Off the Editor’s Desk – 1-2-2013

OLD ROMAN COIN? 

Two weeks ago I printed an excerpt from the Souvenir Number of the Glenwood Tribune printed in 1900. It stated that an old Roman coin from about 100 A.D. was found on the banks of Sand Creek on the Van Ryn farm property.

When I first read that story from the Souvenir Number back about forty years ago I wanted to find out more about it. Well, Sand Creek to me was the creek located in section two of the Town of Glenwood on the Stack Property. As kids we would bike out to that creek to trout fish. We even camped overnight there several times along the railroad that traveled alongside of the creek.

That Souvenir Number book that I first read belonged to Arliss Sherin Cady of Minneapolis. Her grandfather, Paul Salscheider, was one of the first people to come to Glenwood and was the master builder for the Glenwood Manufacturing Company.

I was ready to go to Sand Creek to check out where that Roman coin was found. But my father, Ross, quickly said, “you better find out where the Van Ryn farm property was. The railroad tracks along Sand Creek was laid long after 1900 and that may have distributed the ground. I found an old plat book and the Van Ryn farm was in Section 14 on a tributary of Sand Creek on property owned Peter Knops and James Johnston. At that time I quickly learned that that land had provided fill for the reconstruction of County Highway X and it probably was so distributed that it would not have anything there that was present before 1900.

I read over the files of the Tribune from that time and could not find anything about that Roman coin being printed other than what was in the Souvenir Number of 1900. And, I could not find any person who knew anything about the Van Ryn family or what every happened to that coin, or if there was really a coin, Anyway, it makes a good story, I wish I could find more out about it.

— Carlton