Chapter One
Revolutionary Treasure and Haunted History

Everybody’s mind races just a little bit when they think about treasure. Fanciful visions of pirates in outlandish costumes with parrots on their shoulders looming over chests being buried in the sand, or divers scooping up handfuls of pearls and gold coins from the bowels of some wrecked ship, spring easily from the imagination.

Hidden smuggler’s gold, buried pirate wealth, and shipwrecks may seem like stories from places far away from the quiet bays and picturesque hamlets of Maryland’s Eastern Shore, but reality is far stranger than any fiction.

Treasure is here, waiting beneath the soil, or lapped over by the sea. Sometimes its hidden in secret rooms, or buried in fields or woods, but it’s here.

I know.

I’ve been poking around the peninsula for over a decade, researching sites in the hopes of discovering some of these famous treasures.  I have been having so much fun that I thought I’d share some of these experiences with the folks at large.

Milford Webster

Back in the mid-1980’s, I discovered that a good friend of mine, the late Milford Webster, looked for lost coins and jewelry with a metal detector.

He had lost interest over time and wasn’t actively hunting. I was visiting him one day when I noticed a pile of treasure hunting magazines in what served for his den. The subject immediately piqued my curiosity, so I asked him to tell me about some of his exploits.

He did better than that, showing me some of the finds he’d made a few years previously at old bathing beaches like Tolchester and Betterton. He bragged about finding so many V nickels that he wrapped them up and passed them at local banks for modern nickels since they were in bad shape. He had a cigar box full of silver money: Barber Quarters, Half dollars, and much more.

Then he offered to take me out to look for coins and use his son’s detector.

I went for it.

Needless to say, the glamour of treasure hunting wore off quickly after a few trips.

I knew the stuff was there, but I wasn’t getting it. The problem seemed to be one of technology. Milford’s detector was outdated and had trouble finding treasure in the modern era of pull-tabs, bottle caps and foil candy wrappers.

I didn’t quit,  instead I did  some research on metal detectors and picked up an inexpensive model with a discriminator feature. This allowed me to tune out trash and collect treasure.

I went back out and began to pick up coins. After a few more  trips, I began to find silver coins. Not many, mind you, but enough.

We decide to do some research

Randomly hitting likely sites began to wind down, so Milford and I decided to do some research. Maryland’s Eastern Shore has been settled since the mid 1600’s, so there were loads of historical sites that we knew would yield treasures if only we could find them.

We avoided obvious sites that other detectorists had visited or that were prohibited by various state and federal laws. The treasure hunting fever had hit me pretty hard, and we were going out pretty much every weekend to try and pick up some new sites.

Along the way we met others

Along the way we met other detectorists. It was at one of our best sites, which I’ll talk about later in this book, that Milford and I, along with our new companions, Bill Draper and Doug Wilkerson, decided to form a loose organization of detectorists in order to enhance our abilities to hunt more and better sites.

We initially met in an office suite that Milford was running a computer consulting business out of.

An organization is formed

I was working nights at a motel so we decided to meet monthly on my one night off during the week. Bill, Doug, Milford and myself all came for differing backgrounds, and each had unique abilities that would add a certain synergism to our efforts.  

The Shore Seekers Artifact and Recovery Club were born. Bill Draper gets credit for the name of our organization, and I designed the logo. Twelve years later, we are still going strong, with new treasures being found every month by Seeker members.

Treasure with a capital T

Up to this point, I’ve been talking about treasures with a small “t”. The Eastern Shore is full of stories about that other kind also, treasure with a capital “T”. Various members have all done research into treasures around the shore, and people as far away as California have even contacted us about Eastern Shore treasures.

These treasure tales make up a lot of this book, sprinkled along the way with anecdotes about treasure hunting, metal detecting, archaeology, both professional and amateur, some funny, some scary, and some just plain silly.

A lot of the big T treasures fall into three categories: Pirate treasure, valuables hidden from the British, or Civil War treasures.

Small t treasures include coins, jewelry, and artifacts both civilian and military. Everything mentioned in this book is true to the best of my knowledge.

I’ll be telling you about the ghost who showed the way to his treasure, a buried cache of muskets in a swamp, a treasure ship that keeps on giving away treasure, how a treasure was found and then caused trouble for those who found it, a diamond ring on a bean sprout, and a pirate treasure that’s still out there—somewhere.

A pirate treasure that’s still out there

Most of these tales happened in Maryland’s lower counties of Dorchester, Wicomico, Worcester, and Somerset, but some take place in Sussex County in Delaware, and Accomac County, Virginia.

Those involved range from the kindly to the murderous: pirates, slavers and smugglers on one hand, patriots, plantation owners, and philanthropists on the other.

While there are lots of facts and details, I have tried to present them in a lively narrative fashion—because let’s face it, treasure hunting should never be boring—I have worked hard to make this book as accurate as possible, so any errors are entirely my own.

Now, put on your boots, buckle on your survival gear, and have your shovel ready. You’re in for an exciting ride.

Here’s where it really began for me.

Milford Webster and I were running out of easily accessed sites to metal detect, so he went home and dug up some of his research material.

Like me, he was a pack rat that saved everything. Before being sidetracked and putting treasure hunting on hold, he uncovered a tale about buried gold near an old mansion in Dorchester County.

It didn’t take much urging to get me to grab my detector and head for his car. Gold sounded great to me.

This lark into a rural part of the Shore turned into something that would alter my life and alter metal detecting on the lower Shore from then on.

It was a typically mild winter back in 1988. Milford was still using his antique Fisher Metal Detector from the 1960’s, while I was using my newer Bounty Hunter Red Baron Jr. His detector was pretty simple. You tuned it, and it beeped when it passed over metal. Mine had an added discriminate feature and a meter that read bad and good.

Naturally, I was looking for the good. On a fine afternoon, we began our trip.

A History of Lewis Wharf and Ghost Island

Before we get to our part of the story, which, while exciting, isn’t half as interesting without knowing the history behind the place we were going to. After over ten years of research and detecting, I am still uncovering new information about the riverside area between Lewis Wharf and Ghost Island.

What follows is the history of the area to the best of my ability to sort it out.

What Milford and I saw when we emerged from the woods that grew thickly on both sides of the Lewis Wharf Road was a solitary house, T shaped, its bottom lost in thick underbrush.

Though still in some dispute, I side with those who believe that the house we saw that day was the crumbling remains of the once-great mansion called “Weston.”

“Weston” patent granted 1,000 acres to Jerome White

The original patent for the 1000-acre tract called “Weston” was taken out in 1634 as grant number 76.

Lord Baltimore, anxious to have his new colony of Maryland become settled and prosperous, granted the title to a Jerome White, making the “Weston” tract one of the oldest land grants in the state.  

In 1673, the tract was purchased by Colonel Charles Hutchins, who had been sent to Dorchester County to become a liaison between settlers and Native Americans in order to maintain peace.

The land was lush, fronted by the wide Nanticoke River. Hutchins apparently constructed a log cabin some half a mile from what is now known as Lewis Wharf and at least 300 yards from the riverbank. From there he conducted his business and cleared farmland.

Soon afterward, he had a large belt of tillable soil a quarter-mile in width (looking at it today) that ran along the riverbank.

Near the center of this band, he constructed a brick mansion. It apparently had a wide front section that contained a large ballroom.

Behind that was a hip-roofed section with dormers. Out back were various sheds, barns and slave quarters. A wharf was constructed on the river, since most traffic in those days was by water.

The Nanticoke tribe was friendly

Pacification of the local Nanticoke tribe came swiftly, so Colonel Hutchins settled down to the life of a wealthy plantation owner with his wife Anne and daughter Dorothy.

In 1685, while his daughter was going to school in England, Colonel Hutchins constructed a stouter brick mansion about a quarter mile down stream from his original house.

While his old place was built with beautiful Flemish bond brick, the new Weston was rumored to have walls two feet thick, a veritable fortress in the still sparsely populated wilds of Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

I have been unable to determine whether this house gained the official name of “Weston” or not, but since the first house was built after the patent of the Weston plantation, I have always considered it as “Weston”.

More on that controversy will come later.

Meanwhile, Dorothy Hutchins had been doing more than hitting the books and learning how to sew in England. Instead of returning by ship as planned by her father, she is supposed to have sent him a note that she had met a nice fellow by the name of John Rider and wouldn’t be coming home until they had been properly married.

This chain of events must have occurred swiftly, because some sources show they had a son, John Rider Jr. in 1686.

In 1689, while returning to Weston, both John Rider Sr. and Dorothy Hutchins died at sea, causes unknown.

Little John Rider survived, and was raised by his grandfather until Colonel Hutchins death in 1699 or 1700, depending on which source you believe.

By will, Thomas Hicks was then appointed as the guardian for young Rider, until the boy reached the age of eighteen.

John Rider, Jr.

These tragedies had a silver lining for John Rider Jr. He not only inherited an estate that had grown to 3,948 acres, but also added a further 600 acres when he married the daughter of his guardian, Anne Hicks on January 23, 1706.

He went on to serve in various military, judicial, and legislative posts, attaining the rank of Colonel of militia. He fathered nine children, half of them dying before reaching maturity. By the time of his death in 1739, he had increased the family holdings to 22 slaves and 8,028 acres of land.

His daughter, Dorothy, married John Henry, who apparently continued to occupy the original mansion. The prosperity continued, with some reports listing 300 workers and slaves employed on the huge estate, which now included shipbuilding and a mercantile industry that he ran with his partner Henry Steele, who owned several lots near Vienna adjacent to his own.

 Evidence of these industries was later turned up during various trips, as I’ll later show.

Naturally, this bliss wouldn’t last.