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By Taylor Nash As related to James M. Hylton on April 9, 1941. At that time Mr. Nash was 76 years old, lived on Wise Mountain, Wise Co., VA. This story is part of the WPA Project, located at the Alderman Library, The University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA. The Old Woman and The Cinders All this I am telling you about Swifts Silver was before the War but my mother knew my father s business and Uncle Jessie s business better than I did I guess and when they would sit and tell the tales of Swift and the Silver he was supposed to have hidden it was something to interest anyone and I listened to all that I heard them say. Everyone knows I am interested in this and have been for some years and I have traced down every bit of evidence I have heard of about Swift being in this part of the country. I went to see a woman down at Coeburn or rather between Flatwoods and Coeburn and she told me this tale of his mother who said she found some silver that had been melted and the slag an dirt had held to one end of the cinder-like formation and she thought that it was some kind of old iron that had been left there in the hills but as she was picking Blackberries at the time she never said anything about it to anyone for years later. Then when she did think of it she told her family about it and they having heard of Swift s Silver went in search for it. The old lady had grown feeble by this time and almost blind herself and some of her sons carried her all the way into the mountains and she tried to point out to them where she had thrown the stuff she had found the few years before. It was a place where nobody would have been apt to find it but they hunted high and low but could not find the big piece she said she had found and thrown there. However they did find some silver ore with some slag and rust-like dirt or sand hung onto it. It was a good deal smaller than she said she had found and they thought that someone had more than likely found it and had broken it on a rock to see what it was and when it broke and they saw the Silver part of it they took it along with them after being unable to find the other piece they had broken off on the rock. They carried the old lady back and she tried to draw a map and show them where she found the metal but all searches would up a failure and it was not so long after that she died. However her relatives have hunted time and again for trace of it and every time any of them go into that section of the hills they make brief search hoping they will at least find where she found it. |
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