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Cinders From Swift s Smelter By Taylor Nash Related to James Hylton on April 10, 1941. From The WPA Papers, The Alderman Library, The University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA. One tale that I heard about Swift s Silver interested me very much and I proceeded to go and investigate it soon after I heard it. It had been several years ago but it just goes along to show you that my idea about Swift having his treasure hidden in these hills in this section of the county ain t far from wrong. Old John Conner who lived and died in the Flatwoods section some years ago told me this himself and it corresponds very much with lots of other information I have obtained concerning his silver that he was supposed to have found and hidden away, where he never could get hold of it for himself or his relatives. Everyone knows the legend that he mined it some way regardless how rude the method and all people know that they figured things out like that in those days the best way they could. Anyway, I was told by old John Conner before he died that he had found some slag-like metal in the hills in the Flatwoods section and that he thought it was Swift s Silver or rather some that had been left on the ground. He said he found it up in the hills above his home one morning when hunting and that he come over where an old fire had been made years ago but had burned an old stump and the stump had been preserved by the leaves and twigs that had fallen around it. He said that he had always heard of the place and decided to hunt it out and went to the place where he was shown. He said it looked like after he got a pick and some other tools and dug around some that there had been some kind of furnace there in the time long ago and that this slag- like silver metal was all around in little pieces and that he picked out the best looking piece and kept it. He said all of the pieces looked like they had been molded in some kind of a sand pit or something on that order and that there were little oval like impressions in the ground where it was flat and ashy looking. He said he had heard that a wigwam had burned at this place years before and that the white had seen it in the night and had gotten away before the ndians could trace them. He said that his father Jacob Conner had told him the tale about the wigwam and it had been known in his family all along. He said that there was an old legend told around his fireside when he was young about Swift s smelter or furnace but that he had not gotten interested in it at that time and had just passed it from his mind for the time being. This piece of metal is held by one of the older Conners who hid it in a tomato can years ago and who hid it on a line fence by the old home place near Coeburn (Wise Co., VA). The first property lines ran straight from corner to corner and it is alleged that this metal is hidden somewhere on this old line by the Conner property since fences or later type have been constructed since. |
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