Let's Rob The Atlanta Mint

About the Book

LET’S ROB THE ATLANTA MINT IS A TALE OF THE CIVIL WAR, of the life of Burton Tyler. The setting is South Alabama, near Montgomery, Alabama, and Atlanta, Georgia. The story is fiction. Any resemblance to real persons or incidents is purely coincidental. Burton Tyler was born and reared on a cotton plantation south of Montgomery, Alabama, before the Civil War. When his father died, he had no interest in the plantation and gave it in its entirety to his slaves after he freed them. After completing his college and military at West Point, he then went into high finance in New York and made his fortune. Soon after, he joined the Confederate Army and rose to the rank of general. After the war ended, with his considerable experience in finance, he was asked to take charge of the Atlanta Mint in Atlanta, which was being reactivated by the federal government. He served for several years until it was robbed by fellow former confederate officers. The officers, with many millions of dollars from the mint, fled to a secure hiding place in the northwest and were never found. He was accused of complicity in the crime but was not guilty but felt he must resign. He married a former slave woman whose skin was white, named Lilly Belle. She was known to be a negress in Atlanta during the days of slavery; he was white. They had to move away or be killed by the rednecks of the area. He bought a “ghost” plantation in South Alabama and became a successful planter. He named the plantation Lilly Belle Plantation and gave it to her with the title in her name. The plantation was called a ghost plantation because the former owner’s spoiled daughter accused Goat—“nickname of Burton’s best friend and overseer of the plantation” (he was a black man and Burton’s former slave0—of trying to rape her as a teenager. She also accused other slave teenage boys of the same. Her father whipped several of them to death. Afterward, the neighbors swore they regularly saw the murdered slave boys working the fields of the plantation, so it gained the reputation as a “ghost” plantation. No one came on the property or near it for many years until Burton Tyler bought it. The road in front of the house was not used for many years. He later visited the officers who robbed the mint in their northwest home. He met a woman held captive by them for fear she would expose their existence there. Burton negotiated her freedom and brought her to his home. It was a long embarrassing trip together, but there was no untoward contact between them. He also met two orphan children on the train and brought them home and later adopted them.

About the Author

Ralph Way was born in Detroit, Michigan. His parents returned to Cookville, Tennessee, two years later where he was reared. After school, he spent his adult life as a commercial building contractor, retiring at age seventy-one. He then began writing. He is married and has three children. On Christmas Eve of 2007, they celebrated their sixtieth anniversary. He now resides in Lawrenceville, Georgia.