Treasure Tales and Treasure Stories About Ohio from the Archives of Lost Treasure Magazine
Silver ingots in river
From State Treasure Tales
BY MICHAEL PAUL HENSON
From page 30 of the February 1992 issue of Lost Treasure magazine.
Copyright ©1992, 1998 Lost Treasure, Inc.
There is (like all treasure stories) more than one version of the following. However, I am giving the most widely accepted one. Jean Jacques Blanchardcameto Ohio with the French when they claimed the territory in the 1700s. He married a Shawnee woman (some accounts say she was a Wyandotte) and settled on Blanchards Creek, a stream named for him. At this time the Shawnees controlled the Ohio Valley and made repeated raids against the American colonists.
In 1780, Col. George Rogers Clark invaded the Shawnee country to put an end to their depredations. His rangers moved up the Little Miami River. The Shawnees took fright and buried the silver which they had mined. Blanchard had several boxes of silver ingots which he threw into a bend of the river that bears his name. Another source states that Blanchard had two chests full of coins which he buried near his cabin. He had been manufacturing bracelets and other jewelry for the Shawnees.
At the fime of his death in 1802, Blanchard reportedly told that he never retrieved the ingots. They are somewhere on the bottom of the river near where he died or buried near his cabin, depending on which story is true.
While this site in Hancock County is speculative, it could pay an interested TH'er to investigate.
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