Colonel Noah Parker and the Myth of Blackbeard's Treasure

(Listen to the audio version of this story on the Pennsylvania Oddities Podcast)
 

Eight miles north of Emporium, in the wilderness of McKean County, lies the ghost town of Gardeau. Once a prosperous lumber town with over a thousand residents, Gardeau is home to more rattlesnakes than humans these days; records indicate that, by 1929, the population of Gardeau had dwindled to just four.  Although Gardeau is a lonely place today, it does boast one unusual and mysterious tourist attraction-- the mausoleum of Colonel Noah Parker.

What makes the mausoleum strange is that it is not in a cemetery; it seems to have just grown out of the wilderness like an ancient Mayan temple. What makes the tomb even more strange is that some folks believe there may be a vast silver treasure hidden inside. As to what else may be inside the mausoleum, no one can say for sure; some locals insist that Col. Parker is buried somewhere else, and some local legends claim that Parker's ghost can still be seen from time to time on moonless nights, silently roaming Gardeau Road.

So what is the truth behind this mysterious man and his mysterious tomb?

Maps from the 18th century show Gardeau as Great Elk Lick, a name given by the Indians to denote a place where the saline waters attracted a great number of elk, deer and other wildlife. Before the area was settled, this was a famed hunting ground of the red man, but the earliest white settlers were attracted to Great Elk Lick because of its abundance of virgin timber.

In 1800 a New Jersey native, Captain David Thomas, was forced to abandon his ship off the Florida coast after the crew of a Spanish man-o-war attempted to capture him. Captain Thomas was a pirate who made a habit of plundering Spanish vessels, and it was said that Thomas had been responsible for sinking a Spanish ship laden with silver bullion. Captain Thomas evaded capture, and rowed northward along the coast until he reached the Susquehanna River, presumably taking the silver with him. He paddled upriver until reached Great Elk Lick, and it was here where he built himself a cabin. Thomas went into business manufacturing salt, which he sold to the early settlers who traveled along the ancient Indian trail along the stream that later came to be known as Parker Run.

Meanwhile, in Albany, the Parker family was preparing to leave New York and embark on a new life in the Cowanesque Valley. It was here, in 1811, where Noah H. Parker was born. In 1828 George Parker, Noah's father, purchased a tract of land from Shongo, the Seneca chief, in the Genesee Valley. One day Shongo showed the Parkers where to hunt. "Way off yonder, great much lick, much deer, much elk, much salt," said Shongo, pointing off into the distance in the direction of Great Elk Lick. According to Shongo, the waters also possessed remarkable healing properties. In 1844 the Parkers purchased this tract of land from Captain Thomas, tearing down the old log cabin and erecting a hunting lodge.

It was during the tearing down of Captain Thomas' cabin when a young Noah Parker found the pirate's diary, secreted inside the stone chimney. The diary contained a detailed account of the sinking of the Spanish vessel, and the whereabouts of the silver bullion. Over the course of his long life, Parker would give conflicting accounts of where the treasure had been hidden.

The Rise and Fall of Gardeau


As more settlers arrived in the region Noah Parker built a saw mill, leasing it out for the stately sum of $40 per day. Parker, who was possessed of an entrepreneurial spirit, used this seed money to drill for oil along Great Elk Lick. When he failed to strike oil, he remembered the words of the old Seneca chief, who often spoke of the medicinal qualities of the local water. In 1888 Parker opened a large, three-story brick sanitarium and drew guests by advertising the curative powers of the local spring water. He erected bath houses and a bottling plant, and established a game preserve where guests could get up close and personal with bears, wolves, hawks and eagles. He also constructed a large fish pond at the mouth of Parker Run. Sadly, Parker's Mineral Sanitarium was completely destroyed by fire on June 17, 1898.

While Parker was an important figure in the early history of McKean County, the growth of the region can be greatly attributed to the B. & N.Y. Railroad, which was constructed between 1871 and 1872 and linked the communities along the Allegheny and Susquehanna Rivers. This made the shipping of lumber possible, and, before long, the village of Gardeau sprang into existence. By the 1890s, Gardeau boasted dozens of homes, a handful of shops, a brick church and, later, a train station. But after all the timber had been cut the village was abandoned. In 1944 the state highway, Route 155, was built, re-routing traffic around the deserted village and effectively cutting it off from civilization.

The Mystery of the Tomb


According the Colonel's widow, Mrs. L.R. Kightlinger, Noah was locally famous for his eccentric nature, and it was this eccentric nature which evolved into the idea of erecting a mausoleum prior to his death. The tomb was built in 1895, and at the same time Parker also purchased a hermetically-sealed casket for the staggering sum of $500 (approximately $15,000 in today's currency), thereby wiping away the entirety of his life's savings. He died penniless at the age of 87 on December 8, 1897. The 1895 date which appears on the mausoleum reflects the year the tomb was completed, not the year he passed away. He left behind a young daughter, Polly (Pauline), who was placed in the county orphan's home and awarded the sum of three dollars per month from the Colonel's estate. She later married William Mitcheltree, and died in Keating Summit at the age of 20 from typhoid fever. Her infant son, Ned, would succumb to the same disease one week later.

As for the mystery of the treasure, shortly before his death Parker revealed that Captain Thomas had buried it under a cluster of oak trees along the Manatee River in Florida. He claimed that Thomas had never gone back to retrieve it, as the area was inhabited by hostile Seminole Indians at the time.

And as for the man himself, all evidence seems to suggest that, yes, Noah Parker is indeed interred inside his unusual mausoleum, presumably inside his expensive hermetically-sealed casket.



The Legend and Legacy of Colonel Noah Parker


In spite of these facts, legends surrounding Parker's grave and the silver treasure continue to flourish. This is due largely to numerous newspaper articles written about Parker in the 50s and 60s. During this time, old-timers who had been mere children when the Colonel was alive shared their reminiscences about the glory days of Gardeau and their recollections of its most famous resident.

One newspaper article even makes the claim that Parker had been hired by the pirate to keep watch over the treasure (which now had a stated value of $11 million), but had stolen a considerable portion of it and hid it inside his casket. By the 1970s, the pirate in question was now Blackbeard, who was said to have stolen the very treasure he had been hired to transport to Canada via wagon, entrusting the secret of its location only to Noah Parker.

Even Henry Shoemaker, the great chronicler of Pennsylvania folklore and legend, had his facts wrong in the numerous articles he wrote about Parker throughout the 1940s, claiming the Colonel died in 1901, taking the secret of Captain Kidd's treasure to the grave. In other accounts Shoemaker claims the treasure was from the War of 1812, which would have made Noah Parker one-year-old at the time he was "hired" to guard it.

Nevertheless, in the years that followed, hundreds of treasure hunters descended upon Gardeau, many of whom desecrated Parker's tomb in their greed and insatiable thirst for wealth (if you look closely at photographs, you'll notice that the entrance to the mausoleum has been altered; my guess is that some kind-hearted local was determined to permanently seal the grave to discourage would-be graverobbers).

One article, appearing in the June 15, 1950, edition of the Bradford Era, provides some fascinating anecdotes about the Colonel. D.M. Bullock, Sr., was 81 when he shared his memories with the Era in 1950. He stated:

"I was 18 or 19 then and I remember Colonel Parker well. He was a man about five feet eight inches tall and always carried himself erect." According to Bullock, Parker was a great sportsman and hunter, who carried a gold-plated Winchester rifle and "always rode a pony wherever he went".

Bullock, who had been employed by the Colonel and had even helped clear the hillside during the construction of the mausoleum, recalled that Parker had amassed quite an impressive collection of seashells. When he constructed his house (which stood at the confluence of Parker Run and South Branch Indian Run, just north of the junction of Gardeau Road and Indian Run Road), he hired a man to build a cement wall around the property, and had the seashells ornamentally embedded in the cement.

Several sources claim that pirate treasure had been buried inside the tomb, but even Bullock himself refuted this myth back in 1950. Bullock said that Parker often spoke of wealth being buried in the surrounding hills and that "some day someone will get it out", but Parker had been referring to Pennsylvania's natural resources-- not pirate silver. The fact that the Colonel's father had purchased a tract of land from a real-life pirate only helped to bolster the legend. But that pirate was Captain David Thomas, not Captain Kidd or Blackbeard. And the treasure in question never made it out of Florida.

While Colonel Parker's tomb is a strange and unusual landmark, the historical record proves that the remains of a human being are buried there, and should be treated with respect. And the historical record also proves-- beyond any doubt-- that Blackbeard's treasure is not, and never was, hidden in Gardeau.