Strang treasure traditions

Summary

“Strang’s treasure” is not one stable legend. It is a web of stories that place different valuables at Holy Island (Pine Lake), Fox Lake, High Island, and North Fox Island. A separate South Fox Island murder-payoff story and a single coin reportedly found near the Saint James palace became neighboring pieces of the folklore. Across the versions, the treasure changes from stolen goods to Spanish coins, Chicago robbery loot, a royal treasury, or a chest of gold hidden in a lake.

The traditions are historically important because they show how the memory of the Kingdom of Saint James was reshaped after 1856. They are not evidence that a Strang treasury existed. No held source documents a cache in a contemporary Strangite ledger, diary, inventory, sworn statement, or archaeological report.

A map of the variants

Holy Island: treasure as resort history

The 1912 Charlevoix County Herald says Strang hid identifiable stolen goods as a government vessel approached. Nearby publicity offered a free history of “King Strang and the Buried Treasure.” A 1955 retrospective adds a clue near a flat stone, reported searches by Bert Wilhelm in 1900 and 1912, and a stone vault about thirty inches square. It also identifies I. B. McLean as a skilled real-estate salesman. The strongest conclusion is not that treasure lay there, but that the legend helped sell Holy Island as a place of mystery.

Fox Lake: the hurried-departure story

The modern Fox Lake version says Strangites hid a large chest of gold while leaving Beaver Island after Strang’s death. The currently held 2011 lecture manuscript calls it a persistent rumor and says treasure probably does not exist. Frederick Stonehouse’s Great Lakes Crime (2004), pp. 100–101, is the earliest identified publication for the large-chest wording, but those pages remain a controlled-loan acquisition target rather than a held source.

High Island: thirty paces from the tree

Later summaries cite Carl A. Norberg’s 1987 article for a royal treasury hidden thirty paces from a large tree overlooking High Island’s northeast harbor. The tree was supposedly removed by logging. Because Norberg’s article itself is not held, the clue and his underlying sources remain unverified. The subject index also exposes an issue-number discrepancy: 43.3 in the index, 43.2 in later citations.

North Fox: two stories joined together

Firestone preserves an old Northport tradition of $150,000 in Spanish gold, sealed in jars inside an iron chest, sometimes attributed to Strang. The 1905 Evening Record instead reports two travelers and an alleged Chicago robbery cache. It says plainly “Not Strang’s Money.” By 1996 the oral legend and the newspaper episode had been woven into one narrative. Their relationship is evidence of folklore changing—not two independent confirmations of treasure.

South Fox and the palace coin: useful comparisons

The South Fox story involves a shipwrecked murderer’s payoff: $35,000 in dishpans in one circa-1920 childhood version, or a tree bearing a nail in another. It has no Strang connection. Likewise, the Beaver Beacon’s 1964 recollection of a $20 gold coin near former palace foundations is a lone-coin story, not a cache. Keeping these comparisons visible prevents every island gold story from being retroactively absorbed into “Strang’s treasure.”

Evidence detective: a young historian’s challenge

Every clue has two dates: when the event supposedly happened and when someone wrote it down. Put both on a card. Then sort the cards:

• Did the writer see the event, interview someone, repeat a family story, or quote an earlier booklet?
• Is the clue stable? Watch the tree become a marked cedar, a large landmark, or a tree with a nail.
• What was the storyteller’s purpose—news, tourism, family memory, or research?
• What evidence would change the answer: an original booklet, a ledger, a diary, a period newspaper, or an archaeological report?

Mystery and skepticism belong together. The reward is learning not only whether a story might be true, but how a community keeps remaking it.

Open questions

• Obtain Norberg’s six pages and verify his sources and issue number.
• Locate I. B. McLean’s illustrated Holy Island booklet.
• Recover the Northport Leader report preceding the September 14, 1905 article.
• Read Stonehouse pp. 92–101 and trace the Fox Lake version earlier than 2004.
• Search Strangite financial and personal papers specifically for treasury, church funds, emergency concealment, and the 1856 evacuation.

See also

• “The Treasure?” — The Evening Record (1905)
• “Treasure on Holy Island” (1912)
• “Lost treasure of the Beaver Island Mormon Colony” (1987)
• North Fox treasure-search trip reported in 1905
• Music and folklore
• Historiography