Treasure hunter’s collection on display at Historic Upshur Museum

By Mary L. Kirby

Terry Smith is a treasure hunter and some of his treasures are on display at the Historic Upshur Museum. He does not hunt for gold coins or dubloons like Robert Louis Stevenson described in Tresure Island, but he goes waving his Garrett Metal Deteclog, listening for the sound of something interesting.

What he finds is not always metal. His dectector reveals the shape of objects . He has searched the battlefields of Virginia, Georgia, and Louisiana and in East Texas. Most common among the items on display in the museum are the lead tips of bullets fired in those ancient rifles of yore. The lead tips after over a century and a half underground have oxidized so they are covered in white lead oxide.

Smith retired after 26 years of custodial work for the Longview schools where he sometimes would sit in on history classes. Before that he spent two years in Vietnam. He has been treasure hunting now for 30 years.

Not all his treasures are metal. The detector gives off different frequencies for different items. When he explained to a novice treasure hunter what frequency he found one items, the hunter exclaimed he had been ignoring that sound.

Among the more unexpected items are the heels of boots lost when marching over a “cordoroy road” of logs placed side by side to keep wagons from sinking too deep in the soft terrain. He also found a pair of eye glasses, stirrups, and a spur. He has found numerous buttons from old uniforms, many representing the state the soldier was from.

Among the interesting places he has searched are the battle field at Vicksburg where he helped the national park archeoligist identify things he had found, at the University of Virginia and Monticello, Jefferson’s home, where he dug at the slave quarters.

Smith is a member of the Wood County Metal Detecting Club and knows Keith Wills, Gilmer’s own metal detector. With Wills he is a member of the Texas Association of Metal Detectors and will be here on August 8 from 9 am to 4 pm at the Gilmer Civic Center with the East Texas Treasure Show. The exhibits will be open to the public free and will include metal detecting supplies, native American artifacts, relic and coin displays.

For futher information about the show or about metal detecting, contact Terry Smith at (903) 238-3020.