Orphan heirloom Bible makes its way home.

October 31, 2023
By Vicki Entreken

I started working on orphan heirloom projects when I found an old Webster pocket-sized notebook on the bottom shelf of a bookcase in a Winter Haven, Florida antique store. The cover had a patent date of 1909. I don’t remember sitting my butt down on the floor, only that I needed to read what was in it. I saw pages dated 1918, military terminology, and details of a tour overseas. I was holding a record that was over a hundred years old, written by a U.S. soldier of the Great War. How was this notebook not in the hands of his descendants?

I asked the gentleman behind the counter how much he wanted for it and he said $5. My daughter said, “Get it Mom,” and I did. It wasn’t until after I digitized it that I found the soldier never wrote his name on it or in it. I researched names and battalions that he mentioned in hopes of finding the writer, but so far, no luck. I had help from Steven Thomas Howell and my husband David to transcribe the notebook and I put it online in hopes that someone might be able to help. This orphan heirloom project has been at a standstill for quite a while now.

I wanted nothing more than to see the face or read a letter from this soldier’s great grandson or great granddaughter appreciating the return of a piece of him to their lives. I have more research I can do before going full-on asking for help, so I haven’t given up yet.

Read more about the Soldier’s Notebook here.

Then, while on a writing retreat this past summer, I found another orphan heirloom in an antique shop in Waynesville, NC. This one, a Bible with records of births, marriages, deaths, a marriage certificate dating back to 1887, and the binding held together with duct tape, was precious. The last time I’d seen pages that brown and brittle was when I was transcribing the scripts of playwright Dion Boucicault, handwritten by him most likely with a quill pen and ink pot. The drops and smudges from his tired hand, writing copy after copy for each part in his play, gave these works character. Now, this Bible with its scribbles inside the cover, its genealogical documents and personal bookmarks, and its duct tape holding it together like a crutch, this Bible has character. I couldn’t leave it there, broken and abandoned on that shelf, so I took it in and fostered it. By researching its history, the adventure began.

Read about my adventure trying to locate the Bible’s family:

If you’ve been following the story, you know the last post left you hanging, knowing we’d made contact, and having a plan to meet Sandy and her daughter Chelsea for lunch the next day.

David and I met them at Stone Ridge Tavern, one of my favorite restaurants in the greater Asheville area. And just so you know, their homemade southwestern chicken soup is fabulous. True comfort food.

We talked about how Sandy and Chelsea grew up in the Asheville area, and David and I in Florida. I pulled the Bible out of the box and showed them the inside cover where someone, we’re guessing Sandy’s grandmother Della, was practicing her cursive as a little girl. I opened the pages to where various documents were placed, a hunting license for Jim Rogers from 1938, a Sears order confirmation with Lucrecie’s name written on the back, part of an envelope addressed by a young Miss Della Rogers of Topton, NC, near Robbinsville, and a meticulously cut out stork carrying a baby. They’d seen the images already online, but there’s something to holding an item your late great-grandmother once held.

When Sandy saw young Miss Della’s handwriting, she looked at Chelsea and smiled. Her grandmother was a sweet woman who lived a hard childhood. A teen during the Great Depression, and forced to pay debts that were not hers, she went to work at a young age, pulling her away from attending school. In spite of that, Della lived a long and full life to the age of 97, long enough to know and spend time with her great grandchildren. Chelsea knew her well, and Sandy remembered her grandmother with love and respect.

It was difficult to pinpoint how the family Bible ended up in an antique shop. One might guess the youngest of Lucresie and Jim’s children, Della, would have it since Jim, widowed and getting on in age at 75 in 1940, lived with her and her family before passing in ’45. If so, where did it go from there?

Having witnessed my in-laws move from their condo into an independent living apartment, and how the belongings were distributed at the time, it seems easy for a book, overlooked in its value, to be tossed in a box and carted away, especially if its binding was duct-taped. In a time when the move needs to happen quickly, many people utilize estate sales for the remaining items their children didn’t need or want. Or perhaps didn’t recognize. Another thought we had was that Sandy’s aunt, having passed more recently in 2019, may have had the Bible after Della. And in her downsizing, the Bible was passed on without notice.

However it happened, I’m glad to have helped bring the Bible back to its rightful family. I was beginning to take a liking to fostering this heirloom with its once gold-trimmed cover and beautiful full-page depictions of the Bible stories inside. In a later edition of this same Bible, the printers started condensing the size of these pictures to fit 2-4 per page. That’s unfortunate. The details are stunning.

David and I returned to Waynesville the next day for the apple festival and brought the Bible back to Depot Village in hopes of catching Phillip Page who sold it to me and wrapped it in a lacy curtain he found in the back to protect it. Would he be there, sitting behind the counter playing his guitar? He was not. But I did take reenactment photographs depicting exactly how I saw the Bible on the shelf when I found it for an article I’m working on.

Then David and I walked to Panacea Coffeehouse with the boxed Bible in arms for more photographs and a cup of coffee of course.

On Sunday, Sandy met me in Mills River where I handed over her family’s heirloom, no longer an orphan. She thanked me for doing the research and finding her, we hugged in the parking lot, and then she made the first donation to SecretBoxes.org.

In the past, I’ve volunteered on the Burger Brothers Photograph Project, for the Zion Cemetery descendent research, and working on family collections as an intern (and then stayed on as volunteer) in the collections department of the Tampa Bay History Center. These volunteer experiences are taking me somewhere. Only a week before meeting Sandy, I procured the SecretBoxes.org domain so that whatever this is can grow beyond a blog.

Rescuing this antiquarian Bible, researching its history, and feeling blessed to have found the Parker family – all activities that I’m passionate in doing – has allowed me to successfully finish an orphan heirloom project. Fostering the Bible has changed me. It feels good.

If you’re interested in knowing more about the research process or need help with your own orphan heirloom project, please leave a comment or email me at the address below. I’d be more than happy to help. 💜

Thank you for reading. 
I appreciate you.
~ Vicki