Silver Spanish coin, 1785 (Graves road, Joudrey's Cove)

About This Coin

A silver Spanish coin bearing the date 1785 was found in 1930 beside the old road that ran from Anthony Graves's house at Joudrey's Cove down to the shore. William S. Crooker records the find in Oak Island Gold (1993) in the context of a local tradition that Graves, who owned most of the island from the late 1850s, regularly paid for household supplies in Mahone Bay with Spanish money. Graves had built his house and barns at Joudrey's Cove on the north side of the island, about fifteen hundred feet from the Money Pit, and outwardly showed little interest in the treasure workings. Crooker treats the coin, the Spanish payments, and a second Spanish coin found at the house site in 1965 as the earliest hints that the island's story extended beyond the eastern end. Crooker also notes that in the 1970s Fred Nolan displayed a collection of Spanish pillar dollars at a museum on Crandall's Point; the collection had been loaned by Joseph Carsley of Mahone Bay, who acquired the coins from the heirs of Anthony Graves. Whether the 1785 coin belonged to Graves, to an earlier occupant, or arrived by some other route cannot be established from the surviving account. The coin's present whereabouts are not recorded.