Reconciliation At Mountain Meadows - Mormon Massacre Is History

One of the darkest secrets of the Old West was brought into the light and examined this weekend by descendants of a California-bound wagon train which met its end at the hands of Mormon militia and Paiute Indians at a place called Mountain Meadows in 1857.

Covered up in a conspiracy which put the blame for the deaths of 120 men, women, and children on local Indians and shook the Mormon faith to its very core, the Mountain Meadows Massacre has been the subject of heated debate, accusation, and retribution for 150 years.

Descendants from both sides of the tragedy met some 30 miles north of St. George, Utah to commemorate the incident Saturday. An honor guard in period uniforms fired a salute in tribute of the victims, cut down by bayonets and bowie knives in a dark plot hatched by Mormon extremists against the Fancher Party, by all accounts an innocent band travelling through the territory in violation of martial law imposed by Mormon Leader Brigham Young.

Descendants of those who committed the massacre, only one of whom was ever successfully prosecuted and subsequently shot, also attended, as did historians with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Descendants of massacre victims (seven children from the slaughtered party were taken and "adopted" by Mormon families) were also present.

They heard about efforts to preserve the grave site through a master plan compiled by the descendant groups and LDS Church, which has been acquiring property around the site and plans to buy more.

The LDS Church and descendant groups are meeting to preserve the site for posterity.
In an interesting case of self-analysis the church has expanded its holdings from the mere 2.5 acres where the current memorial is located to 700 acres - including more than 200 acres that would have been subdivided near the meadows.

Sixteen acres recently acquired by the church is believed to be the location where the bones of men killed at the massacre were buried a year later. The church may purchase another site where children and women could be buried, if pending investigations reveal the bodies are there.

The Mormon church has opened up about Mountain Meadows since the archives of the church were opened to scholars. During the 150th anniversary at the site, apostle Henry B. Eyring was the first church leader to acknowledge the massacre was carried out by local church leaders.

Nantucket Ahab Busted For Trafficking In Sperm Whale Teeth

A Nantucket antique dealer has been charged with the illegal importing and trafficking of sperm whale teeth. David Place was indicted Friday on multiple counts of conspiracy and violating federal laws prohibiting the trade of items from illegally harvested wildlife.

Investigators say that Place bought and sold sperm whale teeth from 2001 to 2004, a violation of the Endangered Species Act.

If convicted, Place faces up to five years in prison and fines up to $250,000.

From Russia, With No Love Whatsoever...

Things on the slow side these last two weeks or so as people sat on the sidelines, I guess, and wait to make sure the country's financial news was really as good as people were saying.

Upticking stock market, lower jobless rates, a few good economic indicators we thought would get people feeling good about spending again but nosireee, not these last two weeks.

Sure, we sold a nice Plains Indian pipe bag (thanks, Norm) and some lower end WWII things - all to nice people, but nowhere near the high-volume, high-end sales of yore. One interesting tale involved a call we made to a house in San Francisco, the lady adamant that we appraise her antiques.

She was interesting, let's put it that way. Rather brusque and not a lot of fun to be around. I resolved to "get in, get out" as she was making rather pointed comments about our pricing and services.

Long story short she didn't have much at all until I got to an old desk, partner's type and nice enough - I put it down as English in origin. She was hovering, jabbering on about stuff and distracting me - so much so that I almost passed one of the desk drawers, which was balky and unseated.

"There's something wrong with it," she said. "But that shouldn't hurt the price, right? It's early 18th Century..."

"Twentieth," I responded, and shouldn't have... but what the hell. About 1910. Nothing spectacular. I worked on the drawer a little more and quickly realized something had fallen down behind it. Shifting drawers revealed the problem as a lovely little sterling silver czarist military jetton fell out of the carcass and landed with a lovely warm feel in the palm of my hand.

Nice marks, all Cyrillic lettering and three piece construction... I guessed it's age at about 1890 and probably from one of the higher end military academies. I didn't have as long as I'd like to study it because she snatched it from me.

"What's this?" she said. I told her. I had a sinking feeling when I did but nevertheless, I told her. The badge disappeared into her sweater pocket as she prattled on about thieves and con men and how she'd had such good luck with ebay.

I was heartsick. In my hand and gone, probably to be misidentified and raffled off at the earliest opportunity. I did my job and left her, still grooving on the way that little badge dropped right into my palm.

And that's the way it goes in the antiques biz.

"Gone With The Posse, Mama..." - Story Of A Gold Country Badge

Fred Huston was a farrier and part-time gold seeker living in Jamestown, Cal. when he was asked to join a posse looking for the prolific highwayman Charles Boles - known at the time as the poetically inclined "Black Bart."

"Bart" had just held up a stage in Oroville and was reportedly just steps ahead of lawmen who'd set their caps to catch him when word spread that a wider net was needed and a posse was being formed.

Fred put down his blacksmith's hammer picked up a rifle and joined up, telling his mother he'd be gone awhile. But the fleet-footed Boles was a skilled woodsman and cross country trekker. He made good time getting out of the area with $2000 or so of Wells Fargo's money and promptly disappeared.

Fred eventually joined up with the legendary Harry Morse, who dedicated a good portion of his life to catching the elusive highwayman who, as it turned out, was living the life of a wealthy mine owner in that most sinful of cities, San Francisco.


The posse traveled near and far looking for Bart, Huston getting a badge made by Reiningers of San Francisco, a short rosewood truncheon, and a monthly purse to participate. All he ever found was a young schoolmarm, Nettie Hinch, when the posse passed through Gilroy.

It took the mountain man a while to get around to it but eventually he asked Nettie to come away with him, she acquiesced and they moved back to Jamestown, leaving Morse to eventually track and capture the fast-moving Boles in San Francisco, after he left an embroidered handkerchief behind at the scene of one of his robberies.

Fred and Nettie were married and settled down to having children, Fred still gathering his "poke sack" of beans and coffee and taking off into the mountains to fish and pan for gold while Nettie waited at home.

His badge, photo and truncheon surfaced recently at a home in Livermore, Cal. Nettie's picture was not far away.

"Jobless, Illiterate Irishman" Loots English Castles

A man described in the British press as a "jobless, illiterate Irishman" has been arrested in Britain for a series of robberies at stately manor homes and national landmarks.

Andrew Shannon, 44, of Dublin is accused of travelling to England for a "weekend crime spree" with an accomplice, the two men using GPS locators and wireless communications devices to locate target homes and to communicated with each other during their robberies - almost always conducted while the homes were open for public enjoyment.

Apparently Mr. Shannon considered six homes, including Blenheim Palace, a "soft target," walking away with porcelain, paintings, silver and a walking stick from Belvoir Castle.

He was found out when he was approached by a security man who saw two oil paintings stuffed into Shannon's laptop case.

Police found out that Shannon had pilfered items from Castle Howard, Blenheim, Belvoir and other landmark homes, customarily open to the public to display their historic contents.

Shannon was sentenced to three years "in the nick."

A Salty Old Dog Goes Home

I love this antiques game.

Interesting people, interesting objects. Take last night. I get a call from a couple living near us in the San Francisco Bay Area. They're interested in a sterling silver Merchant Marine pin we have from World War II.

We meet on this one 'cause they want to see it and it turns out the pin is for their father, a former merchant mariner who served in the Pacific, was shipwrecked, and passed recently. My buyer is his grandson, himself a just discharged Coast Guard corpsman.


He handled the pin like I'd just dropped a gold nugget in his palm and took it on the spot.

"It's for a shadow box we're doing on his grandfather," his girlfriend explained. "He led a very colorful life."

I'll say. Action in the Pacific, a shipwreck, back home to the East Bay and family who followed in his footsteps and went to sea. It's cool when these things "go home."

To my buyers: enjoyed meeting you very much...

"Cool As Steve McQueen" - His Bikes Sell For Big Bucks

What recession?

A sale of various old motorcycles - everything from a 1950 Vincent White Shadow to the crotch rockets actor Steve McQueen liked to tool around on - went under the hammer over the weekend in our famed Carmel Valley.

Next time you look at the old rusting, leaking hunk of iron you have left sitting in your garage since 1972 consider this - the sale brought in nearly a million in proceeds for those lucky enough to have owned some of the fastest metal around.

The Series C. White Shadow fell under the hammer at $111,150. And someone shelled out $166,000 for two of the perpetually cool actor's bikes as well as his driver's licenese. Hey, I got an old California license right here I'll sell ya...

A bidder paid $84,240 for McQueen's 1963 Triumph Bonneville "desert sled," a bike built by Bud Ekins, a motorcycle racer and friend of the actor best remembered for his iconic barbed wire jump in "The Great Escape."

Another Triumph, not for sale on Saturday, was gussied up to look like a World War II vintage motor and used in the chase and jump sequence... which Ekins made while McQueen did the closeup work.

Minding The Curators - When Museums Go Bad

Our customers are always so surprised when they learn we buy a lot of things from museums around the country. Many labor under the impression that museums are just these great big warehouses where cool old things come in, are cared for, and displayed in a way to benefit the former owner's tax status.

Sometimes. But those warehouses cost money, have limited space, and cannot accomodate the flow of incoming items. So the museum "deaccessions" - a fancy word for sells off duplicate items or things they cannnot build a display around.

And we buy it. We've purchased items from the Smithsonian and small local museums around the country, and loved the items we've gotten. We often receive a phone call from people trying to get it back, thinking they'd donated it to the museum in perpituity.

Nope. Not the way it works.

And sometimes, things go way wrong, with the curator taking the items that come in to the museum and "deaccessioning" them for himself.

This happened recently in the Northern California town of Fortuna, when a former curator of the Fortuna Depot Museum was arrested for skimming off some cool - fishing items - and selling them on E-Fraud, we mean, Ebay.

The accused has been charged with stealing museum items, some of which he later sold on eBay for $826.18.

Investigators said the items consisted of around 40 pieces of antique fishing equipment dating from the 1920s through the 1940s. All were later found at the man's home.

"I guess there's a collector's market on that stuff," an investigator remarked. Well, yeah, copper - there is.

The curator was booked on charges of grand theft and possession of stolen property and later released on his own recognizance.

So, consider this a cautionary tale about museums - they don't always do what they're supposed to do, and sometimes the things we all love so much are reduced to the status of mere commodities. It's a fact of life, if somewhat sordid.

Know who you're donating to and get the details in writing. It's the best advice we can give you.

Auction of Antique Torture Devices To Benefit Amnesty International

We've been around long enough to know that there's a collector out there for just about everything - and not to get too much into the psychology behind a person's collecting habits.

That said, a pretty unusual collection by any one's standards is coming up to auction in New York - with the collector wishing that proceeds from the sale be used to benefit people who could use the help.

The New York house is handling the sale of a broad collection of medieval torture devices - everything from the infamous "rack" to even more heinous devices used over the years to inflict harm.

The auctioneer says the 252 devices may comprise the most complete collection in existence of historical torture devices. All proceeds will go to Amnesty International and other organizations committed to preventing torture at the request of the seller - who requested anonymity.

The collection was last on public display in 1893.