Heather walked up to the first person they saw in the records storage building and said, "Excuse me. We were just sent over here from the Hall of Records and were wondering if you could help us find something."
"I would be delighted," the man replied in a thick New England accent. "You cannot imagine how happy we are to occasionally leave our jobs of sorting to help someone actually find something." With a smile, he added, "I hope what you are looking for is a lengthy job requiring much of my day."
"Could be, I guess," Heather shrugged. Rarely did one find such cooperation from a city employee. Certainly, she thought to herself, the man wasn't union.
"What we are looking for," Garison told the man, "Are papers concerning my de—ancestors."
"Were they born or married here or anything?" the man asked.
"Oh yes," Garison replied. The man asked for a name to begin with and Garison replied, "Fitch. The first members of the family known to be in the colonies were Sarah and Garison Fitch. Should be circa 1740. That was the year they were married. On New Year's Day, in fact."
"Fitch?" the man asked. "That shouldn't be too hard. Not if they are related to the people Fitch Street and the Fitch building were named after."
"I believe they were," Garison replied.
"Follow me," the man said, motioning them down a corridor. They came to a stairwell and there was a hand lettered sign saying A through E was on the first floor, F through M was on the second, N through S on the third and T through Z on the top floor. The sign looked like it was scribbled by an eight year old, but it was legible. Obviously, whoever had moved the records to this building had not expected the general public to often consult them.
The building smelled like old papers and dust, for that was all it contained. Had it ever caught on fire, it truly would have been consumed in a matter of minutes. As they walked, however, the man told them that there was a team of computer operators who were going to come in the next month and begin scanning and putting everything on computer. In which case, it would no longer matter so much if the building burned. The man laughed and hinted that he might play the arson himself. Heather and Garison were fortunate to only have to talk to one man, otherwise the same hapless joke would have been repeated to them several times.
As Heather fought to stifle the sneezes brought on by the dust, the man brought them to the area which would contain files about the Fitch family. He opened a drawer in a filing cabinet (causing Heather to commence sneezing again, this time more violently) and showed them where to look. He added, "You might also try the newspaper office. They have microfilm copies of the town's newspaper going back as far as the mid-1700s, I believe. Quite an accomplishment for so many newspapers didn’t realize the value of their past issues until at least the mid-1800s. They are missing a few issues here and there, of course, but they have an astounding collection. One of the best in the country, I hear. It's especially interesting to see events we think of as history just being reported as everyday news. Continental Congress and all that. I was a bit of a history buff before," he motioned all around him, "Before this. Now I almost hate history."
"Thank you," they both replied as they pulled out the files marked Fitch (there were several) and took them to a table nearby.
Before leaving, the man pleaded, "Please think of ways I can assist you. Please, please, please." He smiled and went back downstairs, dreading the return to the task of sorting through another unorganized box of paper. Fortunately, the county supplied all the workers in the building with an inexhaustible supply of antihistamine.
There were many records about the Fitch family contained in the files they found and Garison wished he could spend hours studying each one. He vowed he would come back some day and do just that. A quick glance proved the records went all the way up to Heloise Fitch, who apparently married a man from Illinois in 1919 and went west with him. She seemed to have been the last of the Fitch's to live in Mount Vernon, Virginia. Garison wondered what her relationship was to Hiram Fitch, but found nothing in the cursory search that told him.
"Huh," Garison mumbled.
"What?"
He held up a piece of paper and said, "According to this, these files were checked out—I guess you could take them home like a library, back then—by a Maureen Carnes in 1954. That's the name of my aunt or cousin or whatever who wrote that book about my family tree. I wonder why she was looking in this file?"
Heather shrugged and offered, after blowing her nose, "Maybe she was just looking at any family named Fitch and seeing if they were somehow connected."
"Probably," he nodded.
They started at the beginning, the earliest date they could find anyway, looking over one another's shoulder as they began to sift through the dust-covered parchment. Much of the writing was done in a flowing script Heather had trouble with but Garison could read easily. After all, it had only been five days since he had last written something himself in a similar flowing script. Heather also had trouble just reading between the sneezes. A couple surprise sneezes manifested themselves before she could get the tissue up and stained a couple documents, but she doubted anyone would ever notice. She wondered what her sneezes would look like when scanned into the computer the next month.
They found first the marriage license of Garison and Sarah Fitch (apparently, this section had already been pretty thoroughly sorted). The signature was obviously Garison's and Heather marveled that all she was reading was true. She had believed Garison over the last few days, but each new proof still surprised her. It was Garison's turn for surprise when Heather put the marriage license in her purse. At his questioning look, she said, "I want this. We can show it to our children."
"Isn't that stealing?"
"Not really. It's your marriage license."
"But that's the county's copy."
"Do you really think anyone with more claim to it than you is going to come looking for it?" At his somewhat stern look, she rolled her eyes at him, but said, "All right. I do want to see if they can make a copy of it for me, though."
Heather went downstairs, leaving Garison with the files, and found the man who had showed them around. She held out the marriage certificate and asked, "Is there somewhere I could get a copy of this?"
The man looked at it and replied courteously, "Sure. Come with me." She followed him into a little office that apparently also served as the break room and popped the lid on the copier. He quickly ran off a copy, then handed Heather the original.
She looked from it to the copy he was holding and asked, "You mean I can have the original?"
The man smiled and told her, "Why not? I'm guessing those two people are relatives of yours so that marriage certificate will mean a lot more to you than it will to the county. All that matters is that we keep a legible copy that can be scanned and I've got that right here." He added with a laugh, "Besides, it isn't like one of the people on the certificate's going to come asking for it."
Heather faked a laugh and responded, "You've got a point. This won't get you in trouble, will it?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about," the man replied. In a whisper, he added, "Just stick the copy back in the file where the original was, OK?"
Heather nodded and returned to find Garison studying a document intently. Somehow, she knew by the expression on his face that it was Sarah's death certificate. She looked over his shoulder as she sat down and confirmed her suspicion. Along with the death certificate of Sarah Fitch (listed as having died in her sleep) was her will. It was in an old envelope with a string clasp which he carefully undid. Garison gently unfolded the parchment and read it. As he unfolded it, a small envelope fell out into his lap. He looked at it and inside there was a note that read, "I have placed in the safe keeping of the vicar at the Anglican church a letter. It is addressed to Garison Fitch and will be picked up by him in the year two-thousand five or sometime after that. I know this must sound crazy, but please allow an old woman this fancy." It was signed by Sarah Fitch, althoug
h it was not like her handwriting, and witnessed by the same lawyer who had attested to her will. He then realized it was the shaky hand of a very old woman. Her handwriting for the will had not been quite so bad, so it must have been done a year or two before the note.
"What do you think this means?" Heather asked.
"She must have written me a letter," Garison smiled. "Sarah must have suspected that I was aboard the time machine and not dead. She knew I would come back if I could—even if it were too late."
"But she put the tombstone up to make it look as if you had died that day," Heather surmised. "I guess she thought that better than trying to explain what really happened and getting locked away in the loony bin. I told you she knew you had lived."
"Apparently so," Garison nodded. "Let's look through this some more before we go over to the church or to the newspaper."
"Don't you want to go to the church next?"
He shrugged and said, "I do, but I don't. That letter is the last correspondence I'll ever have with Sarah and, well..."
"You want the moment to last?"
"Exactly."
The next document was the birth certificate of Justin Fitch. With it was his marriage license to Olivia McConnelle in 1759. They had six children between 1761 and 1770. Justin Fitch was killed in a skirmish near Concord in 1777 and interred in the Mount Vernon cemetery a month later. Unfortunately, such documents as they had before them gave very little details as to events.
"Six kids in nine years?" Heather asked. "He was a busy little beaver, wasn't he?"
"Hey, that's my son you're talking about."
"Sorry."
The rest of the documents were birth, marriage and death certificates of the Fitch family. Mostly, though, there were documents that seemed to be copies of town ledgers—made sometime in the days of memeographs—that listed Fitch family members and their births and deaths. All tolled, there were more than two hundred people who bore that name from Justin Fitch to Heloise mentioned. And that only counted for those who stayed in Mount Vernon. There were several others who were unaccounted for after their birth or marriage statistics. These, Heather and Garison guessed, had either died or moved to another area. There was no telling how many children they might have had, who had children themselves, and so on. It occurred to Garison for the first time that he probably had descendants—many of them—still living. Could he find them and actually talk to them? After all, statistically speaking there could be several hundred of them walking around. Perhaps thousands.
Henry Fitch's descendants could be traced all the way to the brother and sister duo of Hiram and Heloise in the first part of the twentieth century, Garison eventually discovered. With Hiram's death and Heloise's marriage, the name of Fitch seemed to have come to an end in that line. At least as far as Mount Vernon went. Heloise, too, might have had many offspring who went west or just to another town, but there was no record of such in that file.
The children of Justin Fitch could only be traced as far as Malachi Fitch, listed in a newspaper article that happened to be in the file as having gone west with his family in 1843. The newspaper article mentioned that Malachi's distant cousin, Mayor Harold Fitch, had thrown the departing family quite a going away party. The article had been in with some personal documents of Reyna Fitch's, Malachi's mother. Garison was amazed at how much had been saved and wasn't surprised that the city wanted to find some way to lessen the bulk. He thought he'd ask if he could have everything after it was transferred to computer—or at least a copy of it all. With a little work, he figured, he probably could find some descendants still living.
The only mention of Helen Fitch was that she married an Otto Hemler in 1760. He was the son of a prominent business man in Richmond (according to a newspaper clipping attached to one of the papers), so they assumed that was where she had gone to live. There was no notice of her having children, when she died, or anything. To find that, they reasoned, would take a trip to Richmond.
Garison held up one birth certificate and said, "Hey, Justin had a son named Darius Fitch."
"So?"
"I think I saw someone with that name when I glanced through that book of my aunt's. Funny that there'd be two different people with that same name."
"It's not exactly common, is it?"
"Fitch or Darius?"
"Both. The only other Fitch I had ever met before you was your uncle." Heather suggested, "Let's go look at the newspaper before they close. Maybe there would be articles or obituaries that would tell us a little more about your family. Besides, I've gotta get away from this dust for a while." Garison nodded and they took the files back over to the cabinet from which they had come. After sneezing several times, Heather asked, motioning to the files, "Does this mean all these people are my step-children?"
It was early evening when they left the hall of records and Garison had put in a request for all the papers in the Fitch file but had been told he would have to wait on the ruling of the commissioners before finding out whether he could have the originals. The nice young man who had aided in their search promised to give them photocopies of everything, but didn't know how soon he could get to it. They told him they would come back by and do it themselves if they had the time.
When they got to the newspaper office it was closed already, so they set off to find somewhere to eat and then went back to the motel. They had been given a rather odd look when they asked for a room with separate beds, and, as they left the motel office, the manager made a mental note to keep an eye on their room and make sure they were not sneaking in extra people. They looked rather old to be pulling such a stunt, but he had learned a long time ago not to judge a book—or a motel patron—by its cover. Unbeknownst to Heather and Garison, he was watching them when they reentered their room that evening. The night manager kept an eye on the room and his curiosity grew and grew as no newcomers entered the room. Why had they wanted separate beds?
The woman at the newspaper the next morning could have taken lessons in courtesy from the man at the records building. She seemed very put out about being disturbed by someone who wanted her to do her job. With looks of great exasperation and martyrdom as she set down her jelly donut, she showed the Fitch's to the microfilm and even helped them find the years they were looking for. After showing them how to run the machine, she left them alone to do the work themselves. She mumbled something about "If you need any help..." but she didn't sound as if she meant it. Of course, not being able to hear the last half of that offer, Heather wondered if it might have been a threat.
Garison's first discovery was in an ancient newspaper—barely legible on microfilm that was itself thirty-five years old. In a few short paragraphs, it gave a flowing eulogy to a carpenter named Garison Fitch. It was there he first learned of the fire that had consumed the shed when he read that his ashes were to be buried in the community cemetery that Friday. His widow and three children were listed as survivors. A feeling of odd nostalgia swept over him as he thought back to Clive Harlow, the shop owner who had begun putting out the semi-regular paper not long before Garison left. That paper he had been sitting on his porch and reading just a week before would have long since yellowed, then crumbled into dust. Of course, that thought didn't compare to reading his own obituary. It was an interesting experience and one that Garison found slightly unnerving. It said a wonderful eulogy had been given at the funeral by Finneas Franklyn, and while part of Garison wondered what his friend had said about him, mostly he was glad he would never know.
They stumbled across other references to the Fitch family as they scanned through the years. Darius Fitch, eldest son of Justin Fitch, was said to have set off to explore the west in 1779 but was never heard from again, according to one report. The reporter did say, however, that rumor said Darius had eventually made it to the Spanish held west coast and was still alive. Others contended that he had been killed by savages, while still others said that he was living in some far western mountains and had even sent some letters back t
o General Washington.
"That's weird," Garison said.
"What?"
"That book of my aunt's. I flipped through it a bit last night and it said the Darius Fitch that was my ancestor was a mountain man, too. Just like this guy. Strange coincidence."
"I need to read that book," Heather stated. "Maybe after I finish that Dalton Riley book tonight."
There was an obituary for Sarah in the year 1786. It listed her as having died in her sleep of natural causes. In fact, it mentioned that she had been out on her usual rounds to see her children and friends that very day. The article alluded that Sarah's "rounds" were a common sight in Mount Vernon in her later years. As he read the article, Garison could easily picture Sarah going about from friend to friend, checking up on them and doing whatever she could for them. Heather remarked how sad it was that modern obituaries had been reduced simply to facts—presented as lifelessly as possible.
The next week's paper carried more about Sarah. It ran a lengthy article about the funeral and listed some of the more prominent figures who had attended. Finneas Franklyn, who had to have been in his late seventies by then, was there—as were his bride and children and many grandchildren (whom Garison knew nothing about). The biggest surprise came, though, when he read that one of the pall bearers was none other than George Washington. Upon hearing of Sarah's death, it said, Washington had ridden on horseback for two days from somewhere in Pennsylvania without rest to arrive at her funeral.
“Thanks, George,” Garison whispered.
“Wow,” Heather muttered, reading over his shoulder. “George Washington was really at Sarah’s funeral.”
“Remember, I saved his life.”
The Legend of Garison Fitch (Book 1): First Time Page 31