Tuesday, August 22, 2023

Buried Treasure in Troy, Ohio – August 1963

Do you still put money in savings accounts in local banks? Or do you prefer to put excess funds in an IRA, or invest in CDs, bonds, stocks, etc. (Or perhaps you don't have any excess cash at all, which is increasingly becoming the norm in America.)

Well, this page from the August 23, 1963 Lorain Journal has the story of Pop Altman, a man from Troy, Ohio, who distrusted banks so much, he preferred to bury his money in the ground for safekeeping. More specifically, he buried it in huge milk cans at his Miami County feed mill plant beginning in the 1930s. 

On his death bed in late July 1963, he told his son and daughter about the buried money. Two 10-gallon cans with $350,000 in small bills were unearthed shortly thereafter; the article above notes that another milk can with an additional $150,000 had just been found.

Elsewhere on the page: the U. S. Post Office on Broadway gets spruced up; the "By George" column offers some whimsical advice; the Delis family (including the owners of Delis Furniture) has a visitor from Greece, who offers up an interesting view of life there; and Governor Jim Rhodes and Patricia Lei Anderson, Miss Hawaii of 1962, open up the Ohio State Fair (which seems pretty late compared to the current schedule).