Coiners at the Cave
The Cave had been used for religious purposes, as a haven in time of distress, as an inn and as a decoy house for murder and robbery. Through the widely scattered references to it in early books of travel and in magazines and newspapers we find also occasional indications that it had been, at different times and for short periods, the workshop and headquarters of counterfeiters. There are, indeed, few details concerning its occupation by bandits and criminals of any description; this is the veil of mystery that shrouds it in enduring interest. The knowledge that distinct facts about definite crimes committed there can never be obtained has challenged the imagination of various writers. Facts about the counterfeiters who used it are much less in evidence than facts about those following other forms of crime; probably because counterfeiting must of necessity be more secret than other crimes.
There is nothing to indicate that any of the counterfeiters of Cave-in-Rock were guilty of robbery by force or of murder. The part they played in outlaw river life was in the purchase of goods from passing boats and the payment for these goods in counterfeit coin and currency. Not until it was too late would the receivers of such money discover they had been duped. For this reason the counterfeiters could not long use the Cave at one time. There were, as far as is known, only three counterfeiters identified with the Cave. Two of these were among the first lawbreakers to convert the place into a workshop for a nefarious trade; the other was among the last of its outlaws.
Dr. Frederick Hall, who went up the Ohio in 1839, states in his Letters from the East and from the West that “this noted cavern is styled Counterfeiters’ Cave.” He further comments that “in times gone past, never to revert, it was inhabited by counterfeiters, robbers, and murderers.” Charles Augustus Murray, in his Travels in North America, writes of his trip down the Ohio in June, 1835. He says that the current report of the country at the time of his visit to the Cave, was that when this den of thieves was finally broken up “it contained great quantities of gold, silver, silks, and stuffs, and false money, with an apparatus for coining.”
It is not known what disposition was made of the coining tools and false money referred to by Murray. Nor is it known what became of any of the apparatus and illegal money left behind by the Cave’s other counterfeiters. The person who expresses the opinion that an “upper cave” exists, is likely to add that great quantities of good and bad money are hidden in the undiscovered cavern. The counterfeiters probably carried away all their coin and coining apparatus. The only trace of suggestive evidence preserved today indicating the former occupancy by counterfeiters is the half of a double die or mold which was found many years ago in the vicinity of the Cave. It has been cherished as a possible relic of the counterfeiting regime there.
Implements and Weapons used by the Outlaws
Counterfeiter’s mold, knife blade, iron tomahawk, and stone idol found in vicinity of Cave-in-Rock, and a flint-lock pistol of the style used about 1800
This die was seemingly hidden near the Cave by one of the men who had used it for the purpose of making counterfeit half-dollars and the large five-dollar gold pieces of those days. It is a double plate of iron four and three-quarter inches long and two and one-quarter inches wide, welded together. The upper plate is one-eighth of an inch thick and in it are cut two discs, each being one and one-half inches in diameter and having a gap at the top, opening to a funnel shaped “feeder.” It is said that a particular local clay or some other suitable material was placed in the circle and into this pliable matrix the impression was made of one side of a genuine half-dollar, or of an old style five-dollar gold-piece, which was of about the same size. This formed, when hardened, a more or less durable mold for one side of the new coin. In like manner another mold was prepared in the other half of the coining apparatus for the other side of the counterfeit piece. The two parts of the mold were then placed in proper position and the hot metal poured into the cavity through the funnel-like opening. This process doubtless produced, as a rule, a more or less crude imitation, but since many of the genuine coins of an earlier date were somewhat crude and were still in circulation, the counterfeiters experienced comparatively little trouble in imitating the old pieces.
Among the early counterfeiters who made the Cave their headquarters for a time was Philip Alston, who looms large in the romance and gossip of the latter part of the eighteenth and early part of the nineteenth centuries. He was a gentleman by birth, education, and early association. He comes down to us handsome in figure and grand in manner, wearing broad-cloth, ruffles, and lace. He had an air of chivalry to women and of aloofness, superiority, and mystery to men. He was the “Raffles” of pioneer days and legend paints him in high colors.