I'm in the process of compiling a bunch of pre-1830 Capt. Kidd
stories which circulated in the New York newspapers as far
west as Palmyra.

Here's one:

EVENING POST.
Vol. ? New York City, Wednesday, April 24, 1822. No. ?

COMMUNICATED TO THE EVENING POST.

_Kidd's money and the deviI in the shape of black cat. --_ A good deal of amusement was excited by the result of an application which
was made to the police office last Saturday afternoon, for a posse of officers to go down to a house in Goldstreet, and explore the cause
and object of certain mysterious proceedings which had been sometime going on in the cellar of the same. -- Men were heard digging
there in the day time, with the door and windows closed, and lights burning within. The wicked souls would not tell their neighbors what
they were doing, and their neighbors, like "poor aunt Charity Cockloft, who died of a Frenchman," were consuming with anxiety "to get at
the bottom of it." -- Two resolute and intrepid police marshals were dispatched and soon explored their way down into the sepulchral
region of doubt and mystery. Here was first seen a huge mass of new dug earth [losening] up almost to fill the cellar, and a deep broad
oblong pit from which it had been evacuated. A closer inspection shewed a bible laid upon upon the margin of the pit with a naked sword
laid across it -- In another quarter long shining rods of iron were displayed with bamboo cases for their safe preservation; and one might
almost have imagined that he had found his way into the cell of an alchymist of the fourteenth century. The posse however pretty soon
discovered a negro fellow glaring through a crevice in the door, and having made _bon prize_ of him were directly in possession of the
secret of the whole. He had been set to dig there by a white man whose name he did not disclose, and the object was _buried money._
The bible and sword were to keep the devil off -- the long shining iron rods were to explore ahead with; but what the use could be of the
rods of different lengths, any more than the general singularity of the proceeding he did not explain.

The devil had hitherto kindly let them alone it appeared till within about two days past when the poor fellow saw him spring up out of the
bottom of the pit, in length, size and colour like a large black cat, and their digging had in consequence been suspended since; but they
were just agoing to renew it again with fresh resolution, but the charm had now been broken by one of the police officers getting down
into the pit, and any further labor would be all in vain -- The negro was examined by a magistrate and severely threatened that if he dug
another shovel full the devil should carry him off through an underground passage; all which he faithfully swallowed with eyes bursting from
their sockets with wonder and terror, and his recent experience of the frightful black creature coming up out of the bottom of the pit, had
well prepared him to believe it. The pit has also been filled up.

This infatuation of digging for Kidd's money has continued now for near a century and sticks as deeply into the mind as ever.

One tradition respecting it, may, perhaps, amuse. Whenever Kidd and his bloody band buried a quantity of money, their usage was to cut
off the head of one of the band, and lay it on the boxes of treasure, by which a compact was formed with the devil to guard the deposit
forever; and if thereafter any meddling mortal should dare to disturb it, that bloody head would send up spouts of blood from its arteries,
and all the power of the infernal would be roused to protect it.

And another:

WAYNE SENTINEL.
21 Palmyra, NY Feb. 16, 1825.

From the Windsor, (Vermont) Jour. Jan. 17.

Money digging. -- We are sorry to observe even in this enlightened age, so prevalent a disposition to credit the accounts of the marvellous. Even the frightful stories of money being hid under the surface of the earth, and enchanted by the Devil or Robert Kidd, are received by many of our respectable fellow citizens as truths. We had hoped that such a shameful undertaking would never have been acted over [again in] our country, till the following event occurred, not long ago in out vicinity.

A respectable gentleman in Tunbridge, was informed, by means of a dream, that a chest of money was buried on a small island in Ayer's brook, in Randolph. No sooner was he in possession of this valuable information, than he started off to enrich himself with the treasure. After having been directed by the mineral rod, where to search for the money, he excavated the earth about 15 feet square to the depth of 7 or 8; and all the while it was necessary to keep six pumps running to keep out the water. Presently he and his laborers came

Pat upon a chest of gold,
And heard it chink with pleasure,
Then all prepared, just taking hold,
To raise the shining treasure.

One of the company drove an old file through the rotten lid of the chest, and perceiving it to be nearly empty, exclaimed with an oath, "There's not ten dollars a piece." No sooner were the words out of his mouth, than the chest moved off through the mud, and has not been seen or heard of since.

Such is the story as related by himself. -- Whether he actually saw the chest, or whether it was the vision of a disturbed brain, we shall leave the public to determine.

And another --

NY, October 8, 1823.

CAPTAIN KIDD.

...had a secret place of retirement on or near a hill about two miles south of Albany... he made a cave, which is hidden from human observation, in which he buried 51 boxes of gold, and laid upon them 13 human bodies, of those whom he had murdered, in order to
serve as a talisman against the prying curiosity of such as were in search of hidden treasure....

Uncle Dale Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> And another --
>
>...he made a cave, which is hidden from human observation,
>in which he buried 51 boxes of gold, and laid upon them 13
>human bodies, of those whom he had murdered, in order to
>serve as a talisman against the prying curiosity
>of such as were in search of hidden treasure....

Young Joe Smith made is cave in Miner's Hill a mile or so
from the family homestead in Manchester. He had no gold to
hide there, but the bones of sacrificed sheep littered the
floor. Joe's first human attempt came a decade later in
Kirtland, in the guise of his Gentile opponent, Grandison
Newell. Unlike Captain Kidd's victims, Mr. Newell managed
to escape the assassin's hand, and lived to charge Joe
in a court of law. The final verdict was delayed, until
the summer of 1844, when Joe, like his pirate hero, made
the mistake of handing himself over to the machinery of
justice. Both pirate chief and admiring acolyte thus
ended their infamous careers.

UD

Fascinating!!

twojedis Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Fascinating!!

I'm still looking for a popular telling of the Pirate Kidd
story, where his attack ship has been sheltered in the islands
near Madagascar, and he outfits a newly acquired vessel at
Moroni, on Grand Cumorah.

If I can ever locate that Captain Kidd lore tidbit, the whole
tedious search through old texts will have been worth it.

UD

And another -- this one from New England, but also reprinted
in the upstate New York newspapers of young Joe Smith's day.

Note the Vermont witch (Joe's mother lived in Vermont and was
mentioned by Clark Braden as there having been the disciple
of a New England cult leader).

Note the links to a diving rod and seer stone, in locating
the buried treasure -- and the tie to Captain Kidd.

Less well known is Joe Smith's dependence upon J.C. Symmes, as
an authority on the under-the-earth locality where the Lost
Tribes of Israel supposedly migrated:
http://www.sidneyrigdon.com/dbroadhu/SO/miscsout.htm#070931

======================


CONNECTICUT MIRROR
----------------------------------------
Vol. XIX. Hartford, Conn., July 16, 1827. No. 5

FOR THE MIRROR.

-----

THE MONEY DIGGERS. *

Thus saith the book -- 'Permit no witch to live;'
Hence Massachusetts hath expell'd the race,
Connecticut, where swap and dicker thrive,
Allow'd not to their foot a resting place.
With more of hardihood and less of grace,
Vermont receives the sisters grey and lean,
Allows each witch her airy broomstick race,
O'er mighty rocks and mountains dark with green,
Where tempests wake their voice, and torrents roar between.

And one there was among that wicked crew
To whom the enemy a pebble gave,
Through which, at long-off distance, she might view
All treasures of the fathomable wave,
And where the Thames' bright billows gently lave,
The grass-grown piles that flank the ruin'd wharf,
She sent _them_ forth, those two adventurers brave,
Where greasy citizens their bev'rage quaff,
Jeering at enterprize -- aye ready with a laugh.

They came -- those straight-hair'd honest meaning men,
Nor question ask'd they, nor reply did make,
Albeit their locks were lifted like as when
Young Hamlet saw his father. And the shake
Of knocking knees and jaws that seem'd to break,
Told a wild tale of undertaking bold,
While as the oyster-tongs the chiels did take
Dim grew the sight, and every blood drop cold,
As knights in scarce romaunt sung by the bards of old.

For not in daylight were their rites perform'd,
-- When night-cap'd heads were on their pillow laid,
Sleep-freed from biting care, by thought unharm'd.
Snoring e'er word was spoke, or prayer was said --
'Twas then the mattock and the busy spade,
The pump, the bucket and the windlass rope,
In busy silence plied the mystic trade,
While resolution, beckon'd on by hope,
Did sweat and agonize the sought for chest to ope'

Beneath the wave, the iron chest is hot,
Deep growls are heard and read'ning eyes are seen,
Yet of the Black Dog she had told them not,
Nor of the grey wild geese with eyes of green,
That scream'd and yell'd and hover'd close between
The buried gold and the rapacious hand.
Here should she be, tho' mountains intervene,
To scatter, with her crook'd witch-hazle wand,
The wave-born sprites that keep their treasure from the land.

She cannot, may not come, the rotten wharf
Of mould'ring planks and rusty spikes is there,
And he who own'd a quarter or an half
Is disappointed, and the witch is -- where?
Vermont still harbors her -- go seek her there,
The Grand dame of Joe Strickland -- find her nest,
Where summer icicles and snowballs are,
Where black swans paddle and where Petrils rest,
Symmes be your trusty guide and Robert Kid your guest.

_* Note._ It is a fact that two men from Vermont are now, (July 11th) working by the side of one of the wharves in New-London for buried
money, by the advice and recommendation of an old woman of that state, who assured them, that she could distinctly see a box of dollars
packed edge-wise. The locality was pointed out to an inch, and her only way of discovering the treasure was by looking through a stone,
which to ordinary optics was hardly translucent. For the story of the Spanish Galleon, that left so much bullion in and about New London,
see Trumbull's History of Connecticut, and for Kidd, inquire of the oldest lady you can find.

-------------------------
This poem was later extensively reprinted, as being the creation of _Connecticut Mirror_ editor
John G. C. Brainard, who was a poet in his own right.