Lost Treasure on line news letter Vol. XI issue 3

[Ed - QUICKSILVER(appletree)]

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February

Volume XI
Issue 3

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TH'ers News

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1,800-year-old Figurine Found in Jerusalem
Archaeologists believe it could depict an athlete, possibly a boxer
JERUSALEM - Israeli archaeologists say they have discovered a rare 1,800-year-old figurine in a Jerusalem excavation.
Dating from the time of the Roman Empire, the 2-inch marble bust depicts the head of a man with a short curly beard and almond-shaped eyes.
A statement Monday from the Israel Antiquities Authority says nothing similar has been found before in the country.
The archaeologists believe it could depict an athlete, possibly a boxer. They think it was used as a weight and might have belonged to a merchant.
It was found in the ruins of a building destroyed by an earthquake in the fourth or fifth century. The dig outside the walls of Jerusalem's Old City also recently yielded a well-preserved gold earring inlaid with pearls and a trove of more than 250 gold coins.
Courtesy of http://www.msnbc.msn.com

‘A Rare Occasion’
MONTPELIER STATION — A dozen or so local Civil War re-enactors converged in the cold Saturday on the original site of the 1863 to 64 winter occupation here to recreate the huts in which South Carolinian soldiers and officers lived and slept.
As the modern-day men dressed in blue and gray uniforms rolled large tree trunks from the surrounding forest, one got a sense of the hard work that went into creating the temporary, yet fortified lodgings.
“It is a rare occasion that Montpelier is inviting troops to do this,” said re-enactor Dave Peterson of Charlottesville, regimental surgeon with the group, representing the Army of Northern Virginia’s Third Regiment, companies 13th A, 19th G and 7th A.
The huts, once completed, will stand on the Montpelier property —located directly behind the Gilmore Cabin and Farm along Route 20 in Orange – for many years to come, he said. Re-enactors eventually plan to use the cabins for camping out overnight and hosting living history events.
A release from Montpelier described the eventual camp as “the base of operations for Civil War re-enactors.”
“This is a wonderful opportunity for people to see how soldiers built their huts and what their living conditions were like during the Civil War,” said Matthew Reeves, director of archaeology at Montpelier, the newly restored estate of President James Madison, located a short distance from the camp site across Route 20.
“Montpelier’s archaeological site is easily the largest and most pristine example of a Civil War encampment site in the nation on protected land.”
The Montpelier Archaeology Department located and surveyed nine Civil War regimental camps and 12 company camps on the property as well as four hut sites within a camp occupied by S.C. General Samuel McGowan and his troops 145 years ago.
From this discovery, Montpelier archaeologists established the architecture of the huts and what types of material goods soldiers used to survive the harsh winter.
Meanwhile, 20 miles away in Culpeper, more than 100,000 Union troops set up camp for the winter on the county’s farm fields and hills.
At Saturday’s rebuilding event, the re-enactors used brute strength, chains and axes to transport and shape the oak logs that will form the first hut’s foundation. Bill Graham, a longtime re-enactor from Madison, expected many more weekends ahead of the same.
“We’re going to be here a while,” he said.
And that’s to be expected considering the workforce today is much smaller than it was in 1864.
Peterson expected it would take re-enactors until summer to finish building the scaled-back camp, consisting of two officers’ quarters and four soldiers’ huts. The group returns to the site Feb. 7.
The public is invited to come observe this unique reconstruction project at Montpelier and interact with Civil War historians.
Courtesy of http://www.starexponent.com

British Shipwreck Holds Billions in Treasure, Explorers Claim
In a project shrouded in secrecy, work is due to start on recovering the cargo, which was being transported to the United States to help pay for the Allied effort in the Second World War.
The scale of the treasure trove is likely to unleash a series of competing claims from interested parties. Salvage laws are notoriously complex and experts say there could be many years of legal wrangling ahead.
In order to protect its find until the cargo is brought to the surface, the company that located the wreck has not released the name of the vessel or its exact location, but has given the ship the code name "Blue Baron".
It says the merchant ship, which had a predominantly British crew, had left a European port, laden with goods for the US Treasury under the Lend-Lease scheme, whereby the American government gave material support to the Allied war effort in exchange for payments.
The Blue Baron first sailed to a port in South America, where it unloaded some general cargo, before continuing north in a convoy, heading for New York.
However, the company claim it was intercepted by German U-boat U87 and sent to the bottom by two torpedoes in June 1942, with the loss of three crew members. Their nationalities are not known.
Sub Sea Research, a US-based marine research and recovery firm, claims it has now located the wreck under 800ft of water about 40 miles off Guyana.
Greg Brooks, the company's founder and co-manager, said: "This British freighter had an extremely valuable cargo and we decided there wasn't a lot of point in leaving it at the bottom of the sea. This will definitely be the richest wreck ever."
Until now, historians have not credited U87 with sinking any vessels in that area in June 1942 and it was thought to have been operating further north in the Atlantic.
However, Sub Sea Research claims to have located the submarine's log book which prove it did sink the "Blue Baron", as well as documents from the port of origin, the US Treasury and the Lend-Lease programme giving clues as to what was on board.
A picture of the Blue Baron supplied to The Sunday Telegraph by the company shows it is a tramp steamer and her funnel appears to resemble those of the shipping line Hogarth and Co, of Glasgow, whose ships were known as Hungry Hogarths.
Tantalisingly, the names of its ships all began with the word Baron – indicating that the Blue Baron could be one of them. However, none of the fleet's 17 ships lost in the war appear to have been sunk in this area in June 1942.
The picture also resembles Port Nicholson, a steamer sunk by U87 in June 1942 but 2,000 miles north of Guyana off Cape Cod. Sub Sea Research insists that the Port Nicholson is not the Blue Baron.
It claims that the Blue Baron's cargo included at least ten tons of gold bullion, 70 tons of platinum, one a half tons of industrial diamonds and 16 million carats of gem quality diamonds.
In addition, there were several thousands tons of tin and a few thousand tons of copper ingots. Although the tin and copper may have lost some value after years on the sea bed, the precious metals and diamonds would not have done so.
The haul's total worth is calculated at £2.6 billion at today's prices, according to the firm.
Captain Richard Woodman, author of The Real Cruel Sea, a history of the merchant navy in the Second World War, said: "A lot of merchant ships did have to carry valuable cargoes like this.
Any heavy materials had to go by sea. It was the only way to get from A to B. There would have been an element of protection for them, but in the end it is just the coincidence of war that a ship happens to stop a torpedo."
A 220ft salvage vessel is currently being equipped to recover the cargo. It is due to sail next week from the US state of Louisiana to the wreck site, which lies in international waters.
The company has refused to reveal which government sent the valuables to the US or which was the Blue Baron's final port of call in Europe.
It is thought much of the treasure could be Russian, although part, including the diamonds, may have been British.
Britain and Russia were the two main beneficiaries of the Lend-Lease scheme, under which the US provided $50 billion of supplies - equivalent to $700 billion (£510 billion) in today's money.
Although explorers are permitted in law to stake claims on items they recover from the seabed, the original owners can make counter claims.
Sub Sea Research was forced to go public with its discovery when it filed a claim on the treasure in a US federal admiralty court, to which no counter claims have been lodged so far.
Mr Brooks said: "No one has stepped forward to make a claim yet, probably because the government that lost it does not realise.
"We are trying to keep it as quiet as possible until we have it in our possession. We think the possessions on board may belong to more than one country.
"I know for a fact that everyone possible will try to take it from us, but we are doing everything by the book. I think the worst case scenario, under salvage law, is that we would get 90 per cent of it. But we are trying to go for 100 per cent."
Mike Williams, an expert in salvage law at Wolverhampton University, said the Government which had owned the cargo would retain a strong claim on it.
He said: "Both Britain and Russia transhipped large quantities of precious goods to the US to pay for their war effort. It would be unlikely the salvors would be able to keep it all.
"The real winners will be the lawyers. There is a marine lawyers' saying that treasure is trouble."
Courtesy of http://www.telegraph.co.uk

Authenticity Has Practical Limits
WILLIAMSBURG - If Robertson’s Windmill is endangered because it’s out of place for 1775, then what about other anachronisms?
By that criterion, part of the old Capitol would need to be torn down. Wetherburn’s Tavern would have to be renamed since he died in 1760. So would the Red Lion since it was no longer called that after 1767. And the Norton-Cole House wasn’t even built until 1809.
Retired director of archeology Ivor Noel Hume came up with these examples after the Goodwin Building conceded it may remove the iconic Robertson’s Windmill.
“As it was in 1775 that Virginia broke with Britain, thereby ceasing to be ‘colonial,’ perhaps the foundation should be renamed ‘Revolutionary Williamsburg’ or ‘Federal Williamsburg,’” he joked.
Ron Hurst, vice president for Collections, Conservation & Museums at Colonial Williamsburg, isn’t laughing. He said there are other considerations in the Historic Area besides absolute fidelity to 1775.
One is to have interesting and attractive things for visitors to see. “Our mission is to teach colonial history,” he said. And the foundation can only teach the history that it knows, which isn’t everything. In the case of Wetherburn’s, “That’s the name we know for it,” Hurst said. “It probably had other names, but we don’t know those.”
Wetherburn’s operated as a tavern throughout the 18th century, although it’s furnished and exhibited for the time of Wetherburn’s death in 1760.
“Sometimes the documents don’t tell you everything,” Hurst said.
And sometimes what they do tell you is cryptic. Historians know of an obscure coffeehouse, aside from Charlton’s, from the diaries of George Wythe.
“He wrote about going there every day,” Hurst said. “It was in the confines of the Historic Area, but we don’t have any idea where.”
That was much the case with Robertson’s Windmill when the foundation sought to reconstruct it in 1957.
The historical record showed that a windmill had existed in the area, but not precisely where. Through the process of deduction, historians narrowed the site to one of four lots, picked one and rebuilt the windmill.
Newer archaeological excavation has failed to find evidence of a windmill on that site. “We haven’t found the footprint of a windmill,” Hurst said.
Larger problems surround the windmill.
“First, it’s inside another exhibition site, the Peyton Randolph property,” Hurst said.
“We’ve been working for 20 years to restore that property to the condition in which he knew it.”
The windmill disappeared from the historical record in 1723 and was definitely gone by 1780, so it doesn’t jibe with the Peyton Randolph plan.
Another problem is deterioration.
“It’s not so much a building as a large wooden machine,” Hurst said. “In our climate, with our humidity, a structure like that has a defined life span. So at this point, it’s time to consider a major investment if it’s going to be maintained.”
After 52 years, “It probably has existed a lot longer than the original,” Hurst said.
He said the foundation is “considering our options” on what to do with the windmill. “In fact, I can’t tell you when a decision might be reached,” he said.
Estimates run to $500,000 to refurbish the windmill. That’s not all.
“Because of the way the trees have grown up around the area, to get wind power to the mill, we’d have to cut down a lot of trees,” Hurst said.
Courtesy of http://www.vagazette.com

Putting the Carriage Before the Horse
WEIRSDALE - As a girl in the 1950s, Gloria Austin sat transfixed in front of the family's black-and-white television set watching the adventures of Roy Rogers and Gene Autry.
She liked cowboys all right, but what she loved were the horses they rode.
"I was like a lot of little girls," she recalls, laughing. "I bugged my father all the time for a horse until he finally gave in."
A girl never forgets her first love. His name was Duke, and he was an 18-year-old American Saddlebred, a big majestic breed used in shows and parades. A fine horse and gentle teacher who became her close companion, he lived on her family's 1,000-acre dairy farm in New York.
But little girls grow up. Austin would go off to college, marry, have two children, run a business in New York and get involved in public service. Duke eventually would be sold, and she would be horseless for a long stretch, nearly two decades.
She never got over her love for all things equine, however, and now, she's come full circle, living a dream she hadn't even imagined more than half a century ago.
Austin is the founder of the Florida Carriage Museum & Resort, a hidden treasure tucked away in Marion County's rolling horse country. Located on 400 acres of manicured grounds, verdant pastures, picket fences and thickets of old oak trees draped in Spanish moss, the facility she opened in 1995 is a testament to a gentler era in Florida's rural and storied past.
Visitors get a feeling of stepping back in time almost immediately when they enter the grounds. On the long road leading to the museum, they pass a Japanese koi pond and Chinese Qin Dynasty garden, replete with blooming seasonal flowers. From a distance comes the clippity-clop of horses' hooves transporting passengers in open-air carriages on winding pathways. Fountains shoot streams of water into the blue skies; natural rock waterfalls provide a gurgling backdrop of sound.
Horses gallop alongside beautifully kept pastures, greeting newcomers with snorts and whinnies. In all, some 20 equines make their home here: Morgans, Friesians, Saddlebreds, Ardennes, Paso Fino, a miniature and a rare Poitou donkey from France. Egrets and blue herons peck for food on the banks of ponds, while fat fox squirrels chatter at the strolling human intruders.
"Beautiful, peaceful and very interesting," says Courtney Scott of Charlotte, N.C., who visits a few times a year with her husband, Marshall. "And even though the pace is so slow, there's never a lack of things to do here. What is missing is the loud noise and demands from the outside world."
What began as a modest tourist operation and training facility in 1995 has evolved into a multipurpose destination.
More than 160 carriages of all eras are on display over 45,000 square feet in four distinct galleries: European, New Vehicle, South Gallery and American. Each exhibit details the vehicle's place in history and its contribution. Visitors can sign up for carriage-driving lessons or just take a tour of the grounds. Overnight to seasonal accommodations, with or without horses, are available in 24 cozy cottages and duplexes scattered throughout the property.
Sandy Zajac lives outside Portland, Maine. Understandably, she prefers Florida's winters. Last January through May, she and her husband rented a house on the resort property and boarded their two horses in a stable a short walk from their bedroom.
"Horse heaven" is how she described her five-month stay. "I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. When we weren't riding, we were meeting new people all the time, either on nature walks or at the Friday night get-togethers. I felt like we were living on another planet in another era. It was wonderful, so good for the soul."
The resort is also home to the nonprofit Equine Heritage Institute, an educational outreach that partners with schools, community groups, disability organizations and the public to teach about the 6,000-year relationship between man and horse that has shaped civilizations and changed lives. Austin believes fervently in preserving the history and culture of the horse, fearing that younger generations will lose interest, as immersed as they are in technology.
"The social history of the horse is so intertwined with our own, and yet we don't teach it," she says. "That's become my mission." She hosts seminars and field trips, helps develop teaching curriculums, runs day camps for kids and "Horsin' Around" programs for adults. Anything to promote equine knowledge and hands-on experience.
'The Center Of Nowhere'
Austin, 66, never really planned this. It started with her interest in carriages. Yes, those pre-automobile vehicles that served as a major mode of transportation hundreds of years before Henry Ford came along. When she turned 40 and started thinking about owning horses again, she wasn't as excited about actually riding.
"It takes a lot longer to recover from a fall at this age," she reasoned.
So she pursued carriage driving and fell in love with the sport. She took lessons, honing her skills with some of the most accomplished drivers in the field, including one who had worked for the Queen of England. Best of all, she could meld her horse passion with her new love.
Austin was still living in New York in the early ྌs when she bought one, two, three carriages, and then more. In her travels overseas, she found one-of-a-kind antique buggies and shipped them back home. She also started breeding miniature horses.
A few years later, drawn by the good weather and horse-friendly country, she set her sights on the affordable land in Marion County. She started with 10 acres and kept adding as adjoining properties became available.
"The center of nowhere," she says, laughing. And she likes it that way.
She wanted to create an environment that would remind her of her own rural childhood, minus the cows. She would have carriages and horses.
Her plan was to construct an air-conditioned, dust-free building to store her small collection of carriages. But plans have a way of expanding.
"It's such a novelty," she says of her hobby. Friends started prodding her to show off her finds. And with the value of the American dollar so strong back then overseas, her appetite grew. She scoured estate sales and family farms, seeking everything from road carts to full-state carriages owned by royal families. When she found a broken-down vehicle that needed tender loving care, she had it restored by carefully chosen craftsmen.
Some are too valuable for anything but display. Several of her favorites are used in shows, classes and for tourists who book rides. She loves the idea that she has played a role in reviving interest in a dying art.
A championship driver with scores of trophies and ribbons, Austin still takes up the reins at least two to three times a week. Thanks to ballroom dancing, her other passionate pursuit, the twice-divorced grandmother of six is still toned and agile. That helps when she settles in the carriage seat, dons leather gloves and a colorful hat, and takes a meandering drive through her countryside.
Yes, this is a celestial experience, divine in every sense of the word.
"It helps you slow your contemporary life down," she says. "When you travel at 8 mph instead of 50, it's amazing what you can see. And no better companion to explore this whole new world with than a horse."
If You Go
Florida Carriage Museum & Resort, 3000 Marion County Road, Weirsdale (five minutes from The Villages Retirement Community), 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday; noon to 4 p.m. Sunday; closed Monday.
ADMISSION: $10 for museum. Overnight rates range from $110 to $500, depending on size of cottage and number of guests. Stall rentals extra; guests with horse trailers, $15 per day use fee for riding on property.
COMING EVENTS: Florida Horse Festival and Carriage Show, Feb. 20-22 and the Southern Ride & Drive on April 24-26. Also, "Horses, High Tea and Music," the third Thursday of each month through March, $44.50 per person.
INFORMATION: [phone]; www.fcmr.org
Courtesy of http://www2.tbo.com







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