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My uncle Earl wrote to me Jan 3rd 1970 and told Me about Our great grand
Father Douglas Rutherford who when he was in His forties came out
to California
and started mining around hang town , he did pretty well and had about
sixty
thousand dollars in gold, He sent half of it back home overland ,then
took a
ship down the coast to panama ,there he went by foot or mule to the Atlantic
side then boarded the ship 'Central America' for New York however
it ran into
a hurricane off the cost of Carolina and it tried to weather it out but
in a
few days it broke up and sank, he had a money belt with about twenty
thousand
in gold but had to cut it loose and he floated around for about twenty
four
hours and was finely rescued and made it to New York and then home
and they had
heard about the ship wreck and thought he was lost but he was so
bad from
the exposure that he didn't live too long. there were six hundred on the
ship
but only one hundred and forty or so survived, there are some books
telling about the ship and the gold which was recovered. |