This is a very unique cache and a great read of history. We hope you enjoy. It is important to not go on the property or destroy the fence while looking for this cache. Enjoy the view. This maybe available in the winter if the snow doesn't get too high
Jane Elizabeth Martin was born around 1794 in Cork Ireland, Ireland. Just under five feet tall, Elizabeth was the daughter of a Spanish gypsy and her father a colonel in the British army. Being the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, Elizabeth would later claim this was the reason behind her abilities using a mystical “sixth sense.”
Charging 25cents to tell one’s fortune, Elizabeth was soon nicknamed “Mother Barnes” and had crowds of followers coming to her door seeking their future. Based on her incredible reputation of being accurate in telling one’s days to come, she accumulated enough money to buy a small log cabin of her own near Plum Hollow and entertained hundreds of people from all walks of life from all parts of the continent who sought out Mother Barnes mystic abilities. One of these customers was a young Attorney General by the name of John. He asked the “witch” as she was called, where the new capital of Canada would be located. Gazing through time she told John that the capital would be a town near a river called Bytown. She also told John that he would become the first Prime Minister in the capital city. John was John MacDonald, better known as Sir John A. MacDonald, and years later both prophecies would come true, Bytown would become the capital of Canada and he would indeed become prime minister.
Barnes clairvoyant abilities foretold that the body of Morgan Doxtater (This ia desendant of the owner of this cahce) would be found and claimed it was the dead man’s cousin who murdered him. The Witch Of Plum Hollow would also reveal the location of buried treasures, crimes of passion, locate lost personal items, and even reveal future loves. Her powers were always in demand, and she used them with great effect until she died in 1886 at the age of 92.
In June of 1860 two cousins from NY State vying for the same girl went fishing north of the Outlet in which only one returned. A few months later Morgan Doxtater's body would later be found in Charleston Lake floating, partially weighted down by rocks, at a place now called Judgment Cove. Edgar Harter threw the body over board and sank it with rope. The body wasn't deep enough and the body floated to the top. If he would of thrown it 20 feet farther the body may have never been recovered. Edgar Harter was tried, convicted and executed by hanging in Brockville for the crime in 1860.
Elizabeth Barnes was buried in an unmarked grave in the Sheldon Cemetery. In later years, a headstone was erected by Claude and Ella Flood, cheese makers at nearby Plum Hollow from 1924 to 1974, to mark her previously unmarked grave. This stone uses 1794 as the year of her birth and 1886 as the year of her death.