Orphaned Ancient Family Bible: No Response. What next?

September 11, 2023
By Vicki Entreken

If you’re following the story of the century-old Bible found in Waynesville, NC that I’m trying to return to its family, I have bad news. The granddaughter of Jim Rogers and Rachel Lucrecie Sherrill did not respond to my letter. It’s possible she’s unable to read it or write back and I understand that. It’s possible her husband (or whoever answered the phone when I previously called) still believes it’s a scam, and that’s okay too. This is the era we live in. It’s smart to stay on top of the current scams.

AARP Fraud Resource Center – Please take a look. Stay safe, stay smart.

No longer can we pick up the phone and chat friendly-like with strangers without hesitance or paranoia. I’m the same way. Just ask my husband, David. He’ll tell you about how I won’t decline an incoming call because everyone is a fraudster and I don’t want them to know my number is active, or how I never speak passwords out loud because the google is listening. (It’s true, I’m sure! Just talk about hemorrhoids near your cell phone and see what shows up on your Facebook feed!) I get it.

So, what next? I could ship it to them and risk it getting lost in the mail, or thrown around and damaged. I could drop it at their doorstep, but then I’d worry it would rain and drench the already ancient brittle pages, or get stolen by porch pirates, or a groundhog. It happens: Groundhog steals package from porch. We have groundhogs here in Western North Carolina. The thievery is possible! That would break my heart. I prefer to give the Bible to this family in person.

Now what?

It’s time to contact the next generation, and the next generation is on Facebook. Here’s where it gets a little tricky, because you can’t just send a message to a strange person and expect they’re going to actually see it. If you’re not already “friends,” it will get buried in Facebook Messenger’s “Message Requests.” Who checks those anyway? For years, I didn’t even know they were there. Now that I do, all I ever receive are message requests from creepy men (or bots) telling me I’m a beautiful creature and how did they ever live without me, blah blah blah. Gross. No, I’m not going that route.

Instead, I’ll do what I did to contact Mary Jones on Facebook (who ended up being my second cousin.) I posted a public message to her on my own Facebook page, sent her a friend request, and then crossed my fingers in hopes that she’d see my friend request and look at my profile page (like I do, because I’m paranoid) before accepting or declining the request. Then wait. This is a research trick, so take notes, y’all.

Mary was active on Facebook at the time. I didn’t wait for long. Once she friended me, I could then see the hundreds of photographs of her ancestors. At the time, I was trying to confirm if her Geneva Barnett was my grandmother. Then I found a picture she had of my own mother and I happy-cried all over my keyboard. But that’s a story for another day. (Thank you Mary for creating such a fabulous archive of ancestor photos and for all your help in my journey!!)

Now, I’m hoping it will be the same with the adult great-granddaughter of Jim and Lucrecie. I’m hoping that they’ll find this blog and read about my journey discovering this beautiful relic of a Bible and the attempts I’ve made to return it to her mother. We will see.

Dear Readers, if you’ve been following this story, you too can help:

1. PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT BELOW. Address it to the family if you like.
2. Go to my Facebook post reaching out to the family and hit ‘like’, or
3. Comment on my Facebook post so it will reach more people.

I still have my fingers crossed that this will happen. If it does, I may just happy-cry all over again. 🤞

Check out the next episode: A sad duct-taped Bible gets an upgrade.

Thank you for reading. 
I appreciate you.
~ Vicki