Gold of a gentleman named Dutchy. In 1849 at the same time of the gold strike in California, gold nuggets were found in Spruce Brook by railroad workers. Anyone who knows route 8 knows about the tracks that used to run to Winsted Ct., It's while that stretch of rail was being put in, that this occurred. Dutchy was a German possibly Dutch who worked getting firewood for the railroad camps and local factory's. He spent quite some time panning or mining that area and made a fortune. To pay for his monthly supplies he used to pay with regional currency at first, then switched to gold dust and gold nuggets in a store in what was South Torrington. One day he just stopped showing up at the store. No one knows what happened to him, he either jumped a train and left or died in the woods. The local Constable checked his cave and camp and most of his supplies were still there. The cave and camp was located South of Spruce Brook Nursery (rte 118 to Litchfield) and in the Campville/ Northfield area.
 From the story "The Gold Strike at Spruce Brook"
The Mysterious Disappearance of 'Dutchy'
By David Wilson Mansfield
Lure of the Litchfield Hills Magazine
Winter 1973/74

Happy Hunting!!!! Get Permission from land owners....

There is certainly a buried treasure in the area near Bate's Tavern in East Granby but it is not the stolen Washington payroll. In 1944, Anthony Ruches spotted a gold coin in the Salmon Brook River but he was unable to retrieve it in the swiftly running water. He never referred to it as a "Washington Dollar".,  because he never got his hands on it.  However, when he read an article in the Hartford Courant, concerning the Revolutionary War gold in 1957, he remembered that coin and went back to the area  with another man, a treasure hunter named Richard Nelson and began searching. In 1957 they found several stones that had strange markings, {sun , moon stars and some that were printed }. that they later determined were indicative of several caches left by a pirate settlement that was wiped out during King Phillips War. The story is verified in the Thompsonville Press, June 23, 1966 and in The Springfield Daily News, which also has a picture of the stones. I have photostats but posting them would probably be a copyright infringement. I obtained twenty pages of notes attributed to Ruches and made 25 trips to the area myself and I believe that some of these caches were in fact retrieved, that at least two of them remain, including the main cache and there may be others; Ruches hadn't located them all. I would agree with the one poster about the difficulty of the terrain and the digging, but you can't just look where the digging is good. As for the two that I have located, one will require the purchase of the real estate or approach the owner and the other has it's own logistical nightmares, enough said. But it could be worth your while to polk around there. I might add in closing that I had a lot of trouble tuning my Whites 600 two box; there is a lot of copper in the ground. Good Luck

Did you receive the pirate story from Walter Movchuck of Windsor? People should always get permission from the land owner and give them 50% of all treasures. We got more snow in Connecticut this month in our history. I won't be on the beaches and Parks in Bridgeport until March. Best of luck to all of you. Still seeking friends to search parks and beaches with cars. Have detector, no car.

Getting warmer in Connecticut, hope to be out soon with my metal detector. Take care.

What is the latest news?

I've done alot of research on the topic of the Washington Dollars Stolen in East Granby in 1779. I also had information regarding evidence of the French coins that were minted in France and have indentified the investor who put the 2 million dollar loan with France together. I met with his descendant who knew in great detail about the 2 million dollar loan with France.  Her family has journals that relate to their great , great , great relative. That's all I'm going to say right now. I'm looking for some of the people who have written in with their extensitive research to get together. I am located in Connecticut an am an avid metal detectorist. I have my theories on what happened and where some of the treasure may be located.

Treasureman, you got my curiosity up, If you have done all the research, and know the location, why don't you just go and get it? This post has been here for years and I have not heard of one person that has actually gone out and looked for it. You say you have all this info, but post nothing usefull to the other members. Some members hoard info like it was gold and never actually look for it which means they don't know if in fact there info is correct. If I find something interesting, I spread it around. This helps both parties. That is one of the main reasons this forum exist. Sure I might work with one other TH on a project until it is determined that the project is a go or nogo, but I don't hoard the info after that point. The project is either recovered or the cat is let out of the bag. Sure I have had several TH come to me to help recover a cache that they thought they knew the location of only to find out there were problems with the research. It's always better to partner with someone on a project so each can see the problems in the others research, or fill in the holes.    Frank

I haven't read the entire post, but seems like if it's true one of two things are possible. The first being that they had wagons waiting at the site where the original wagons were found and offloaded the gold into new wagons and went far far away which means your wasting your time looking anywhere in the vicinity of the original wagons. Could be a mile, could be a thousand.  Option number two is, they were not able to move several thousand pounds of gold very far very fast so must be close by. If that was the case seems like with all the interest in this story somebody would have found it by now. 

There is certainly a buried treasure in the area near Bate's Tavern in East Granby but it is not the stolen Washington payroll. In 1944, Anthony Ruches spotted a gold coin in the Salmon Brook River but he was unable to retrieve it in the swiftly running water. He never referred to it as a "Washington Dollar".,  because he never got his hands on it.  However, when he read an article in the Hartford Courant, concerning the Revolutionary War gold in 1957, he remembered that coin and went back to the area  with another man, a treasure hunter named Richard Nelson and began searching. In 1957 they found several stones that had strange markings, {sun , moon stars and some that were printed }. that they later determined were indicative of several caches left by a pirate settlement that was wiped out during King Phillips War. The story is verified in the Thompsonville Press, June 23, 1966 and in The Springfield Daily News, which also has a picture of the stones. I have photostats but posting them would probably be a copyright infringement. I obtained twenty pages of notes attributed to Ruches and made 25 trips to the area myself and I believe that some of these caches were in fact retrieved, that at least two of them remain, including the main cache and there may be others; Ruches hadn't located them all. I would agree with the one poster about the difficulty of the terrain and the digging, but you can't just look where the digging is good. As for the two that I have located, one will require the purchase of the real estate or approach the owner and the other has it's own logistical nightmares, enough said. But it could be worth your while to polk around there. I might add in closing that I had a lot of trouble tuning my Whites 600 two box; there is a lot of copper in the ground. Good Luck

Unless it has specifically been renewed, copyright of newspapers expires after 50 years. Provided you cite the paper involved you should be safe.