Proctorville is one of the oldest communities in what is now Lawrence County, Ohio, and throughout most of its history, there prevailed the legend of “Letcher’s Gold.” The origin of the story dates back to the late 1700s when a pioneer company led by Colonel Letcher, traveling down the Ohio River, was attacked by the Shawnees.

The Letcher family had $56,000 worth of gold sovereigns (English mint) with them and during the battle, Mrs. Letcher assisted by a black man named Johnson divided the treasure into small portions and buried them at several spots to prevent the Indians and frontier renegades from seeing the heavy loot should the company be forced to flee.

The tale goes on to say that the party was killed off, and the caches of gold went undiscovered; however, the location of the treasure, estimated by the travel descriptions of the party, was in the vicinity of Proctorville. A small cache of gold was later recovered, thus fanning the flames of the legend.

A Proctorville native, H. A. Borders, who later moved to Portsmouth, Ohio, wrote a series of articles under the pen name Hinla Allen, drawing on his extensive research to bring information about the legend. His first story appeared in the local newspaper in 1930.

Four years later, Borders wrote another series of articles to update information he had accumulated on “Letcher’s Gold” and to give the account of a Proctorville man, who as a boy twenty years earlier, discovered the major part of the loot in an excavation being made for laying sewer tile in the village.

Border’s 1934 articles tell of the man coming to his house and identifying himself as the person who had lived in Proctorville for a short time as a boy in 1914 and was a former acquaintance of the writer, who was about the same age.

The visitor had read the 1930 articles and appreciated Borders research of the legend. He then told Borders of the gold’s discovery but extracted a promise that the writer wouldn’t reveal his name. He believed that Borders, due to his extensive research, deserved to know that the discovery in the final chapter of “Letcher’s Gold” could be known.

During the discussion on the agreement, Borders said he felt the public should know of the discovery, but he agreed to conceal the man’s identity from the readers. He then presented the visitor’s story in detail, calling him “Brad,” and incorporated the thrill that any youth would experience upon accidentally discovering buried treasure.

Brad told of the sewer pipe being laid through the lower end of Proctorville. To save manpower in digging the 12-foot-long trenches, they were “spaced” with five-foot unexcavated areas between which were tunneled through with a minimum of digging.

On Saturday, work ceased at noon because the Proctorville baseball team was to play at the fairgrounds that afternoon. The adult game was followed by an evening “scrub” game for youths.

Brad had been benched because of a new boy, a left-hander, whose pitching was in demand. Late in the game, Brad wandered off toward home and, in an adventurous spirit, jumped into one of the trenches as he was passing the excavation area. While lying in the trenches, he looked into one of the tunnels and spotted a variation in the tunnel roof. Feeling the area with his hand, he was hit by one of the chunks of metal that dropped from above.

Examining the eight fallen objects, he found them to be “about the size of five-dollar gold pieces, and they had the weight of gold; moreover, one bore a date – strong evidence they were genuine coins. However, as an offset to this engraving on both obverse and reverse, there was a foreign pattern that I had never seen on American currency.

Putting the coins in his cap, he took them home and showed them to his mother and father. They identified them as English sovereigns, and upon consulting a dictionary, found that they were worth approximately $6.90 each in U.S. currency.

Being very cautious not to arouse suspicion in the neighborhood, the boy and his father took a hooded lantern to the ditch, climbed in, and began probing the roof of the tunnel. Chunks of metal began pouring out of the roof. They filled a ginnysack and their pockets and caps with coins, working quietly. Once, when two men approached, they completely covered their light. Later, they arrived home lugging about 200 pounds in gold coins, a treasure worth $42,000.

Brad explained to Borders that he believed the Letcher woman, before she died, had fears that her companion might beat her back to the severe caches if they lived, or he might reveal the information to the renegades. So, he presumed, she had dug up the small caches and reburied the entire treasure, except for one of the caches, and that was the one he and his father had discovered.

To conceal the origin of the newfound wealth and to remove the youngster from the temptations of talking about the treasure to others in the Proctorville community, the family moved away soon after the “find.”

That is the story as related to Borders. Did it verify a legend? Did it dampen the hopes of others in Proctorville from ever finding a “pot of gold” in their backyard? It all depends on whether the legend is true, and if it is, whether Brad’s story to Borders was also true.

If the legend is false or the location is off, there would be no gold to find. If Brad’s story is true, then the loot has been found and the bulk of it removed. Otherwise, you can dig for yourself, as many Proctorville residents did in the 1800s and early 1900s.