How I Recovered a Stolen Car

Not that it has much to do with my actual family history, but it makes a corker of a family story, and it's all true.  I know because I was there and experienced this stunning bit of serendipity.

It was the fall of 1965; I had graduated from high school in the previous June, and was a freshman at Florida State University.  I went home for my high school's homecoming game, and a friend who was a senior at the high school asked if I would give her a ride to the game.  She then asked if I would also take a friend and classmate of hers.  Of course, I was happy to do both.  More = merrier, right?

As I was getting ready to go, our neighbor across the hall in our two-up-and-two-down apartment building knocked on our back door.  When Mom answered the door, our neighbor, a young single woman, declared frantically that her car had been stolen.  We asked her to describe it; it was, she told us, a dark blue Volkswagen beetle. 

So I went and picked up my friend Martha, and we then headed over to her friend's house, which was only a few blocks from her own house.  When we got there, there was a dark blue Volkswagen beetle sitting in the front yard.  We went into the house, and I asked Martha's friend's parents if the beetle was their car, wondering why it was sitting in the yard instead of the driveway.  No, it wasn't their car.  Then the dime dropped:  "I think I know whose car it is."  Receiving the parents' permission to use their phone (we did not have cell phones in those days), I called Mom and asked her to ask our neighbor for the license number of her car.  I got that, and went out to the VW and checked -- the numbers matched.  After explaining the situation to Martha, her friend, and the friend's parents, I called the county sheriff's office, as the house was located outside the city limits at that time.  I explained the situation and told them where to find both the car and its legal owner.  We all, including the sheriff's deputy I talked to, concluded that some teens had swiped the car and used it for a joyride.  Having run out of gas, they sputtered to a stop in the front yard of Martha's friend's house, and took off on foot.

Then my friend Martha, her friend, and I went to the game and had a great time.  By the time I got home, our neighbor had her car back.

Sometimes the Source Comes to You

I enjoy serendipity when it strikes, and it seems to strike more often for those who are primed for it.  Case in point:

Today I received in the mail my copy of El Escribano, the annual journal of the St. Augustine (Florida) Historical Society.  In it is an article taking a different look at the manumission of Anna Madgigine Jai Kingsley, an African woman who married the white planter Zephaniah Kingsley.  Kingsley was one of the "nuevos pobladores" (new settlers) whose arrival was recorded in a pair of ledger books contained in legajo (bundle) 743 of the Papeles de Cuba at the General Archive of the Indies in Seville, Spain, which I transcribed during my research there in May, 2008. Kingsley is one of the more prominent figures in my study of the family structure of St. Augustine and the possible influence family relationships had on the history of St. Augustine (or that the history may have had on family relationships).  Anna has long been considered by historians to have been Kingsley's slave.

In this case. the author of the article makes the argument that Kingsley never considered Anna a slave, but that the manumission papers which exist were a sham forced upon the couple by the increasingly unpleasant tenor of race relations in Spanish East Florida as the acquisition of the province by the United States loomed.  The author maintains that Kingsley executed the paper in order to protect Anna and their three mulatto children.  It is an effective case.

What has this article given me?  Family information on Kingsley, his wife, and their children, for one thing, with enough data to allow me to search more specifically for records to back up the information in the article, at least to some extent.  References, for another, which I can examine for the information they contain, and to mine their bibliographies and source notes for other sources.

And it all just fell into my lap -- or was placed in my mailbox.  Be open to all things in your research, and grab the serendipitious bit when it comes your way.
.