Through all the many years I have been researching my families I have often wondered if there was someone or something lookng over my shoulder just waiting for the moment to make me look at something, or pointed out a book to be looked at, these are 2 or 3 of the things that have happened.
I am an inveterate browser of books, stand me in front of a row of books I will work my way thro' them, just glancing to see what they are about. I was researching my family from Leicestershire in the Middle Library at the Society of Genealogists, again just browsing thro' the books on Leics when I saw a thin book, Wills proved at the Archdeaconry of Leics. Picked it up & turned to sit at the long table between the shelves. The book slipped out of my hands, landed on the table, opened flat. There, staring me in the face was the will of my 5 X great grandfather, Samuel Whinyates who died 27th Apr. 1782, not only that but there was an inventory of all his property, farmhouse, animals, land etc. Like someone else I let out such a yelp, usually frowned on in a library but the folk around me all gathered round to read this, having a good laugh at one of the items in one of the bedchambers, " 12 sheets, most of them old ones". Well, we all have some of those.
On another occasion, I was winding a census film on a reader in the FRO, it was badly out of focus so stopped it to adjust it. This was at the start of the film, what I wanted way way off to the end, but when I had focused the page, there was a family I had been looking for years, in a totally different place to where I thought they should be. A similar thing on a census, I had not been able to find a person in the1851census, I was checking an entry for a totally different family, which turned out to be correct, when I saw the last entry on the family living next door, it was my missing person entered as a visitor, nothing at all to do with the family I was researching.
It does make you wonder if there is a guiding hand.
Meliora
