Family Bible

 

DID YOU INHERIT A FAMILY BIBLE?

Surprises!

My parents had an interesting way of getting rid of “things” as they aged. I lived with my family in the Puget Sound area. My parents lived in eastern Washington, so when they came to visit us, it was usually several days, or at least overnight. The first thing I remember “finding” was an unfinished piece of needlepoint that I remembered hanging around my parents’ home for years. I recognized the box as soon as I saw it under the bed in the guest room. The next time I talked with my Mother, I asked her about it, but a funny thing, she knew nothing about what I was talking about. I learned to do needlepoint and finished the piece. My husband refinished an old dressing table bench, which had also come from my parents’  home, and we mounted the needlepoint.

 

The bench now resides in my son’s home. I did not leave it as a “surprise” for him to find.

The next “surprise” I found in my basement after another visit was an aluminum extension ladder. That was a useful item for the inhabitants of a house with six levels. All we had had up until that time was a step ladder.

When I was going through my basement storage room, preparing to downsize and sell my home, I encountered a heavy square package wrapped in brown paper and tied with a string. (Does anyone use string anymore?) To my great surprise, the package contained a family Bible published in 1884.

 

  

I believe originally, it may have been a wedding gift to my maternal great-grandparents, Elsie Florence Parker and Samuel Ellis Hahn, because the first entry, in elegant calligraphy, is their marriage in 1884, and the final entry is my birth, in my grandmother’s hand. My great-grandparents must have brought the Bible with them when they migrated from Iowa to Spokane in about 1906.

What is going to become of this big, heavy Bible? Currently, there are over 2200 Family Bibles with genealogies for sale on eBay.  You can search by family name. Fortunately, I did not find any with my family names among them. However, a few years ago, a creative antique dealer researched my family tree on Ancestry.com and contacted me, attempting to sell me a Family Bible from a collateral branch of my maternal family.

How can a Family Bible help you with your family history research?

Family Bibles were very popular in the 1700s and 1800s, before it was required to report life events such as births, marriages, and deaths to the government. Although Catholics and some Protestant denominations had Parish Records, many Protestant denominations did not, so a Family Bible record may be the only recording of that date. Many times, those events were recorded by a person who had personal knowledge of the event. 

The first U.S. Census was conducted in 1790. Records of that census are not complete, and before 1850, the U.S. Census recorded only the name of the Head of Household.  A Family Bible may give you the names of children or a wife.

If a child was born during the ten years between the censuses, the Family Bible record may be the only record of that child’s name.

The majority of the 1890 census has been lost, so a child could have been born, married, and died during those 20 years, leaving no other record of their life.

How to find a Family Bible

Start with your family. The eldest child did not necessarily inherit the Family Bible. When everyone had taken what they wanted, if it was among the “left-overs,” someone may have taken it just to keep it in the family.

Visit the major genealogy databases: Ancestry.com, MyHeritage, Find My Past, or FamilySearch.org. Just use the search term “Bibles”.

The Daughters of the American Revolution has over 40,000 Bibles in their collection. Although you cannot view images of Bible pages, the Genealogical Record System allows you to see names, dates, and sources that you may be able to access. 

The National Genealogical Society has a collection which contains data from more than 2,000 family Bibles contributed by NGS members. Every name index is searchable by NGS members. PDF scans for most of the Bibles are available for viewing. https://www.ngsgenealogy.org/ngs-family-papers-collection-faq/

Contact Genealogical or Historical Societies near where your ancestors lived.

eBay or other online auction sites.

Local or State libraries may have collections of Bibles.

Search Internet Archive, Digital Public Library of America, or Archive Grid.

Preservation

I long ago discarded the deteriorating brown paper that wrapped the Hahn Family Bible when I found it in my (fortunately dry) basement. I purchased an archival-quality box that fits the bible almost perfectly. I hope that it will be treasured and cared for by descendants of Samuel and Elsie Hahn for many more generations.

Barbara Boye Mattoon    

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

 

Send your story to m.strickland@skcgs.org

                                                                    

Comment

 

Subscribe