Pot of Gold Buried Beneath a Casket?

HUNTER, HESS, DALE

Posted By: Cheryl Locher Moonen (email)
Date: 4/9/2016 at 20:15:39

Dubuque Telegraph Herald and Times Journal, October 15, 1930

Pot of Gold Buried
Beneath a Casket?
~
Bedford, Ia. Oct 15. - (AP) John Hunter, 90, lives near death in his hut at Shannon City, unable or unwilling to tell the secret of “a pot of gold worth a fortune,” he says “is buried beneath a casket” in a 15 acre pasture southwest of here.

The aged stage coach driver, himself reputed to have an estate worth $100,000, told how he and four companions buried the gold three score years ago. He said they brought the treasure in a covered wagon and marked the spot where it was buried with a sandstone rock.

The story was told to Francis Hess, farmer near here whose father was the dearest friend of the man who drove stagecoaches between Albia and Afton in 1860.

Hess said Hunter would tell him neither how the treasure was obtained or the identity of the body in the casket, merely shaking his shaggy grey head while his eyes filled with tears when the questions were asked.

Hess, however, said his father once told him of a cattle owner who registered at the Bedford Tavern one night back in the 70’s. When the innkeeper went to call him the next morning, the man had disappeared; his bed had not been disturbed. The cattleman, Hess said, was supposed to be worth about $18,000.

Although no trace of the gold has been found, Hess said, he found bits of wood and iron which appears to be part of a casket when he searched the pasture, now owned by Jerry Dale, 70.

Meanwhile, Hunter stricken with paralysis, refuses to enlarge on his story.