If I remember right, under the Maryland laws, if a child died before maturity, there was no inheritance. Mr. Sterling claimed that the young man was not of age when he died, and that he died in 1835; but he had no evidence to prove it. He had only a death notice clipped from some paper with no date on it. But he had an anonymous letter signed: "Veritas," postmarked at Carlisle, Illinois, in which the writer, for a consideration, offered to put Sterling in possession of evidence that would defeat the claim; this letter was a few months old. Mr. Sterling could not comply. He could pay for no evidence without compromising his clients. With these facts only and equipped with the following letter of introduction, I started West:
Headquarters,
Middle Military Department,
Office Provost Marshal General,
Baltimore, Dec. 27, 1865.
Capt. Silas F. Miller,
Burnet House,
Cincinnati, Ohio.
My Dear Sir.—I shall be greatly obliged if you will make Lieut. Smith, the bearer, acquainted with one or more of the conductors of the O. & M. R. R. Co.
Lieut. Smith is one of my officers, and comes west on business which takes him on the line of that road.
This is not for the purpose of securing a pass, but in order to get information. I have the honor to be,
Very Respectfully,
Your obedient servant,
John Woolley,
Bvt. Brigadier General U. S. Vols.
Provost Marshal General M. M. D.
The field was entirely new to me. All the way to Cincinnati and the rest of the way to Carlisle, Illinois, I put in much of my time in speculating as to the best course to adopt on landing in a small town, among a lot of villagers, who were banded together in this scheme. My name was to be Comings, and I came from New York; that was all settled in my mind; but what was my business there? I expected to be there a few days, and there was the rub; finally, after failing to fix up a story I concluded to "keep mum," entirely. Later you will see the fix which that conclusion came near leading me into.
I arrived there at night. I asked the landlord not to put me high up in the hotel, and he didn't; I learned the next morning that the hotel was only two stories high. I lounged about the tavern and the village two or three days, making myself aware of the surroundings. I tramped out to the fork of the Kaskaskia river, where the affidavits alleged the boy was buried in 1836. The river was a muddy little brook. No grave was to be found, but some little distance away was a burying ground. I went there searching for the grave. I found it not, but lying up against a fence was a headstone having the boy's name on it, and the date of his death.
In walking about the village I had many times passed the residence of the woman who had framed up the claim; she had noticed me. I wrote one of my old officers in Baltimore to wire me, in language about like this: