Misplaced Fortunes by Ross Mantle
“One doesn’t start by asking one and all where a treasure is. That’s an opener, but a better questioning
method is to express interest in local recluses, scandals, missing fortunes, rags to riches, back to rags
stories, murders, suicides, once-rich families now poor, robberies, and that sort of thing. Don’t be afraid
that a good many people will think you a bit touched. They will and that’s ok. That’s part of the price of
being a treasure hunter.” – H. Glenn Carson, Cache Hunting
Misplaced Fortunes guides readers on a literal and metaphoric treasure hunt. Navigating three centuries
of history, legend, and lies, the work explores America’s colonialist ambitions, unquestioned obsession
with progress, and the stories we choose to tell about it.
The larger project weaves photographs, original and found text, historic imagery, and typographic symbols into
an interrogation of the myth of General Edward Braddock’s pay-chest, rumored to be lost in 1755 after
the British General was killed along a military route in Western Pennsylvania. The trail had been built by
Nemacolin, a Delaware Nation chief, to facilitate trade. It was then expanded at the behest of George
Washington for military use. A half-century later, it became the first National Road, opening travel west
over the Allegheny Mountains. Today both the trail and the treasure are buried beneath centuries of
unhindered progress, replaced by the roads and highways that propelled the United States toward the
promise of land and wealth.
The story of this fortune and the road on which it was lost compresses time, place and significance. The
photographs—made between Alexandria, VA and Pittsburgh, PA—offer another layer of storytelling atop
the rest. Rooted in documentary photographic traditions, these images retain an objective yet incomplete
meaning. Through sequencing I expand their connections, creating additional understandings through
accompanying text and titles excerpted from sources as varied as John Kennedy Lacock’s written
and visual guide Braddock Road (1909); J.W. Hunt’s Cumberland Times editorials (1945-1968); H.G.
Carson’s manual Cache Hunting (1984); and Gordon Kershaw’s critique of Hunt’s writings about lost
treasure (2001). Images of holes, X’s, unintended cairns, remnants, and monuments further guide the
viewer along my narrative path.
To trace a nearly three-century old chest of coins that no longer exists and, most likely, was never lost to
begin with is a seemingly purposeless task. There is no clear conclusion in a search for something that
can’t be found, but this legend has held my focus because of the absurdity of what it proposes and what
I’m looking for. In my time living and working in Appalachia I have come to believe that the region can
be understood best through genres like magical-realism, creative non-fiction, and absurdism. I came to
the legend of Braddock’s gold with this in mind and found the tale fit my broad interests—it’s an inland
treasure hunt, a colonialist road trip, a study on road building, an anecdote of American expansion,
a metaphor-laden look at a region often superficially portrayed, and an analogy to my photographic
practice.
Ross Mantle lives and works in Pittsburgh, PA.
To view more of Ross’s work, please visit his website.
