Bristol May Still Be Home To Rosetta's Gold

She was born Rosetta Hoffman in Germany about 1820.
When very young, she married Samuel Lewis Beachler (folks in Bristol called them Bachelor and that will be used throughout this article). He was born Jan. 14, 1821.
This couple soon came to Baltimore, Md., and lived there a few years, but they were living in Fredricksburg, Va., when they decided to move to the new town of Bristol, Va./Tenn.
In early April 1855, they arrived here by stagecoach. Upon arrival here, they had little more than the clothes upon their backs.
But they were both very industrious and applied themselves very diligently to the task of making a living. As it was, they made more than a good living. Within a few years, they had become rather wealthy.
By the time Lewis died (Jan. 3, 1876), their wealth equaled or exceeded that of the three wealthiest men in Bristol, namely J.R. Anderson, Z.L. Burson and W.W. James.
Not only had they built up a huge fortune, something like $20,000 in gold, but Rosetta had gone further and become a legend in her own time.
The town folks thought of her as a hard-bitten, gun-carrying, sharp-tongued, savage woman and few dared to get her “stirred up” as Ol’ Dad Thomas used to say.
Lewis Bachelor died without a will. Not long after he died, a nephew began legal action to try and get part of the estate.
Rosetta, who already despised that nephew, swore that he would never get a dime of it, even if she had to bury it “grave deep.”
And it appears that she did just that.
The Bachelors never used a bank. Their wealth was always in cash, and it was generally believed that it was hidden about their home.
But, with Rosetta’s reputation as a “trigger-happy sharpshooter” and two very vicious dogs that guarded the house both day and night, nobody tried to rob or steal from her.
In the dispute with her husband’s nephew, she swore in court that she was a pauper, and for the next several years, she lived like one.
Her home fast deteriorated, and a Cherokee rose she had set during the estate dispute, quickly multiplied, turning her backyard into a tangled mass of long and very thorny vines.
Finally, she had moved from the old home to a little shack on Scranton Street that had formerly been one of her rent houses. The Main Street (State) house was sold, and business houses were erected upon the lot.
Near the end of her life, a niece, Mrs. Henry (Mary) Ruff of Catonsville, Md., moved the ailing Rosetta Bachelor there until her death that occurred in late June or early July 1903.
An ex-slave, Andy Susong, had longed worked for Rosetta in Bristol.
During the height of the dispute with her nephew, she had sent Andy to work for her twin sister Rosanna Hoffman Naeff in Baltimore.
In 1910, Andy returned here. After making a futile search himself, he told the story that is of great interest to some to this very day.
On the day before Rosetta had sent him to live with her sister, she had him go to S.R. Ferguson’s hardware store to buy an iron wash pot saying that she needed a new one.
Later that day, she had him dig a hole in the backyard saying she wanted to plant a Cherokee rose.
Strangely she had him dig the hole six feet deep. Her explanation was that it took such a hole to give this type of rose a good start.
Next morning, he returned to find that hole had been filled to within a foot of the top. She had him plant the rose and that very day, bought his ticket and sent him, by train, to her sister’s home in Baltimore.
He had always thought he had assisted Rosetta in burying her fortune in gold and that she wanted him out of town.
And he was more convinced when, upon her deathbed, she kept muttering something about a rose bush in Bristol.
Old timers have told me that the Bachelor home was somewhere on the Virginia side of the second half of the 800 block of State Street, but none of them were able to point out the exact site.
Who knows, Rosetta’s gold may be there, probably covered by a large business house. Next week, I will write more on this subject.

BUD PHILLIPS is a local historian and author. He can be reached at (276) 466-6435.