Newspaper Page Text
Thursday, October 5, 2000
The Southern Cross, Page 3
Diocesan treasure?
What a Baxley farmer found in his field
Rita H.
DeLorme
"n late March 1978, residents
_of the small town of Baxley,
Georgia, had something to talk
about. James Folsom, manag
er of the frozen food depart
ment at their local Piggly
Wiggly Store, had come
across something strange
while plowing his 50-acre farm.
The object Mr. Folsom’s roving
plow had encountered in a pre
viously untilled portion of his
acreage was a metal cask, or
cylinder, which had evidently lain buried there for
years.
What ties Mr. Folsom’s find to the Diocese of
Savannah was the nature of that cylinder.
In his March 30, 1978, letter to Sister M.
Michael Joseph, RSM, who was then diocesan
archivist, reporter Dean Wohlgemuth, who had
written about the discovery in his newspaper,
described the mysterious object as a “tabernacle
about 30 inches high, and about 12 or 14 inches in
diameter.” Wohlgemuth went on to say that “the
door is of cast bronze and on it are the letters IHS
with a cross through the center of the H. Above the
letters is a cluster of grapes, with the grapevine
extending down each side of the door. At the bot
tom is a floral design of some type, perhaps the
center of what I thought was floral is a torch; I
can’t be certain. On the base rim, on each side of
the door, was a small flower held on with a single
screw. The flowers each had four petals.”
According to the reporter, the door of the object
slid into its double wall. It had been locked when
found. When it was carefully opened, its contents
were revealed: two pieces of cloth, both stained
clay colored. One cloth appeared to be silk; the
other, linen.
Bureau Chief of the Florida Times-Union at the
time, Dean Wohlgemuth interviewed Father Patrick
McCarthy, then pastor of Saint Joseph’s Church in
Waycross, and studied tabernacles at Saint Joseph’s
which “appeared to be much, much lighter in
weight, and were welded, or bronzed together. The
one Folsom has was put together only with screws,
with no welding.” The reporter stated in his letter to
James Folsom and tabernacle
the Savannah archivist that he really hoped the tab
ernacle was very old, but that because it had a pin
and tumbler lock (invented c. 1860s), it probably
was not ancient.
In her own meticulous notes, Sister Michael
Joseph recorded an earlier telephone call from
Wohlgemuth. The archivist stated that the taberna
cle had been found in a field 4 or 5 miles from
Baxley. She referred to three newspaper articles
the reporter had sent her and said she had respond
ed to Wohlgemuth’s request for information on
Spanish martyrs in the Baxley region.
The Baxley Times-Union account written by
Wohlgemuth supplies additional details concerning
the mysterious tabernacle. It had been taken to a
local locksmith who was unable to unlock it.
“Finally, the cask was opened after an hour and a
half of careful drilling.” The cloth mentioned earli
er was folded “like a baby diaper, sort of like a
pocket.” Folsom and a friend of his contacted the
University of Georgia via a relative of the friend
and were told by someone at the Archaeology De
partment there that, given the description of the
lock on the tabernacle, the piece was probably
about a hundred or two hundred years old. Still
evidently puzzled by the matter, Folsom said that
“none of his neighbors who had lived in the area
for many years could remember a church being
located near there.”
There is no further reference to the “treasure”
found on Mr. Folsom’s wooded lot. Archival
sources include only the three Baxley newspaper
clippings, the letter from Dean Wohlgemuth, Sister
Michael Joseph’s brief summary, and a glossy 8 x
10 photo (printed here) of James Folsom and the
tabernacle.
Today, attempts to turn up information on the
episode meet with as much resistance as James
Folsom’s plow did close to twenty years ago.
Several of the principals involved in the story are
no longer available to supply additional facts.
Sister Michael Joseph is deceased. Father Patrick
McCarthy has since returned to Ireland because of
ill health. James Folsom, according to a volunteer
at the Heritage Center near Baxley, no longer lives
in the area. Neither the library nor the local news
papers in Baxley have any information other than
the few articles printed at the time the tabernacle
was unearthed. Dean Wohlgemuth, now retired,
remembers the tabernacle incident, but does not
recall turning up any additional information on the
matter. He does not know why he didn’t follow up
on the story and he assumes he was just too busy
to do so at the time.
Somewhere out there, perhaps in the small town
of Baxley located ninety miles from Savannah,
lurks an explanation of the incident which caused
so much excitement in 1978. The contact at the
Heritage Center, after some thought, intimated that
she had heard of “several tombstones” that were
also found on the Folsom property at some time in
the past. The “Baxley Story” contains a good many
“what-if’s”: What if the tabernacle had been hid
den by missionaries fleeing persecution? What if
the tabernacle had been Civil War-era plunder
gathered by Sherman’s soldiers or hidden from
them by a desperate priest? What if the grime-
encased tabernacle had housed Eucharistic bread
hundreds of years ago? There is another question:
“Whatever became of the tabernacle dug up in
James Folsom’s field in 1978?”
RU-486
(Continued from page I)
was based on “the FDA’s careful evaluation of
the scientific evidence related to the safe and
effective use of this drug.”
“The FDA’s review and approval of this drug
has adhered strictly to our legal mandate and
mission as a science-based public health regula
tory agency,” she added.
Danco Laboratories in New York was expect
ed to have the drug on the market in about a
month. It would be sold directly to doctors and
not through pharmacies. The National Abortion
Federation, which accredits abortion providers,
says it has 240 member clinics ready to offer the
abortion drug, which was expected to cost about
the same as a surgical abortion.
Vicki Saporta, executive director of the
National Abortion Federation, said the FDA
approval marked “a milestone in the history of
abortion in America.”
But Joseph M. Scheidler, executive director of
the Pro-Life Action League, called September
28 “a black day in the history of the FDA and
women’s health.”
RU-486 “is a deadly poison to a tiny, defense
less unborn baby,” he said, “and it can be lethal
to the child’s mother as well.”
J. La Verne Redden, president of the National
Council of Catholic Women, said RU-486 “puts
women’s health at risk and destroys the lives of
innocent children.”
“We are concerned that women who use RU-
486 may be unable to become pregnant in the
future and that the long-term effects of the drug
have yet to be determined,” she said. “We
grieve for the unborn whose mothers’ 'right to
choose’ has left them no choice.”
The FDA placed some restrictions on use of
mifepristone, requiring doctors who use the
drug to be trained in surgical abortions or to
have plans in advance to provide such care
through others.
Rita H. DeLorme is a volunteer in the
Diocesan Archives.
»
Pope
(Continued from page I)
same ecumenical passion that runs through my
encyclical, Ut Unum Sint (‘That All May Be
One’),” he said.
“It is my hope that this declaration, which I feel
strongly about, after so many mistaken interpreta
tions, can end up performing its function of clari
fying and at the same time of opening up” dia
logue, he said.
The pope’s unusual public defense of a Vatican
document came after verbal and written criticism
by several groups and individuals involved in the
various dialogues conducted by the Vatican.
The document prompted two rabbis in Rome to
cancel their participation in a Christian-Jewish
symposium scheduled >r October 3, an embar
rassment that forced the Vatican to cancel the
event.