In recent years Henry Jones has become known for his work with " Psychic Roots ". In the course of years of investigation, one is bound to have some strokes of luck in research. The odds may be small but events do come together in such a way that one left is left wondering whether they were preordained.
Henry Jones cites some personal events that left him wondering whether we really do understand all there is to know in this universe. When he started his research to find the German homes of the 847 immigrating families to New York in 1710, his German assistant persisted in asking him for the name of the family with whom she should begin. To Mr. Jones, it didn't seem to matter where they started. But the insistent pleas of Carla Mittelstaedt-Kubaseck forced him to name one of the families, a Schneider, I believe, to start on. When all was said and done and the man was found, it was the only one of the 847 families that Mr. Jones was related to. At the time, he didn't know it.
Closer to us, Jack Alcott in Fauquier and I were seeking the father of Uriah Rector (more exactly, Jack was doing the work). This was a search which had been going on for several decades by various people. He wrote, "Since it was snowing this morning, I went over to the courthouse instead of working outdoors. I paid particular attention to the 'loose' papers in the Fauquier Co. Courthouse which have been catalogued and indexed. I was especially drawn to the name Rector without any unusual finds. When I finished, I called my wife to say I was on the way home for lunch, but there was no answer. So I said that I would take a few minutes to look at the Chancery indexes. I turned to the index of PLAINTIFFS and my eye caught the name Uriah Rector as DEFENDANT. This was no accident; it was only one page out of perhaps two hundred. The luck was that the case did identify Uriah's father."
Henry Jones was so impressed by his own experiences that he started asking others if something similar had happened to them. The response was, "I've never told anybody about this before but . . . ." The net result was that a book " Psychic Roots ," emerged about these collective experiences. The reaction was overwhelming favorable and more experiences piled in to him, with the result that another book was issued called, " More Psychic Roots ". From the way Henry Jones describes it, there is apt to be more such books because any genealogist who has worked any time seems to have his story of serendipity to tell.
One of the favorite tales seems to be "finding the tombstone". The stories vary, sometimes the cemetery is very large, sometimes it is the "wrong" cemetery. The researcher enters the cemetery and is completely lost but he walks without hesitation to the tombstone of his ancestor.
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.