Treasure Tales, Missouri

Here’s a couple of stories for those of you in Missouri.

In Nodaway County, MO there is the treasure of Dr. Lynn Talbott. This story has been in newspapers and treasure magazines but I thought I would repeat the highlights.

Dr. Talbott moved to Missouri just after the Civil War and built a home he called the “House of Seven Gables”. The home was located two miles west of Barnard, MO. Dr. Talbott practiced medicine in the area and raised cattle. He didn’t believe in banks and apparently took the majority of his pay in gold and silver coins. He would put these coins into small kegs and when a keg got full he would bury it on his property.

In 1879, the good doctor Talbott was murdered by his own two sons while trying to find out the location of the kegs of coins. The two sons were convicted of their crime and hanged in 1881. It is said the doctor’s wife went insane and eventually died and the house burned to the ground a few years after that.

There have been several searches for the kegs of coins but I am not aware of any recoveries. The last time I checked the original ranch had been split into two pieces of land with a road going through them. Different individuals own each piece of land and one of those was pretty adamant about not letting anyone onto his property to search. It has been several years since I researched this and if I remember correctly the original location of the doctor’s home was on the west side of the road that goes through the property. The ownership of the land may have changed hands since I last looked but this still might be a viable treasure just waiting to be recovered.

Here’s a little newer cache to look for. It is located in Sullivan County, MO and was hidden by a modern day outlaw by the name of Fred Burke. Mr. Burke was the leader of an outlaw gang that went on a bank-robbing spree through Michigan, Indiana and Wisconsin in 1926. The gang stole gold, silver and currency and then split the proceeds. Fred Burke’s take was supposed to be $100,000 in 1926.

After being successful at robbing banks Mr. Burke decided to quit while he was ahead and he took a job as a hired hand on a farm located just outside of Green City, MO. Fred Burke took on an alias, using the last name of White and lived on the farm. It is said that he hid his treasure at various places on the farm and possibly even in a spot or two in the town of Green City, MO.

The F.B.I. eventually found Fred Burke and put him in prison for life and no one has reported finding any of his caches.
This is another story that could be researched fairly easily using old newspapers to find out exactly where the farm was and how long Fred Burke lived on the farm. With the F.B.I. arresting him in a small town it surely would have made the news.