Mayport Florida Buried Treasure

Life was not a bed of roses in Mayport in the early years. The Indian War was not over until 1842 and that made life dangerous for everyone. On top of that, pirates very often came in and took over for a while. Tony Miers tells of one pirate who brought his side wife into the village and his mother cared for her. Up until then, I did not know that pirates had wives.

Judge Gavagan, who was the law and order of Mayport for many years, told this story of pirates: A four-masted schooner anchored off Seminole Beach, and a boat was lowered with two men in it. The men rowed the boat to an inlet about where the new lighthouse stands now, and disappeared up the creek. Late that afternoon, the boat was spotted going back to the ship with only one man in it. The natural supposition was that they had buried treasure and one man had killed the other so that he could never tell. Years later, Johnny Bothwell came up with a map and succeeded in getting some backing to hunt the treasure, but so far as I know the treasure is still there

Mayport Mills was a fair sized town at the beginning of the Civil War and about all of its contact with the outside world was by water. After the town had been burned down by the northern troops, (who had nothing better to do while they were waiting for a northeaster to blow over so that they dared to cross the bar into the ocean) the town was rebuilt and began to grow. Two railroads have served this little town since that time and at one time there were several hotels, a bar on every corner, three good grocery stores, five churches, a menhaden processing factory, and a dock for loading coal onto F.E.C. [ Florida East Coast Railroad] cars after it had been brought up river as far as the heavy-laden schooners dared to go.

The Jetties were initially begun shortly after the Civil War, and this stabilized the channel so that it was easier to come up river without running aground. The old lighthouse still stands as it has stood for over a hundred years; but from the years 1860-1865 the light was put out. For some years after that, a light ship was anchored off shore, but this was eventually replaced by a modern lighthouse located just north of Seminole Beach on the ocean front.