I just quickly read through the posts, and I haven't done the research, but there has always been a rumor that Baird found pirate money on fowlers bluff...but it could have been this money....Im sure he wouldnt be perticular...
this is one of the accounts that I found...
GAINESVILLE, FL – There is a tall tale, deep in the swamplands of Florida, along the banks of the Suwannee River near a place called Fowler's Bluff in Chiefland. There, it is said, pirate Jean Lafitte sailed up the river and deposited millions of dollars of his "earnings," burying three chests in the quicksands of the bank. It was this treasure that was reputed to have been found years later in 1897, when sawmill owner Emmet J. Baird – whose business was going through some rough times – tried his luck at finding one of the boxes.
Following a treasure map and instructions given to him by a fever-ridden old man on his deathbed, Baird gathered a small group of men and spent the next three months trying to raise the dead pirate's booty from the sunken ground. Whether or not he ever found what he was looking for has remained a mystery, a secret locked within Baird and his descendants, yet the rumors all point to his success:
• Baird's sudden disappearance, slipping away in the night
• A broken lock, found at the dig site by a former workman
• Baird's reappearance in Gainesville, where he opened the Standard Crate Company and
purchased what is now know as the Baird Mansion, a 5,400 square-foot, three-story Second French Empire-styled home built in 1886
• The sporadic appearance of old coins in the hands of the Baird family members
throughout the years.
Fact or fiction, the intriguing story found its way into a "Saturday Evening Post" article in 1945
