The never-before-told true story of an elusive eighteenth-century New Brunswick treasure, featuring dozens of illustrations and historical charts.

Tall tales of sailing ships, swashbuckling pirates, and lost riches abound in East Coast folklore. Blackbeard is said to have buried his treasure in Nova Scotia; legend has it that Captain Kidd hid his loot on Oak Island. Now Nine Bags of Gold: The Real-Life Hunt for the Lost Treasure of Acadie adds new intrigue to that lore.

In the late 1800s, an elderly man named Simpson travelled from Québec to Moncton, New Brunswick, with a French map from the mid-1700s. The chart, he claimed, pointed to a fortune—nine leather bags of gold—which had been buried in Acadie by mid-eighteenth-century French troops on the run.

Simpson partnered with local excavator Sherman Blakeny. Sponsored by Moncton’s wealthy elite, the two launched a massive search. Dozens of labourers plowed seven acres of land in Irishtown down to a depth of five feet.

What did they find? It’s a question author and skeptic Stéphane LeBlanc-Rainville has spent years researching.

Nine Bags of Gold brings this never-before-told saga of eighteenth-century intrigue to light, excavating age-old legends, furtive protagonists, deathbed confessions, mind-bending plot twists, questionable treasure maps, large-scale digs, and tantalizing cliffhangers.

Features more than thirty illustrations, numerous infographics, and detailed historical charts.

Table of Contents

• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Prologue
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: The Teller's Tale
• Chapter 3: An Extraordinary Footnote
• Chapter 4: The Four Financiers
• Chapter 5: Dating The Search
• Chapter 6: A Revelation
• Chapter 7: X Marks the Spot
• Chapter 8: Ontario: Yours to Discover?
• Chapter 9: Red Tape
• Chapter 10: Winters of Discontent
• Chapter 11: The Trilogy of the Times
• Chapter 12: The House of Weld
• Chapter 13: The Three Simpsons
• Chapter 14: Simpson's Sketch
• Chapter 15: Two Birds, One Stone
• Chapter 16: Rocks of Ages
• Chapter 17: A Stone Left Unturned
• Chapter 18: The Riddle of Skull Island
• Chapter 19: A Last Hurrah
• Chapter 20: The Peter Pan Within
• Appendix A: Chronology
• Appendix B: A Mystery Blakeny Quote
• Appendix C: Inventory of La Louise
• Endnotes
• Bibliography
• Index