I have just come into the possession of our family Bible. It is very old and in sort of bad shape, I suppose from not being taken care of properly and due to age. It dates back to the turn of the 20th century. I had not seen this bible in many years because I gave it to my oldest sister for safekeeping when my last great-aunt died back in the early nineties. It had been stored in their family garage until my niece came upon it after my late sister's husband went to the nursing home recently. I know that there has probably been a lot of information lost from it through the years, but I plan to start going through it later today to see if I can find any valuable information there. This just got me wondering how many of my fellow myLotters have a Family Bible, and in whose possession is it?
I saw an interesting piece on the almost lost art of bookbinding a few days ago. When I think of the most attractive bookbindings I have seen in the past they were usually in connection with family Bibles, Classic Literature, etc. During modern times the art of bookbinding has been largely lost due to cheap materials available. The piece that I saw showed a woman who does hand binding as a profession, and some of her works are masterpieces. She pointed out how she created the bindings to focus on the material within each book. The story also told of an apprentice who has been studying the art for some years. I truly love beautifully bound volumes and hope that this art will never go out of style. My question to you is, do you own any beautifully bound books? I have a huge family Bible that is very nicely embellished.
I have been tracing the genealogy on both sides of my family for years, so I thought I would share some of the things I have learned. First of all, talk to all of your relatives. Get as much information as you can from them, such as names of ancestors, dates of birth or death. Ask to see any old family bibles. Next, go to a free genealogy site, like www.rootsweb.com or www.family search.org and start searching. Try the social security death index, world connect (on rootsweb) There is a great page in family search that walks you through getting started on the site. It will all fall into place once you get started, and you will be shocked what you will find.
