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A Family Bible Comes With A Sacred Trust

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By SHARON TATE MOODY

Tribune correspondent

Published: March 29, 2009

It was a cold, snow-driven night on the plains. Only two sounds filled the cabin - the crackling from the fireplace and the whimpers of a newborn baby. The new father sat at the kitchen table and, by the light of a single oil lamp, entered into his Bible the date and the birth of the newest family member.

There was no doctor within 100 miles, so a neighbor woman with midwife experience (if the new mother was lucky) probably helped with the delivery. No one would drive to town to officially register the child's birth. No records were kept at the one-room log church where the plainsmen and their families gathered most Sundays.

Only in that family Bible was the arrival of this and later children recorded for history, along with the date of their parents' marriage, and later, the deaths of each family member.

Most states did not require birth, death and marriage registrations until the 20th century. This has forced family historians to get creative in their search for proof of ancestors' life events. That's why the family Bible is so valuable.

If you find a book purported to be "the family Bible," don't accept it at face value. All genealogical sources must be closely scrutinized, and the Bible is no different. The best records are those created contemporaneous to an event. The more time that passes between the event and the time when the information is written, the more likely memory errors occur.

Look at the title and publication pages in the front of your family Bible. If it was published 50 years after some of the family events recorded within, you know they weren't written in a timely fashion.

I had a client who proudly produced for me the family data pages from six separate Bibles for different branches of his family. The pages were beautifully embossed and contained several generations of each family. When he informed me that he had taken these pages and thrown the Bibles away, I could not hide my exasperation.

He had thrown away my ability to assess the accuracy of the information he gave me. So if you find your family's Bible, keep it all!

Some families didn't have a Bible because no one in the household could read and write. Except in upper-crust homes, the Bible might have been the only book a family possessed. For genealogists, no publication or record is more cherished. Yet the vast majority of us work through our family histories without ever locating those books.

I'm the proud trustee of my grandfather John Tate's Bible. His last surviving child, my aunt, passed it to me about 10 years ago as she shared her memories of how her father had read out loud from it every night after dinner.

Of course, only one person at a time gets to be guardian of this family treasure. And in some generations that person wasn't very reliable. As families became more mobile and grew apart, many Bibles were lost or destroyed. Some were tossed into old trunks and eventually stored in a dusty attic.

Whatever the story of your family Bible, if it isn't in your hands, one of your fondest dreams should be to find it. There are a number of ways you might go about looking.

First, locate aunts, uncles and cousins (no matter how distant) to see if any of them have the Bible or know where it is. The next place to work is online. Go to www.rootsweb.ancestry .com and check archives for your surname or the geographic areas in which your ancestor lived. See whether researchers have posted queries about family Bibles.

Through this method about 12 years ago I met a cousin who told me about another cousin who had the Bible of our common ancestor, Asa James. Oddly, the man with the Bible lived about 30 miles from me but without the wonders of mailing lists, I doubt I would have ever found him.

None of my wiles or charms could wedge the Bible from him, but he did let me hold the treasured book, and he copied the Family Data pages for me.

As genealogy has grown in popularity, Web sites for sharing family Bible information have grown. Some come online and then disappear. Others proliferate and continue to grow. If you find relevant sites, check back frequently for postings about new discoveries.

A couple of links to get you started include Bible Records Online, at www.biblerecords .com/surnames.html and Genealinks, at www.ancestorhunt.com/family_bible_ records.htm.

Some family Bibles have been donated to state archives and you may be able to access these online. At the least you'll get a description of what they have. For example, the Library of Virginia has original and photocopies of more than 6,800 family Bibles. If you have Virginia ancestors, it's worth a look at lva1.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/F.

Also check with local libraries and genealogical societies, and college or university libraries with special collections.

The Church of Latter Day Saints is always worth a visit at www.familysearch.org. Click on the "Library" tab, then click on "Search Records" and from the dropdown menu select "Catalog." At the next screen, select "Keyword search" and type "Bibles." You will find a wealth of wide-ranging collections that have been microfilmed.

Many of us would spend our last dime to buy the family Bible - the possibility isn't too far-fetched because you can find family Bibles for sale online. Go to www.ebay.com to see what's offered for auction. When I entered "family bible" I got more than 134 hits.

If you are blessed to have inherited or bought the family Bible, you should view yourself as its trustee or guardian. Don't wrap it in plastic and store it in the attic. It should be stored in an archival box and kept in a humidity-controlled environment.

To find an archival box (one that is made of acid-free materials), Google "archival products." Before you store it away, copy or photograph the family data pages so you won't have to handle the original. Every time you touch and copy those pages you risk damaging them.

You're the keeper - honor the trust.

Sharon Tate Moody is past president of the Association of Professional Genealogists. Send your genealogy questions and event announcements to her in care of Getaway, The Tampa Tribune, 200 S. Parker St., Tampa FL 33606 or stmoody0720@ mac.com. She regrets

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