​​Armchair Genealogist

   Thare was one Enoch Chesley had a house in the corner of my orchard field 25 or so rods from my house. He came in to my house one Sunday morning, asked me if I warn't a going to meeting that day. He said thare was a going to be a new preacher preach in the meeting house that day. "Come by, go and hear what he has to say."

   "Well Enoch, I don't feel mutch like walking so far today. If I go I will ride old Chancy as he is handy by. I will get him and put the sadle on and we will both ride. He can carry us both that distance."

   We got the horse and we both got on and rode to the meeting house. It was only about a mile. We went into the house, the people had not but a fiew of them gathered but was a gathering very fast. I sat down on one side of the house with my back aginst the wall of the house and folded up my arms and was waiting for them to open their meeting. The house got pritty mutch filled with people but thare was no preacher came.

  

 

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   After I got home, Enoch came in. "Well you make me think of the bear and the two friends that we read of in the spelling book. When the old bear come upon them, one sprang up into the tree and the other trowed himself flat on the ground and pretended to be dead. The old bear came and smelt of the man that lay in the ground and thought he was dead and wint off and left him. After the old bear had left, the man on the tree came down and said to the one that lay on the ground, "Well the bear seemed to whisper you closely." "She did and gave me this, a good piece of advise. Never to put confidence in a friend that would forsake me in the hour of danger."

   "Enoch, why did you go off and leave me thare asleep. Why dident you come and wake me."

   "Sleep? Can  man sleep with his eyes open?"

   "My eyes warnt open."

   "Yes they was. You sat thare all day with your eyes wide open looking acrost the house. You dident stir hand nor foot all he time."

   "Enoch, do you suppose that a man could sit all day in sutch a company of people and be a wake and not stir hand nor foot?"

   "Well I shouldn't think they could but I know you did and dident even wink your eyes for I sat whire I could lok you right in the face and I looked at you steady a good deal of the time, for I wondered at your setting so still and not stirring or paying any attention to what was said or done in the house. Thare was a good many people was a looking at you as well as me, for you looked uncommon white in the face and your face seemed to all most glisten. I think they nearly all noticed you for your eyes was rather looking up for was looking out at one of the upper windows."

   "I am shure I would not ________ or move _____ more than a dead man would. If I was looking when the ____ I had to _____. Enoch, do you think I breathed while I sat there?"

   "I don't know whether you breathed or not."

   "I don't think that I breathed at all, for my spirit had left the body and the body had to remain just as the spirit left it."

   "I suppose you must have breathed or you could not have lived five or six hours."

   He dident know that a man could be in a trance and live while his spirit was gone from the body but I ______had been well aquainted with Enoch for we had been to school together, both raised in the same neighborhood. I knew he would tell the truth as nigh as it could be told by anyone, but he dident know nor hadent hard any thing about my ever having a vision.

 

 

Source:

   1820 United States Census