What is it about the soggy bottoms of the Mill Creek that attract legends of buried treasure?

According to the Cincinnati Enquirer [22 December 1890], residents of the remote reaches of Gest Street reported decades of annual visits by a Christmas ghost, supposedly guarding the loot from a long ago bank robbery. The desperados got away with more than $300,000 and a fine clock from the bank president’s office. The money was never found, but some kids found a fancy clock in the Mill Creek muck and rumors spread that the cash must be located nearby. That’s when the ghost made its appearance, on a decidedly peculiar schedule:

“It is a matter of fact that many people living in that portion of the city have stoutly claimed to have seen the ghost, which they describe as of many shapes. The singular thing is that it never appears except on Christmas or a few days before.”

Years before, the Enquirer [31 July 1876] reported that a copper kettle full of gold coins was buried 15 feet deep in the muddy banks of the Mill Creek.

“Tradition is not quite clear as to who sunk the kettle of money in the earth many years ago. One story goes that it was a street contractor. Another version declares that the money belonged to a boot-black who won it by betting on base-ball. Still another tale tells is that it was a single deposit of an enterprising street-car conductor, who suddenly became wealthy, and hardly knew how it happened.”

The Enquirer reported that treasure hunters in 1876 employed divining rods and double-distilled bourbon in their fruitless quest for the elusive kettle.

Legends of buried treasure around these parts are often associated with some of the notable scalawags who passed through over the years. When Confederate General John Hunt Morgan led his Raiders through Indiana and Ohio, it is reported, many of the townsfolk ahead of his guerilla band buried household goods for safekeeping. Some of these hoards were never recovered, or forgotten, leading later generations to excavate farms around Harrison and Glendale.

Simon Girty, the renegade, terrorized the Ohio country in the early days of settlement. Son of a white settler who traded with the Native Americans, Girty joined forces with the British and encouraged Indian attacks on American settlers and United States Army posts. The tale was told that Girty stashed a good-sized chest of soldier gold somewhere near Newtown. Despite occasional searches, Girty’s gold has remained a myth.

Prohibition bootlegger Ulderico DeLuca spent enough time in Cincinnati before his 1926 arrest that the United States Treasury sent a team to Cincinnati looking for buried evidence of his ill-gotten gains. Along with his accomplices, DeLuca ran an alcohol-smuggling ring under the Pacific Fruit & Produce Company name as a cover for the Cleveland mob. The feds found nothing, but nosy residents kept digging.

Almost any place in Cincinnati is a candidate for treasure hunting. Today, the erstwhile intersection of Fifth and John Streets lies under a tangle of exits near an I-75 exit. In 1920, however, an excavation there sparked lots of rumors based on faded memories of days gone by. The 1920 excavation, according to the Cincinnati Post [12 June 1920], cleared a plot of land on which a garage was to be built.

“The lot, which many years ago was a Quaker cemetery, was famous as a beer garden in the seventies. Workmen, it was reported, had found 18 gallons of wine in a beer vault six feet underground.”

Rumors of additional finds brought gangs of treasure hunters around, to be chased off by a surly foreman.

The multitude of richly decorated churches in the Cincinnati area proved irresistible to a thief named Ray Marsden. From around 1915 through the 1920s, Marsden pilfered gold and jewels from many local houses of worship, stashing his plunder in the most unusual locations. Marsden told detectives to locate an old abandoned automobile, rusting on the banks of the Licking River. Inside, they found a gold monstrance stolen from Covington’s St. Benedict Church.

Most of the golden decorations Marsden heisted, he said, were melted down at a Cincinnati refinery and stashed throughout the city. It is probably wise to take Marsden’s claim with some suspicion, however. In August 1927, Marsden led three police officers and a prison guard on a tour of upstate New York, claiming he would reveal a cache of 100 golden chalices stolen from Catholic and Episcopal churches in Ohio. The loot was never found and Marsden was shipped back to the Ohio Penitentiary.

Claims by fortune tellers are also worth some extra scrutiny as Fred Lamparth discovered in 1897. Mr. Lamparth wanted to buy a saloon, so he asked a “Mrs. Wendel,” who told fortunes on Ninth Street, for advice. As reported in the Cincinnati Post [25 March 1897]:

“Lamparth alleges that Mrs. Wendel told him that she knew where a big amount of treasure was buried in the hills of Kentucky, five miles back from Cincinnati. According to Lamparth’s story the treasure was said to be buried on the farm of a widow, and that years ago two men went to seek the hidden gold, and upon opening the earth, fire burst forth and killed them both.”

Mrs. Wendel offered to send away to England for a magnetic machine to safely uncover this gold, if only he would invest $150. He came up with the funds, but was surprised to discover that Mrs. Wendel was reluctant to give his money back, even though she never produced the treasure-hunting machine..

The first installment of buried treasure reports in Cincinnati appears here.

