http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_S._Mosby#mediaviewer/File:JohnSMosby%26men.jpg

Anna Hider

You don't have to head all the way out to the Wild West if you're in search of buried treasure...in fact, there are reports that there is a cache of Civil War-era valuables worth upwards of $350,000 buried deep in the woods of Fairfax County, Virginia. That's a lot of booty!

It all started when Confederate Colonel (and notorious guerilla fighter) John Singleton Mosby launched a daring night raid one rainy night in early March of 1863. Mosby and his men captured 42 Union soldiers who were camping out at the Fairfax County Courthouse without firing a single shot. The Confederate army also, according to legend, found a burlap sack containing family heirlooms and treasures taken from the homes of Virginia's wealthiest planters in Brigadier General Edwin H. Stoughton's room. Jewerly, candlesticks, coins and more were reportedly among the booty that was on its way to Union authorities. Mosby and his men rounded up their captives, packed up the treasure and headed back towards Confederate lines.

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James William Boyd
Disappeared Circa February 1865

As a captain in the Confederate Army during the Civil War, James William Boyd was captured by Union forces in 1863. His wife died while he was imprisoned, so he petitioned for freedom to return home and care for his seven children. On February 14, 1865, the US Secretary of War approved his release. He never returned home.

It was certainly not altogether uncommon for men to go missing during wartime, but Boyd’s case emerged as particularly mysterious. He had the unfortunate luck to closely resemble a famous actor of the time. Some believe that, following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the manhunt for John Wilkes Booth ended with the killing of look-alike Boyd instead. 

Booth was buried in an unmarked grave and three cervical vertebrae were taken out of his body during his autopsy. These are on display at the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington DC, which is overseen by the US Army. Some descendants of the Booth family have asserted that their notorious ancestor escaped justice and have recently demanded that his remains undergo a DNA test, but they have been denied the right to exhume the body on the basis that they do not know its exact location and could disrupt other remains. The Army also refuses to let them experiment on the vertebrae, even though a DNA test would do little damage to the specimen. For now, the mystery remains.

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