While visiting the Presidential Library of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in Hyde Park, New York, Rick Lagina, his nephew Alex, and researcher Paul Troutman are searching for information that could explain just why America’s 32nd president remained interested in the search for treasure on Oak Island throughout his adult life.

There were 17 million sheets of documents there, most of which have not yet been digitized. So it’s a difficult research agenda.

“I guess just to give you a sense of what this collection is—this is called the President’s Secretary’s File. These are the documents that were so secret, personal, or confidential that they were kept in FDR’s secretary’s office rather than sent down to the White House filing room.”

“Interesting. Very interesting. I was hoping to find something from around the time when we know he made a trip to Oak Island.”

“Okay, this letter right here—it actually does mention Oak Island in it. There’s a man named Richard Perkins from Englewood, California, who writes to the President to confirm that there was an actual expedition. And right here, the secretary, Missy LeHand, is confirming that this was 1909 and that there might have been more than one expedition—at least two.”

“It is true that the President visited in search for this often-sought treasure about 1909. There have been two other expeditions also. But the President understands the treasure has never been found.”

Wow.

Although Franklin Delano Roosevelt did help finance and also took part in the search for treasure on Oak Island in 1909, his family’s involvement with the mystery goes back much further.

In 1849, Warren Delano, FDR’s grandfather, had been an adventurous entrepreneur whose investments in goods such as tea and the opium trade with China made his family among the wealthiest in the world.

That year, his interest turned to treasure hunting, and Delano became one of several investors in the Truro Company—the same organization that not only discovered the box drains at Smith’s Cove in 1850 but also small bits of gold chain while drilling in the Money Pit.

“This right here—this is a biographer named Joseph P. Lash. He wrote two books on FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt. One of the interviews is with Duncan Harris, the one that we found the local material on. He went to Harvard, as well as FDR. There is a distinct possibility that he’s actually in the famous photograph.”

“Now of course, here is FDR. I’m not sure who Duncan Harris is, but apparently he’s in this photograph, either on top or on bottom. But I think he’d be in the front row considering how close of a friend he was.”

“And in this statement, he actually says, ‘It all started off for us on the treasure hunting business. Franklin was always interested in that. He thought they were the lost jewels of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.’”

So these are the lost crown jewels of France—Marie Antoinette, the crown jewels of France.

Of all the various theories, perhaps none is as audacious or compelling as the one suggesting that precious jewels could be buried on Oak Island—or the claim that there isn’t only one treasure hidden there, but several—and that one of the guardians of that information might well have been one of America’s most popular and powerful presidents.