Wednesday, September 30, 2009 9:33 PM CDT
Note found in antique rocking chair spurs treasure hunt for gold coins
By the ASSOCIATED PRESS
ST. LOUIS (AP) — Patty Henken always thought she found great value in the rickety rocking chair when she plunked down $200 for it at an auction, figuring she could restore the century-old relic to its former charm.
Doing that turned out to rock her world, sending her on a treasure hunt straight out of a mystery novel.
Five months after hauling the chair home last November, Henken spent hours in May prying the seat off it in her garage in Mount Sterling, Ill. A small envelope fluttered from it as she tossed the seat aside — “Finders Keepers” typewritten on it. Inside, a key was taped to a note.
“This DEXTER key (number sign) 50644T will unlock a lead chest,” the note began, before spelling out a location in Springfield, Ill. — 1028 N. Fifth St. — where a chest containing more than $250 in U.S. gold coins supposedly was buried 12 feet below ground.
The stash, the note claimed, included eight $20 gold pieces, six $10 gold pieces, five $5 gold pieces, three $2 1/2 dollar gold pieces and two $1 gold pieces.
The note, signed by a “Chauncey Wolcott,” included a request to contact the Springfield newspaper if the chest was ever found. Henken finds that intriguing, thinking Wolcott perhaps has left a confession in the chest or “wants to give us an answer to an old mystery.”
For now, any treasure remains elusive. A search of the site — currently a vacant lot — with a donated backhoe last Sunday came up empty, though Henken pledges to be back at it this weekend.
Whatever the outcome, “it’s the fact that there’s a story there that’s exciting,” Henken, 48, said Wednesday from her hometown, where she works part-time as a window clerk at the post office.
The note at the crux of the mystery isn’t dated — though its insistence that the chest “cannot be located by metal detector” suggests it could have been written anytime since about World War II, when the first practical metal detectors came to be.
At the supposed burial spot, the home on the lot was torn down many decades ago. The owners of the land — retired state corrections workers Dennis and Sharon Chrans — live next door and, at least initially, disregarded Henken’s voicemail approaches as the workings of a telemarketer.
“We were skeptical all the way,” Sharon Chrans recalled. But the couple eventually were swayed and met with Henken and her husband, hashing out a deal to split any costs of the dig — and the proceeds of whatever they found.
Henken’s scouring of genealogy records and courthouse documents in Sangamon County, which includes Springfield, has offered no clues to anyone named Chauncey Wolcott. Dennis Chrans found no such name on his property’s abstract.
Yet last Sunday, the dig began. A couple dozen folks showed up, many of them friends of the Henkens. Some brought lawn chairs, others drinks and snacks. A co-worker of Patty Henken’s brought a toy magic wand they generally keep behind the counter at the post office, using it to change their attitude whenever a grumpy customer leaves.
“It was a happy event, a party-like atmosphere,” Sharon Chrans said.
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