Journaling the Family Bible

The Family Bible

journaling the information

I am indeed proud to own my grandfather's Family Bible. It's presence in my life marks the first day I became a genealogist at the age of eight. I knew it would be mine someday and the information that it contains has been the firmest tool in my genealogy toolkit. 

I broke the binding photocopying the pages so I could scan them. But, since I am the only person to directly inherit it from my grand father and his daughter, my mother, it is OK.

I have several samples of my 2nd great grandmother's handwriting (and recently was given her childhood essays) and since 1859 is when her oldest child, my great grandfather was born, I think it might have been a gift and she copied all the oldest records she could find. Please read this terrific blog post to learn more about Family Bibles.

What I have NOT done with this is to record the dates of birth, marriage and death in a journal. I have photocopied them, scanned them, archived them and put them in my family tree. 

So, I am going to sit and transcribe them by hand and examine them one by one make sure the information is correct in my database and find out if I have vital records to match. I know there is one vital record that can't be found because it may have been a home birth and not recorded. I keep looking....