Adam Dumphy
A story within a story, this is a romantic novel in the style of the 1940’s, which means it is brief, simple, plausible and clean. The first protagonist, a Hessian Lt. with Burgoyne’s Army at Saratoga in 1777, and an ancestor of the author, is sent with dispatches to General Cornwallis at Charleston. On a subsequent (fictional) trip his troop is ambushed carrying a British war chest of gold intended to equip Scottish Royalist troops in the Georgia hills. Although wounded he is not captured through the kindness of the then Mistress of the Fair Oaks Plantation who secrets him in a hidey-hole of the mansion.
What subsequently happens to him is unknown until 1909 when his diary is found between the thick walls of the mansion intact and legible. Legible except that the last pages are written in some strange code and cannot be read.
In 1946 Ab Andrus, the only Inheritance Investigator in the South is requested by the State of Georgia to make a formal statement as to the authenticity of the Diary.
Like the Hessian he gets to know too warmly the current Mistress of Fair Oaks and both couples learn a great about themselves and each other in their contacts made in the search. One wins his lady and the other does not.
Recently Adam Dumphy was informed at a Family Reunion in Canada that his branch of the family were not considered truly a part of the clan. Rather they were descendants of a mysterious Johanna Benedict, a maid servant in the house of the Loyalist family before the flight from the New Hampshire Breaks to Canada in the Revolutionary war.
Intrigued, his research brought out that Johanna did exist but no marriage license was ever located for her or other information on her among records of her son, Adam’s ancestor.
It was hardly reasonable that he could resist some idle dreams as to the actual circumstances when no new information could be gained. And from them came this novel, combining what is known of the Family he had previously thought his own, with outright fiction.
“Well my young friend Abonijah, your fame as the only inheritance investigator extant, has spread afield...” The old man paused. “To distant, exotic, and uncultured climes...” He paused again drawing out his announcement. “The Attorney General’s Office of the State of Georgia requests your services.”
The old man stopped, looked over the top of his half glasses to observe the reaction to his words. Apparently satisfied at the astonishment produced he continued.
“Have you ever heard of the Fair Oaks Diary?”
The very tall, large, young man seated opposite him looked down suspiciously at the spindle legged Chippendale chair upon which he was perched and across the room from old man’s the huge mahogany desk. He stirred uncomfortably, crossed one leg over the other cautiously and scratched the back of his neck, as was his custom when considering deeply.
“No sir.” He admitted at last. He was reluctant to make the admission, as it seemed as if it was something he should know about, still he knew how the old man hated equivocation.
“Good, good.” Judge Dandridge dropped the glasses on the spotless, green blotter, a part of a handsome, tooled leather desk set, occupying the exact center of the great desk. Surrounded as it was by stacks of neatly piled manila folders on all other available space, it looked as if mounted.
“I was afraid that all my boning up last night might be wasted. ‘Tisn’t often I get to lecture to someone your age these days. Particularly someone who might listen.”
He again looked closely at the young man opposite him assuming the expression caught so well in the oil painting hanging in the State House Hall of Justice among other distinguished barristers. That was a noticeable oil as most subjects there were fat and pompous, while he looked like a gray, old eagle, lean and hungry, but still with beak and claws and formidable powers
