Confederate Gold and Silver (22 page)

As they entered Petersburg, Francis and Kirschner both saw to the needs of their men. After Francis had secured passage on the next Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac train moving south, both men shared a meal together at the Petersburg Hotel before they parted company later in the afternoon. After they had eaten their meal, they walked back to the train station together. For a short spell they sat there, talking about the war and their families. Then wishing each other well, they promised they would meet again after the war. It was a promise they would not be able to keep.

Summer,
2011

11
Filling
In
The
Pieces.
 

“I
was
too
weak
to
defend,
so
I
attacked.”
General
Robert
E.
Lee,
CSA

The long day had finally come to an end for Paul after he had told his story to both the Georgetown County Sheriff Department investigators and, reluctantly, several more times to the various media representatives who had gathered at the marina. Despite being physically and mentally tired from the strain of the past two days, he called Donna on her cell phone during her ride home from work. They were able to spend a couple of quiet moments together when she stopped at the marina to witness the sideshow which was occurring there. She was amazed at the commotion Paul’s discovery had caused.

As they had stood off to the side of the marina talking for a few minutes, Donna asked Paul if he had told Bobby Ray about the gold coins he found. Taking a moment to walk her to the back of her car so they could have some privacy, he reached into his pants pocket and showed her the five gold coins he had found earlier in the day. “Do you mean these gold coins or the gold coins I found yesterday?” He was grinning as he watched her open her eyes wide at the sight of the additional gold coins he had found. Donna did not say a word, electing to just stare at them as he held the coins in his hands. “To answer your question, no I have not, nor am I going to tell him about them. At least not yet I’m not.”

As they talked, Bobby Ray walked over to where they were standing in the parking lot. While he had spoken to Donna on the phone, it was the first time they had seen each other since she had moved to South Carolina. Bobby Ray gave her a quick kiss and a long hug. She was pleased to see Bobby Ray, even if it was for a brief few minutes, and she laughed when he joked about her living with an old retired guy. After only a few minutes of talking, Bobby Ray began to walk back to the boat launch so he could get back to work. As he did, they told each other they were looking forward to getting together for dinner on Friday night. “Try to find a new date if ya can, I’m already tired of seeing this guy.” Bobby Ray’s joke made both of them laugh and Donna waved a quick goodbye to him as he walked back to where the Georgetown County Sheriff’s Crime Van was parked. It was where Sheriff Renda was conducting yet another interview. This time it was with a reporter from the
Georgetown
Times.

After Donna left, Paul answered a few more questions for Bobby Ray’s partners regarding his initial find of the bayonet and the soldier’s clothing. He also spent a few more minutes with the media, answering the same questions he had already answered several times earlier in the day. Finished answering questions, Paul walked over to the Wacca Wache marina’s small restaurant,
The
Waterway
Cafe
, for a couple of cold beers.

Paul barely had time to get inside the door to the small restaurant when he was loudly greeted by the bartender. “Hey, ain’t you the guy who found the dead Confederate soldier? You’re him, ain’t you? Hey, my name is Jed, but my friends call me Bubba.” Bubba, the marina’s part-time bartender, looked to Paul like a stereotypical
Southern
Bubba
should. He was a big man in not only his height, but in his weight as well. His shiny bald head seemed to reflect the light from the various lighted beer signs hanging on the wall behind the bar. As he moved back and forth behind the small wooden bar, Paul could see the reflections as they bounced off of Bubba’s shiny head. He noticed Bubba’s once white tee shirt was now stained with grease from the burgers he had either cooked or eaten during the day.

“Whatcha drinking? Charlie told me if you stopped in your drinks were on him. Them TV folks, and them reporters, they’ve been buying sodas, snacks, and burgers all afternoon. Charlie is real appreciative of what you’ve found, and for all the business y’all have given him today, so he’s buying your drinks. What can I get for you, buddy?”

“Two Coors Light please. No glass.”

As Bubba walked to the nearby cooler to fetch his two beers, Paul let out a sarcastic chuckle. “What a great day for South Carolina! A Civil War soldier is finally coming home to be buried, a sheriff is posturing for votes in front of the television cameras, and I am being offered free beer for finding the soldier. Obviously the owner of this place cares more about making a few bucks than he does about the historical event that is unfolding outside his joint.” Thirsty from the long hot afternoon, Paul quickly drained the first cold beer as he sat down on a stool by the restaurant’s side window. His seat by the window gave him a view of the marina’s parking lot and of all of the activity occurring there. He could see several news reporters frantically running around as they prepared the finishing touches to their news stories before they went live with their broadcasts from the parking lot. “What a zoo this is turning out to be!” Finishing off his second beer, he threw a few bucks down on the bar and walked outside. As he did, Bubba quickly followed him outside. In his left hand he was holding the money Paul had left on the bar. “Hey, mister, I told ya Charlie was buying your drinks for y’all.” Walking to his truck, Paul did not give a look back at Bubba. He was not interested in capitalizing on his new and unsought fame by quaffing a couple of free beers.

After finally getting home, and after filling Donna in with the rest of the details of the day over dinner, including finding the soldier’s watch, Paul closed the plantation style shutters in their kitchen as she cleaned up. After spreading a couple of bath towels over the kitchen table, he went into the garage and gathered up the tools he thought he would need. After placing the tools on the table, he walked back to the garage one more time, returning with the two bottles he had found in the soldier’s clothing. Then he went to find his camera equipment that he had temporarily stored in one of the guest bedrooms.

After setting up the camera equipment, Paul described each bottle in detail to Donna so she could write down the descriptions on a yellow legal pad. He wanted a description of each bottle for both posterity reasons and in the event they broke as he was trying to open them. When they finished that task, he held each bottle up so she could take digital pictures of all sides of the bottles with their Nikon camera. Paul had also placed his Sony camcorder on a tripod next to the kitchen table. After giving a brief introduction, including the date and time, he allowed the Maxwell eight millimeter tape to record what occurred as he handled the bottles. He had learned redundancy was something that often had proved to be important when processing crime scenes during his career as a state trooper; now they took both still photos and a video recording of the bottles for similar reasons. He did not want a photograph or an angle for a photo to be lost if he needed to show his findings to others. Paul knew he soon might be doing just that.

First they started with the pint sized flask style bottle that was brownish in color. As Paul closely looked at the bottle he noticed it had a double ring around the neck’s opening, one apparently designed to originally seal the bottle. He made sure Donna included that in her description of the bottle. Using a soft soapy sponge, he carefully wiped away some of the accumulated grime on the bottle’s exterior. As this was being done, he could hear the faint whirl of the tape in the camcorder as it recorded his actions. With the bottle somewhat cleaned off, he noticed one exterior side had been embossed with an eagle on it. Inspecting the bottom of the bottle he saw it had been made by the Willington Glass Company, in West Willington, Connecticut. “Well, I’ll be. Hon, this bottle, it was made back home in Connecticut. This is getting weirder by the moment!” Paul then took notice of the interior portion of the bottle’s neck. He described to Donna the apparent partial remains of some kind of cloth that had been likely used to replace the bottle’s missing cork many years ago. For now he let the piece of cloth remain in the neck of the bottle.

After he had finished inspecting the first bottle, and after making sure the camcorder was still recording their efforts, Paul inspected the second bottle, describing it in detail to Donna as he had done with the first one. The second bottle was slightly larger than the first one and had what appeared to be the original cork still stuck in the neck. Further describing the bottle to her as being bluish green in color, he estimated it likely had also held about a pint of liquid at one time. As he slowly cleaned the exterior of the second bottle, he was careful not to get any water inside of it. With the exterior now much cleaner, he saw the bottle had raised lettering on both sides, as well as the raised outlines of two faces, one on each side. Cleaning the bottle off even more, he quickly recognized the first person to be George Washington. Under the outline of Washington’s face was the wording
‘Father
of
our
Country’
. Turning the bottle over, he did not immediately recognize the second face, but after reading the inscription under it,
‘General
Taylor
Never
Surrenders’
, he then believed it to be a likeness of General Zachary Taylor, who he remembered as being one of the country’s earliest presidents. Looking at the bottom of the second bottle, while holding a magnifying glass in his left hand, he could see the bottle had been made by the Dyottville Glass Works, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. “Donna, why would a Confederate soldier have two bottles made in the North on his person? Did the South not have companies that made bottles? I wonder why he kept these in his blouse? Kind of strange, no?”

“Can’t help you with that. You know more about that stuff than I do.”

Donna had put her pen down and was looking at the first bottle they had inspected. “If these bottles are that old, and were found within the clothing of a dead Confederate soldier, they have to be worth something, right?”

Paul could now see that both bottles had accumulated some grime and dirt inside of them. He paused from his inspection of the bottles to think about what Donna had just asked him. “They likely are worth something to someone who collects old bottles, but your guess is as good as mine. One thing for sure, we need to Google the names of these glass companies later and see what we can find.”

With the exteriors of the bottles now cleaner, and despite the thin layer of grime which coated the interiors of both bottles, Paul alternated between using his kitchen ceiling lights and a flashlight as he held each one up in the light to see what was inside of them. He could not tell for sure, but it looked as if each bottle appeared to have some type of rolled up papers inside of them. As he focused on the papers inside the bottles, Paul muttered a thought out loud. It was one he did not expect Donna to answer. “Tell me how to get these papers out as they sure are not going to come out the same way they went in without me ripping them to pieces?”

“I don’t know. Why don’t you try to drill them out if you just don’t want to break the bottles?”

At first Paul gave Donna a sarcastic look. He was about to say something smart to her for what he had first perceived to be a ridiculous idea, but before he could say something to her he caught himself. He thought for a moment about what she had just said to him. “Perhaps I could drill a few small holes in the bottom of the bottles, perhaps forming a small rectangle and then I could tap that piece of glass out. If it works I would at least save the rest of the two bottles.”

It took several minutes to find the still packed box which contained some of his tools, but he soon did and he plugged his Black and Decker drill into an extension cord in the garage. As he did this, Donna carried the bottles into the garage and placed them on the folding table Paul had previously used when he first had found the bottles and the other items. After searching through the box of drill bits he had, Paul selected a very fine masonry drill bit to try drilling the bottoms of the bottles with. Before he started on the bottles, he moved his video camera into the garage so he could film what he was trying to attempt with the bottles. As he set-up the video camera, Donna retrieved their digital camera from the kitchen so she could take some additional photos as the bottles were being drilled.

“You know I have never tried drilling holes in glass before. This may not work, but what the hell, if it does it does, and if doesn’t it doesn’t. Either way we will find out what’s inside the bottles. They probably just have a note inside of them telling us a genie will soon appear to grant us three wishes.” Donna rolled her eyes at Paul’s weak attempt at humor.

Wrapping the first bottle in a towel so only the bottom was exposed, Paul placed it between his knees as he sat on a stool. He hoped the towel would protect his legs from being cut if one of the bottles broke while he was drilling them. Proceeding very slowly, and using the drill at a low speed, he began drilling a hole in the bottom of the first bottle. As he did, Donna made sure the camcorder was recording properly. Satisfied the camcorder was functioning properly, she began taking a few more digital photos, hoping at the same time not to see either the drill or broken glass pierce her husband’s legs.

When the drill bit went through the bottom for the first time, Paul expected to see the bottle break, but surprisingly it did not. Over the next hour he carefully drilled and chipped a series of holes close to each other in the bottoms of both bottles, holes which formed small crude rectangles in each bottle. Finished drilling the last hole, he placed the drill and the safety glasses he had been wearing on the garage floor next to the table. With his right thumb wrapped up in the towel, he then pressed against the drilled out section of the first bottle, hoping the glass would break and fall into the bottle. It did not. “As my father would say, if I did not want the glass to break it would and if I wanted it to break it wouldn’t.”