(having grown up in Maine, this story has a special appeal to us)
When the Labbe family unearthed a box of Spanish
gold and silver coins at their Biddeford floral establishment in 1931,
many speculated that a West Indies pirate had buried it there.
Lots
of gold and silver coins have been dug up — mostly by gardeners — along
the coast of southern Maine. In June of 1849, William P. Fessenden's
gardener dug up a silver sixpence dated 1579 at his employer's State
Street, Portland
property. Two months later another rare old coin was discovered on a vacant lot at the corner of Brackett and Vaughan streets in Portland. It proved to be a 1655 "leg dollar," so-called for the military figure depicted with only one leg showing on the face of the coin.
property. Two months later another rare old coin was discovered on a vacant lot at the corner of Brackett and Vaughan streets in Portland. It proved to be a 1655 "leg dollar," so-called for the military figure depicted with only one leg showing on the face of the coin.
A stone pot full of gold and silver coins, all
dated before 1630, were dug up with a plow near the center of Richmond
Island on May 11, 1855. The amazing discovery was chronicled in the
Eastern Argus on May 24, 1855. "Mr. Hanscom, the tenant of Dr. Cummings,
was holding the plow, and his son, twelve years old, was driving. When
the boy came to the place, he observed the pot, bottom up, and picking
it up, said to his father, 'I have found it!'" Rumors of buried pirate's
treasure on the little island off the southern shore of Cape Elizabeth
had not escaped the Hanscom boy. After careful scholarly study by
chronicler, Hon. Wm Willis, the treasure was thought more likely to
belong to Walter Bagnell, an early settler on Richmond Island who was
killed by Indians in 1631.
William Edgecomb
was working in his garden on the Ferry Road in Saco during the spring of
1931 when a gold coin bearing the date 1723 was turned over in the soil
before him.
Later that summer, on July 22,
1931, Elie T. Labbe was transplanting flowers with employees Ralph Labbe
and Ovila Bouthot — to make way for a new greenhouse at the florist
shop he co-owned with his brother Joseph. The men uncovered a rotted
wooden box that had once contained the 63 Spanish gold and silver coins
scattered around it in the dirt.
One of the coins was described in the
Biddeford Journal the following day. "Elie T. Labbe took one of the
coins in a splendid state of preservation bearing the date 1805 to a
local bank this morning where he was told that it was a $1 Spanish coin
of the reign of Charles IV of Spain. He was also informed that the value
of the coin at this time is $65."
Labbe told
the Journal reporter that he intended to do some more digging before
totaling up his buried treasure, but he didn't believe it would ever
amount to enough for him to be able to retire from the florist business.
He also made a plea for help from local historians in solving the
mystery of how Spanish coins might have come to be buried on his land at
200 Pool St.
Though a little late to be of benefit to Elie Labbe, your Old News columnist will explore some of the possibilities.
Spanish
coins were the most common currency in Colonial America and they
remained in circulation in the United States until 1857. Spanish coins
dated 1800-1805 did not necessarily belong to a Spanish pirate. For the
most part, piracy on the coast of Maine had long ceased by the time
these coins were minted. There was one incident with a Spanish ship in
1817, but that is a story for another day.
According
to an article in the Lewiston Eve Journal on June 4, 1872, a wooden box
of gold and silver coins was stolen during the previous week from the
Hubbard residence on Oak Street in Biddeford. The thief was later
apprehended with jewelry taken from the same house but the box of coins
was never recovered. Perhaps he buried the box on the 200 Pool Street
property that Thomas Potts had acquired a few weeks earlier.
Another
possibility is that the coins were buried for safe-keeping when
Biddeford Pool was attacked by the British man-of-war Bulwark on June
16, 1814. John Staples Locke wrote of the incident in his 1880 book,
"Shores of Saco Bay."
"Messengers were
dispatched through the country on horseback, to alarm the inhabitants.
All the men capable of bearing arms left their fields and hastened
towards the Pool. Women and children fled to the woods with their
valuables. One aged lady tells of taking the silver of a wealthy Saco
family and burying it in the woods near where is now the Eastern Depot."
In
all the confusion of the day, some residents of the Pool buried their
money hastily and later forgot at what exact location. Through the years
a few other gold and silver pieces have been unearthed in gardens along
Pool Street.
In 1814, Joseph Morrill and his
wife Mary Jordan owned the lot at 200 Pool St. that would later become
the Biddeford Floral Company. They had inherited it from Mary's father,
Judge Rishworth Jordan, when he died in 1808. Perhaps the coins belonged
to members of the Jordan family or of the Morrill family.
It
cannot be stated with certainty exactly how the Spanish treasure ended
up in Labbe's garden, but one thing seems certain, gardening in southern
Maine can be very rewarding.
Old News columnist Sharon Cummins is a historical research professional in southern Maine. She can be contacted at www.someoldnews.com.
