LOST
SILVER MINE LEGEND A BEAUTY
By Byron Crawford
The Louisville Courier-Journal
November 21, 2004
BALD KNOB, Ky. — The first fireside tales that Ed Henson heard about John Swift's legendary lost silver mines were
told by old-timers in the Red River Gorge when Henson was a boy.
His father, the late Clarence Henson, was a well-known U.S. Forest Service ranger in the rugged gorge country and
had been listening to the stories since he was a youngster.
"I believe it's the oldest legend in Kentucky," said Henson, a retired director of state recreational parks and historic
sites. "In fact, James Harrod (who established the first permanent Kentucky settlement) disappeared while hunting
for the silver mines. They never found his body."
The mine is mentioned in two popular Kentucky benchmark histories, "The Draper Papers" and "Collins' History of
Kentucky."
Collins notes that some of the first white visitors to parts of Eastern Kentucky came "at different dates before the
Revolutionary War in search of Swift's silver mine."
In essence, the legend goes that in 1760 an English seaman and frontier explorer named John Swift happened upon
a rich vein of silver in a cave in Eastern Kentucky, and that he and his men minted the ore for several years.
When Indian trouble and mutiny among his men forced Swift to withdraw in the late 1760s, he walled up and secretly
marked the site.
Swift is said to have gone blind and died before he was able to return to the mine, but left a copy of his journal
describing its general location (37 degrees, 56 minutes north latitude and on or around the 83rd meridian longitude,
in most journals).
Several copies of "Swift's Journal" are known to exist — each is similar but with enough variations to send searchers
looking for the mine from Eastern Kentucky and parts of Tennessee to Georgia and the Carolinas.
As far as is known, no one has found Swift's silver vein in more than two centuries of searching. And despite
geologists' insistence that there is no silver in Kentucky, fortunes in time and money have been lost in those
search efforts.
In 1991, John Powell, 58, a General Motors retiree then living in Adair County, estimated that he had spent more
than $300,000 in 12 years searching for the mine.
"I'll go to my grave looking for it if I haven't found it," Powell said then. He could not be located last week.
Although Henson has never searched for the mines himself, he has accompanied others to sites that they believed
were identified in "Swift's Journal."
Henson doesn't know whether the story is true, but he has noticed some curious coincidences of history concerning
the Swift legend.
English satirist Jonathan Swift published his famous novel "Gulliver's Travels" in 1673. Daniel Boone and his party
told of reading the book in camp during early exploration of Kentucky in 1769. Boone named Lorbrulgrud Creek,
now between Powell and Clark counties, after some characters in the book.
In 1755, Henson notes, Boone, George Mundy, John Finley and a John Swift had enlisted in Gen. Braddock's army
at Fort Pitt. Swift and Mundy supposedly found the mines in 1760 and left about the same time that Boone and
Finley came to the Kentucky wilderness in 1769.
"Is the legend true or was it just a plan by Boone and others to sell Kentucky land?" Henson asks. "I can't say one
way or the other. But the legend is a treasure in itself. To me, the beauty of the story is in the dreamers who
chase after it."
Byron Crawford's column appears on the Metro page Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
You can reach him at (502) 582-4791 or e-mail him at bcrawford@courier-journal.com.
You can also read his columns at www.courier-journal.com.
By Byron Crawford
The Louisville Courier-Journal
November 21, 2004
BALD KNOB, Ky. — The first fireside tales that Ed Henson heard about John Swift's legendary lost silver mines were
told by old-timers in the Red River Gorge when Henson was a boy.
His father, the late Clarence Henson, was a well-known U.S. Forest Service ranger in the rugged gorge country and
had been listening to the stories since he was a youngster.
"I believe it's the oldest legend in Kentucky," said Henson, a retired director of state recreational parks and historic
sites. "In fact, James Harrod (who established the first permanent Kentucky settlement) disappeared while hunting
for the silver mines. They never found his body."
The mine is mentioned in two popular Kentucky benchmark histories, "The Draper Papers" and "Collins' History of
Kentucky."
Collins notes that some of the first white visitors to parts of Eastern Kentucky came "at different dates before the
Revolutionary War in search of Swift's silver mine."
In essence, the legend goes that in 1760 an English seaman and frontier explorer named John Swift happened upon
a rich vein of silver in a cave in Eastern Kentucky, and that he and his men minted the ore for several years.
When Indian trouble and mutiny among his men forced Swift to withdraw in the late 1760s, he walled up and secretly
marked the site.
Swift is said to have gone blind and died before he was able to return to the mine, but left a copy of his journal
describing its general location (37 degrees, 56 minutes north latitude and on or around the 83rd meridian longitude,
in most journals).
Several copies of "Swift's Journal" are known to exist — each is similar but with enough variations to send searchers
looking for the mine from Eastern Kentucky and parts of Tennessee to Georgia and the Carolinas.
As far as is known, no one has found Swift's silver vein in more than two centuries of searching. And despite
geologists' insistence that there is no silver in Kentucky, fortunes in time and money have been lost in those
search efforts.
In 1991, John Powell, 58, a General Motors retiree then living in Adair County, estimated that he had spent more
than $300,000 in 12 years searching for the mine.
"I'll go to my grave looking for it if I haven't found it," Powell said then. He could not be located last week.
Although Henson has never searched for the mines himself, he has accompanied others to sites that they believed
were identified in "Swift's Journal."
Henson doesn't know whether the story is true, but he has noticed some curious coincidences of history concerning
the Swift legend.
English satirist Jonathan Swift published his famous novel "Gulliver's Travels" in 1673. Daniel Boone and his party
told of reading the book in camp during early exploration of Kentucky in 1769. Boone named Lorbrulgrud Creek,
now between Powell and Clark counties, after some characters in the book.
In 1755, Henson notes, Boone, George Mundy, John Finley and a John Swift had enlisted in Gen. Braddock's army
at Fort Pitt. Swift and Mundy supposedly found the mines in 1760 and left about the same time that Boone and
Finley came to the Kentucky wilderness in 1769.
"Is the legend true or was it just a plan by Boone and others to sell Kentucky land?" Henson asks. "I can't say one
way or the other. But the legend is a treasure in itself. To me, the beauty of the story is in the dreamers who
chase after it."
Byron Crawford's column appears on the Metro page Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
You can reach him at (502) 582-4791 or e-mail him at bcrawford@courier-journal.com.
You can also read his columns at www.courier-journal.com.
