Chasing Legends 432: The Maryland Hoard

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]Hi, I'm Wayne Tuttle and this is Chasing Legends.

[00:00:26]Welcome back to Chasing Legends. another episode. We're getting up into the triple digits. Probably getting close to the end of time to be doing these out in the open desert. But for right now, please hit subscribe, hit the notification bell, leave a comment, check out the website, www.leendofthe superstition mountains.com.

[00:00:46]That being said and done, rendevous, November 6th, 7th, and 8th. Be there or be square. So, let's get on to today's story.

[00:00:58]It's a cautionary tale. This story takes place in um 1934.

[00:01:05]It's two young men. One's name is Theodore Jones and the other gentleman's name is Henry Gro. They are 14 and 15 years old. They live in Baltimore, Maryland. And this is pretty well-known story. I think there's been a book. There's a lot of articles and a lot of material on this. But uh these two young boys um form a club like young men will teenagers. It's called the Rinky Dinky Dues Club. Uh I guess in the 30s that was probably cool.

[00:01:38]And uh they decide um they're going to hide their treasury box, their box with basically their rules or charter and their dues, which they can't even afford to pay their dues. It's supposed to be a nickel to join, but neither of them have a nickel. But they have a cigar box and they're going to bury this thing in the basement of Theodore's house. Now Theodore lives in an old tenement, three-story tenement. It's pretty rund down, but they get back in the garage and they take a short-handled axe, probably a hatchet for the most part, a kitchen knife and a flashlight and they go find a corner and they start digging out. They're digging for a bit and then they hit something that sounds metallic and Theodore's like, "There's something metal in there, you know, and they start so they hurry up and start digging because they found something." They end up finding an old boot. They pull this boot out and there's something in it.

[00:02:28]So, they start hacking away at the boot and bust this copper pot and it's full of coins.

[00:02:35]Um, there's around 1,500 different coins. There's over I think it was 1,300 $1 gold pieces. They were all gold pieces. There were $20 gold pieces, $10 gold pieces, $5 gold pieces, but they found all these gold pieces and they're just like stunned. Now, both these boys do not have fathers and they're both their mothers are on um government assistance. So, this to them is like the most amazing moment in their lives. Um they start splitting everything up. the bigger coins, they split evenly and then they basically there's so many of the $1 gold coins, they just go, "You take a handful, I'll take a handful." And they work it out. Theodore runs his up to his bedroom. Uh Henry has to shove his in some pockets and his boots and his socks to get it home and the boys get home and the next day they start thinking about it and realize, I wonder if we're going to get in trouble for this because this is a lot of gold, a lot of money. just face value. It's more money than they can imagine. So they talk to Theodore's uncle. He tells them, "Well, one problem is six months earlier, the gold act have been passed. So they can't own more than $100 worth of gold. Um if you do, it's a $10,000 fine and 10 years in prison." Uh but he tells the boys there might be an out. Um if you turn this in, there's a chance because these are artifacts.

[00:04:00]These are it's coinage.

[00:04:02]It might be worth the face value. It might not be the gold value involved in this. So he said, "Why don't you take them down to the police? I'll get you down to the police and you turn them in and tell them what happened. And there's a good chance you guys will end up with a at least a reward for all this." So the boys go to the police station. Of course, the Baltimore, Maryland police station doesn't know what to think when these two young boys come in. They dump all these coins on the counter and they're looking at them and to boot the next day they come back with another bunch of coins. Um, it makes the newspapers. It makes a very very big deal. Um, and it's life-changing possibly these boys and their mothers.

[00:04:43]Theodore's mother actually besides the government assistance, she handwashes clothes for other people. So, and these are pretty much pretty good kids because Theodore even says in the newspaper article. Um, I'm just hoping to buy my mom one of those new washing machines to help her with her work. She works very hard and she's always been really good to me. He said, "The only thing I want to buy with the money is I'd like to buy a really nice suit." And then he said, "The rest of the money my mom can have cuz she's she's gone without for too long." So, it sounds like really good kids. The problem is once the money gets turned in and the publicity gets out about the boy's fine, the owners of the property, they want in on it. Um, the two mothers and the boys figure they would give them a quarter of what the boys found. Um, they demand half, but the other problem is the building is not owned by the property owners. The building is owned by two other people and they want their half. And everybody starts jumping in. There's um a family of a former resident um that had lived in the building who had been a sea captain. They claim it's something he put there. And then there's another that their father who was just preceded the Jones and had passed away. He was a jeweler and used to pay for things in gold coinage. So they think it was his hoorde. So this goes to the judge. The judge starts going he there ends up being 12 claimments on this and he starts dismissing people immediately.

[00:06:13]Finally, the conclusion he comes to is it's finders keepers. The boys dug the hole. They found it. It's theirs. Caveat here. Okay. And this takes a year or two. Um sorry boys. Until you turn 21, you can't have the money.

[00:06:30]Now, what's unfortunate is Henry doesn't survive to see the court case end. He ends up working at a meat packing plant, contracting pneumonia and passing away.

[00:06:41]So his mother gets the money. Now they also made a deal with an attorney because they had court costs and they had a deal with an attorney. The attorney gets a third. So Henry's mother after two over two and a half years.

[00:06:53]Henry's passed away. Her earnings from this and they said it was up to 30,000 even though at auction it sold for 20,000. She ended up getting $3,000 out of all this. Um that was her share. Um one kind of odd thing was um the boys were report the boys were actually 14 or 15. Theodore was 14 but in the newspapers he was listed as 16 and so when he turned 19 he ended up getting the money because they had recorded his age wrong. So the date he was to receive the money was two years earlier than it was supposed to. He got his a few thousand and he lived till I think 1977.

[00:07:32]So, the story you think would end there, but during this time period, there was a lot of people suspicious and stuff. And one of the things that came up was there was a break-in at the Jones House.

[00:07:44]Someone had climbed a fire escape outside the building, got in through the second floor, walked in and broke open a trunk, and they claimed that he had stole $3,000 and $500 in gold. And people realized the boys must have found something else or held something back.

[00:08:01]Um, Theodore basically later says that uh what it was is there was a second boot and they decided with all the drama that was happening with this first one once they went back and dug again that they were just basically going to keep that money and cuz their moms worked too hard and everybody was being a vulture on the whole thing so they kept it. I don't think anybody holds them in contempt over that other than the people that always thought they owed they were owed something for nothing. So today's in today's value um it's said that those coins all pre1857 gold coins would be around today's about 722,000.

[00:08:44]Now, I didn't do the math, but that's something like you found $722,000 of gold and you got $100,000 of split between the two of you after the fact of the court cost, everything else and the auction or whatever. Now, today it could even be worth more. But it's a cautionary tale because we always wonder, people say, "Why didn't Jacob Waltz file a claim? Why was there so much mystery about this last mine he had?" Well, remember he had three earlier minds he laid claims on. None turned out well. This wasn't just Jacob Waltz. This happened to a lot of people.

[00:09:18]And I think in this instance, which it's happened to other people, is sometimes you hit the prize, you find the treasure, and suddenly it just doesn't work out. And in this case, everybody and their brother came in and poor Henry. I mean, Henry didn't even find out they got to keep the gold. But fortunately, they had that little extra stash, so they were able to get by. So, that's today's story. I think it's a good cautionary tale is you find something, sometimes it's not worth the glory. I don't think the boys were looking for any glory in this.

[00:09:57]I think the boys were um just good kids.

[00:10:01]And I don't know if Henry got his mom that washing machine and stuff, but they were just trying to look out for their moms and do the right thing and it didn't work out fortunately for them in the end possibly. So just think of that 20 to $30,000 worth of gold and they ended up with about a grand total of six grand. So that's this week's story.

[00:10:21]Triple digits. So we're not going to sit out here too long and we got other things to do. Hope everybody can make the rendevous. will start getting things gearing up towards that. It'll be nice to hit that cool weather and be back in the mountains and we'll have other stuff coming up through the summer because there's not much we can do early mornings, but it's just going to be probably a long hot summer. So, thank you for watching Chasing Legends. Thank you for sticking through us with everything. Always remember, we're not AI. It's just little old me live sitting in the desert. It's pretty cool, but I wish other people would just take a notion of that and go back to just like just tell a story. You don't need all the gimmicks and all the other stuff.

[00:11:04]That kind of ruins it all for me. So, there you go. Have a good week. Catch us on live on Fridays. We've been having a good time on Fridays. Pretty good time.

[00:11:14]Last week we talked a little bit about UFOs, man. Anyways, have a good one and always remember I'm Wayne Tunnel. You're not.