John Jacob Astor made a fortune. But did he do it as a fur trader, as he told everyone? Or, did he actually base his fortune on buried pirate treasure discovered in Deer Isle, Maine? And did he keep it secret so he didn’t have to return it to its rightful owners?
That’s what Franklin Head told the world.
Well, in actuality Astor built his fortune on fur trading. But the myth that he discovered buried treasure on the coast of Maine has persisted – ever since it was created by a Chicago lawyer and bon vivant who liked to entertain his rich friends with fanciful historical spoofs.
John Jacob Astor by John Wesley Jarvis
Franklin Harvey Head was the lawyer who invented the story. Born in New York, he went west to Wisconsin to practice law. His career took him to California and Utah, where he had mining and cattle interests. And finally he landed back in Chicago as a bank director and president of the Chicago Malleable Iron Company.
During his off hours, Head liked to socialize with Chicago’s literary society. To entertain his wealthy friends, he published humorous books based upon fanciful tales.
Shakespeare’s Insomnia
Franklin Head (inset)
For example, Head noticed that William Shakespeare’s characters frequently express their wish for a restful sleep to ease their minds. He then published: Shakespeare’s Insomnia and the Causes Thereof. In the parody he included “newly-discovered” correspondence between the playwright and Sir Walter Raleigh, actor William Kempe and money lender “Mordecai Shylock.” The fictitious letters highlighted Shakespeare’s money and marital difficulties. Head argued they caused the insomnia that influenced his plays.
Head had wealthy friends who founded the exclusive Jekyll Island Club, a retreat off the Georgia coast. For their entertainment, Head published Studies in Early American History: The Legends of Jekyll Island. The fictitious history interweaves real and fake historical names and stories with the names and photographs of Head’s friends. Yet many took the book as truth, and incorporated into later histories of the island.
Jekyll Island clubhouse
A Head book dealing with Maine spawned the Astor story. Head was dining with the daughter of landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted when the subject of his Maine property came up. Olmsted owned an estate on Maine’s Deer Isle and spent one summer there before his death.
The pirate William Kidd was a favorite of Head’s. He had also worked him into his Jekyll Island history. From his Olmsted conversation came Studies in Early American History: A Notable Lawsuit. The story described how Olmstead’s descendants had sued the Astor family to recover William Kidd’s pirate treasure.
Frederick Law Olmsted
The Astor Fortune
According to Head’s account, a trapper had discovered a buried treasure chest from William Kidd on land that Olmsted’s ancestors owned on Deer Isle. The trapper stole the chest and, not knowing its actual value, sold it to Astor. It then formed the basis for the Astor fortune.
Barred Island, part of the Deer Isle property owned by Frederick Law Olmsted
In Head’s account, generations later the Olmsteds discovered the theft and sued Astor for compensation. That includED back rent on all his Manhattan real estate, which he could not have purchased without the stolen treasure.
The book is full of tipoffs that it is not factual, including references to Olmsted ancestors Cotton Mather Olmsted and Oliver Cromwell Olmsted. Perhaps the most glaring indicator that the story was not true was the absence of any lawsuit that the book was supposedly based upon.
Nevertheless, the appetite for news of the wealthy was so strong the story came to be taken as truth. Liberty Magazine then published it as fact. People would tell and it would be told and reprinted many times over the years.
William Kidd
The Hoax Has Legs
Originally printed in 1892, the story then surfaced in 1926 when a California historian presented it as true. It then made its way into newspapers around the world. Not to be outdone, newspapers in the state of Maine even postulated that the state could recover the treasure. After all, selling stolen goods was illegal.
There’s no indication that Head, who died in 1914, intended his stories to be taken seriously — or even that they would be distributed beyond his circle of friends.
This story about the Astor fortune last updated in 2021. Images: Jekyll Island clubhouse by By Lawrence G. Miller (Lawrence G. Miller on en.wikipedia) – Photograph created by Miller using a Casio QV-2000UX digital camera., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8489632.
