I stood thus not more than two or three seconds when a gentleman, who had been writing at a standing desk near the center of the room, looked at me and then stepped quickly towards me. At the same time I moved towards him. When he was near enough to me to speak to me he asked me, in a pleasant but abrupt manner: "What family are you tracing?" His question surprised me, and I wondered how he knew I was tracing any family. Most persons searching the records in that room did so for data affecting land titles, and at that moment several lawyers and lawyers' clerks were so engaged. I promptly answered his question by saying simply: "The Chamberlain family." "Well, here is a branch of it," and with these words he handed me half a sheet of legal cap paper on which was written, in ink that was still quite wet, a pedigree giving several generations of a branch of the Chamberlain family, and showing a migration of part of this branch from New Jersey to Pennsylvania, thus establishing an important connection.
As I received the sheet of paper from his hand, the gentleman quickly turned and walked away from me without saying another word, or giving me time to do so, and left the building. I was greatly astonished at the incident. I do not believe I had been in the building more than one minute by the watch when the sheet of paper was placed in my hand. I had not spoken to a soul in the building except the clerk in the front office, and he could not have spoken to any one without my hearing him; and so far as I had reason to believe, not a soul in the building ever saw me, or heard of me, or knew my business. Some years had elapsed since I had been in the town.
The gentleman who gave me the pedigree was about 40 years old, of medium height, light complexion, had a full, round, smoothly-shaven face, and wore a pleasant expression of countenance. After he had left the room I asked a gentleman who he was. The gentleman believed he was a lawyer, but did not give me his name. I never saw him nor heard of him again. While I was on the train en route to the town he was working on that pedigree, and he completed it at the same moment at which I entered the land record room. But why he spoke to me as he did, and why he gave me the pedigree, are questions that cannot, in my opinion be answered without reference to agencies or influences that operate from behind the veil.
I knew that in colonial days a law required marriage licenses to be issued and a record kept of all marriages in the jurisdiction of which Freehold was the seat, and that the books containing these records ought to be in the court house. But diligent inquiry of clerks and officials failed to bring these books to light. I had spent several days searching land and probate records, and was very anxious to examine these marriage records, because I knew they would yield a large amount of valuable data concerning the family I was tracing; but in deep disappointment I gave up all hope of finding them. Preparatory to leaving the court house for good, I went into a small room in the center of the lower floor of the building, which had no outside window and was very dimly lighted, for the purpose of washing my hands, as there was a wash bowl and towel there.
While thus engaged I cast my eyes around the room. On a shelf near the floor I saw three ancient looking volumes, and in the dim light read on the back of one of them the title: "Marriage Record." With the eagerness of a hawk pouncing on a chicken I pounced on those three books. On removing the thick and ancient dust that covered them, I discovered that they all bore the same title. I took them into a better lighted room and examined them, and to by great joy found that they contained records of marriages covering a long period of time. They were the books for which I had been making earnest inquiry among the clerks and officials of the court house, none of whom had ever seen or heard of them. I, a stranger had discovered them in an out-of-the-way place where they had been stored years and years before.
I found in them the rich material I wanted, between 200 and 300 Chamberlain marriages. But I should have left Freehold without this precious data had not my glance, in the little dimly-lighted room, been directed just as it was.
Genealogical work was never profitable to me financially, but I always took great delight in it, and often had experiences which convinced me that a marvelous providence attended me while so engaged.
[Warned by The Spirit]
[CHAPTER I.]
CHAUNCEY W. WEST SENT ON A MISSION TO ASIA—DREAMS OF THE WRECK OF A VESSEL UPON WHICH HE HAD ENGAGED PASSAGE—LEFT THE SHIP, AND AFTERWARDS LEARNED FROM THE CREW OF THE VESSEL BEING WRECKED JUST AS HE HAD DREAMED THAT IT WOULD BE—WHILE AWAITING ANOTHER OPPORTUNITY TO SHIP TO CALIFORNIA WAS PROMPTED TO VACATE A HOUSE WHERE HE AND COMPANION ELDER WERE STAYING—HOUSE IMMEDIATELY AFTERWARDS CRUSHED BY LARGE STONE ROLLING DOWN FROM SIDE OF MOUNTAIN.