About This Artifact
The largest single artifact Fred Nolan described to Crooker was a railway trolley with wheels that run on a track, recovered from beneath the mud of the swamp. Nolan hauled it out with a timber jack. He could only guess how it came to be there, and offered the possibility that it had been rolled out onto the ice during a winter and sank into the deep mud when the ice went out in spring. He suggested it may have belonged to Anthony Graves, to Henry Sellers, or to one of the Sellers heirs, and was simply discarded by dumping it in the swamp. Crooker leaves open whether the trolley is a piece of the island's puzzle or a nineteenth-century farm cast-off. Wheeled trolleys on rail were common on Nova Scotia farms, wharves, and small quarries from the mid-nineteenth century, and several search syndicates ran narrow tramways at the Money Pit. The object's dimensions, gauge, and construction are not recorded in Crooker's account, and its present location is unknown. The date range given here reflects Nolan's own suggestion rather than any examination of the object.
Historical Context
William S. Crooker, Oak Island Gold (1993), chapter 23
Where It Was Found
Found Beneath the mud of the swamp on Nolan's property. Location: the triangle-shaped swamp on Oak Island's southeastern quadrant.
