FOUND: Big Fat Duct-Taped Family Bible

July 31, 2023
By Vicki Entreken

I found a big fat family Bible at an antique shop in Waynesville, NC. The Bible, its binding held together with duct tape, dates back a hundred years and has four documents in it: marriage certificate, list of births, list of marriages, and a list of deaths.

If you know me, you know that I prefer preserving familial and cultural history over making money off an old book. As a bibliophile, I adore the sheer existence of this heirloom and I feel privileged to hold it in my hands for a moment. Now, I want to get it back to the family it belongs to.

The seller wants $35 and I’m hesitant to pay because it would most likely sit in my studio until I can get around to it. I already have an orphan heirloom project: a WWI soldier’s notebook that I’m trying to get back to his family.

I digitized it and had help from Steven Thomas Howell and David Entreken to transcribe it. That notebook remains a challenge. I’ve researched names, dates and battalions, and I still don’t know who wrote it.

This Bible has a much better chance of being returned, but I’d rather it not sit around waiting to be worked on. I don’t want to be an orphan heirloom hoarder, so I left it at Depot Village in the Frog Level section of town.

I’m a researcher. I found my mother’s sister (the one she kept secret from us.) I found descendants of the people buried in Tampa’s erased Zion Cemetery when I volunteered my genealogy research skills to help. Now, with all the names listed on those marriage, birth and death lists in that Bible, I can do it again.

I went back to Depot Village, an awesome antique store in the Frog Level area of Waynesville.

Walking to the back, I worried the book may have been bought. I was lucky. It was still there.

The hard cover is decorated with Moses and tiny angels and the saying, “The Same Yesterday Today and Forever” engraved over what looks like the Ark of the Covenant with rays of light emanating from it.

The pages are brown and brittle. This Bible may appear as a book to some, but for one family, it may be priceless. I imagine the matriarch in a rocking chair reading to her children sitting nearby on the floor. I try to imagine the eras this book has lived through: The Great War, the Great Depression, World War II. Was it sitting on a shelf near the radio when Americans were told about Pearl Harbor? Was it near the TV when we landed on the moon?

I snapped pictures of the documents. Some names are repeated on the pages. This research shouldn’t be too hard, I think. This time, while carefully handling the Bible, I tidied up the loose pages to reduce the chance of them crumbling even more the next time someone picks it up. I set it back on the shelf and sighed. This heirloom doesn’t belong on a low shelf in a humid antique shop with no air conditioning. It should be preserved safely in an archival book preservation kit or on display in a glass cabinet in the original family’s home. I need to rescue it.

To start my research, I chose a name from the documents: Rachel Lucrecie Sherrill. Her name is beautiful and unique. Plus, she shows up on the list of deaths, the list of marriages, and the marriage certificate. Genealogists know, the more event dates the better.

After a good hour of building a research tree, an easy one as the Rogers family stayed married and lived in the same area the entire time, I was able to find Rachel’s granddaughter. I spoke to her today and while she didn’t seem familiar with the Bible, she wanted to see it. We arranged for me to bring it on Friday. I’m excited. Now I have to go back to Depot Village and try to talk him down from $35.00!

We’ll see what happens.

Check out the next episode: Big Fat Duct-Taped Bible: Now an Adventure

Thank you for reading. 
I appreciate you.
~ Vicki