History Detective

Many years, my grandfather’s brother told me a very interesting story.

“Cinderella*,”, he began.  “Remember the Confederate Gold that got missing down the road a bit?  Well, that wasn’t the only thing that went missing in this area.  During a battle right here in town** we were taking a beating.  It wasn’t looking good and a wounded soldier had one of the Confederate Seals***.  That boy climbed a tree over on what’s y’alls’ place and wrapped and put that seal in a knot hole of the tree.”.

There’s always been a tree here that was too big around for four adults to hold hands and encircle it.  After hearing Uncle Rob’s story, I threatened to tear that tree apart.

Of course Mama threatened me with bodily harm and I never did.  However, age and weather have torn it apart for me.

Intrigued by the possibility of what might be in that tree somewhere, we walked down to it.  In falling apart, it took down at least 7 other good sized trees.  It’s sad looking with that big tree gone.

David took his metal detector and went all along the hollowed out (by age) trunk.  Nada.  Up and down huge limbs, bigger than most trees you see, nothing.  Molly & I walked back to the house, the guys kept searching.

Right before it got too dark to look anymore, the found something…

Cloth.

In the center of that hollow tree trunk.

OLD Confederate GRAY cloth.

They’re going back in the morning. 

*Cinderella- Uncle Rob called nobody by their name.  My mom was “Duck”, one of my aunts, “CottonTop”, his own daughter was called “Joe”.

**Town.  Heh.  Hard to imagine.  However, my great-great-grandfather built the barn that’s on our property and it was the livery stable at the time.  There was also a bank, 2 general mercantiles, a hotel/saloon (the house we lived in when we moved here), a restaurant, blacksmith shop, and something else that I don’t remember.

***What he called a seal is more than likely a brass embossing made by the actual seal.  They were presented to higher ranking officers.