DREAM: FRAME
On the night of September 22, 1870, a farmer known as Samuel Frame went to bed and during that Fall night experienced a dream which he later said was "sharp", by which we can conclude he meant it was seen in clear detail as to what action should be taken at once.
In the dream Frame told his family that and angel had appeared before him.. In the background, he said, there was a constant flow of rushing waters. The angel instructed Samuel Frame as to actions which must be taken promptly.""Take your wheat from the mill!”
Samuel frame took the dream very seriously. He was a religious man, an saw it as his duty to share his he heaven-sent warning he had received with his neighbors. He had to warn them of an impending flood. Such a thing could ruin all of them, because they, like Frame, had their wheat crop in storage a Palmer's Mill, on Middle River. They all stored grains at Palmer's Mill where it would be ground into flour later as needed. Apparently it was the policy of the mill to store farmer's grain, possibly for a small fee and payment for the stored grain was made when it was ground into a salable product.
It is not recorded that any neighbor actually laughed at Samuel Fame's prediction of a flood, but they told him he could take his grain out if he wished but that they would rather not undertake all that unnecessary labor.. It was a large task, too, but Sam Frame got it done that very day.. He redeemed all of his wheat crop and stored it on his own farm near what is now called Spring Hill in Augusta County away from the quiet waters of Middle River.
The next day torrential rains changed that stream into a raging torrent! No doubt there must have been some heavy rainfall up river and when, combined with what fell that day, turned a Middle River to a force that tore away portions of Palmer's Mill and sent them tumbling downstream toward Shenandoah River waters. All; stocks of wheat were lost. Only that of Samuel Frame was saved, stored elsewhere on the urging of an angel appearing in a dream.
A granddaughter of Samuel Frame, Elizabeth Carson, who had heard the story of the angel's warning many times when she was a girl., had marker placed on the Frame farm. Present-day residents of the area seem to think the maker remembering Samuel Frame's dream is not on the site it was intended to be placed – in front of the old Frame house .They say the real site was half a mile down the road nearer to the statement called Spring Hill.
` The story is still being told by Frame family descendants still in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia section; some in the McLean area of northern Virginia, and by others in Richmond, who recall an actual case in their their own family history wherein a man was ”warned by an angel to go another way”. He obeyed and not only witnessed , but became part of, a miracle.
A.L.M March 25, 2003 [c534wds]
