There *WAS* a Williams family Bible
Feb. 5th, 2012 09:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dee_burrisLast night, I had another one of those moments.
The one where you are looking for one thing, find another, exclaim over it, and then spend the next - in my case - two and one half hours engrossed in something else altogether.
~The genealogy ADD kicked in again.~
In my den, I have this bookcase.
It is deep enough to stack rows of books two deep. I also keep some files in there. One of my shrines is on top of it.
I went into it to clean out some previous years' tax returns.
As I was digging around, and giving things a good dusting at the same time, my half hour project blew up on me.
Because I found a very well-wrapped, astonishingly heavy parcel slumbering in the back recesses of the bookcase.
I took the parcel over to my coffee-table sized footstool and unwrapped it.
It was the Williams family Bible - the one I said DID NOT exist in this post.
Apparently, I wrapped it up in 1998, stowed it in the nether regions of the bookcase, and forgot about it.Maybe I forgot because of the condition of the Bible.
It was coming apart in chunks. The covers had detached themselves from themselves from the chunks of pages decades ago.
I went for the middle - and hit pay dirt.
The Bible was given to Maxie Leah Meek and Jo Desha Williams by Maxie's mother, Mary Emily (Conner) Meek Webb, for Christmas in 1890.
Maxie had immediate entries to write in it. Her marriage to Jo Desha Williams on 11 Feb 1886.
The first death since their marriage - that of their one day old daughter, Mildred Imogene, on 28 Jan 1890...
It was from that page that I found the date, although not the place, of death for Jo's brother, Lucien Eugene Williams, on 27 Dec 1900.
I loved the birth page...it has the undated news clippings of the arrivals of some huge Williams babies.
At his birth, Cedric Hazen Williams weighed a hefty ten pounds.
Paul Meek Williams, born on Christmas Eve 1894, weighed in at ten and a half pounds.
And omigosh...My grandfather, Jo Duffie Williams, weighed twelve pounds.
No wonder Maxie was done after Jo...
LC, you were right.
Cousins, right click and save...
The one where you are looking for one thing, find another, exclaim over it, and then spend the next - in my case - two and one half hours engrossed in something else altogether.
~The genealogy ADD kicked in again.~
In my den, I have this bookcase.
It is deep enough to stack rows of books two deep. I also keep some files in there. One of my shrines is on top of it.
I went into it to clean out some previous years' tax returns.
As I was digging around, and giving things a good dusting at the same time, my half hour project blew up on me.
Because I found a very well-wrapped, astonishingly heavy parcel slumbering in the back recesses of the bookcase.
I took the parcel over to my coffee-table sized footstool and unwrapped it.
It was the Williams family Bible - the one I said DID NOT exist in this post.
Apparently, I wrapped it up in 1998, stowed it in the nether regions of the bookcase, and forgot about it.Maybe I forgot because of the condition of the Bible.
It was coming apart in chunks. The covers had detached themselves from themselves from the chunks of pages decades ago.
I went for the middle - and hit pay dirt.
The Bible was given to Maxie Leah Meek and Jo Desha Williams by Maxie's mother, Mary Emily (Conner) Meek Webb, for Christmas in 1890.
Maxie had immediate entries to write in it. Her marriage to Jo Desha Williams on 11 Feb 1886.
The first death since their marriage - that of their one day old daughter, Mildred Imogene, on 28 Jan 1890...
It was from that page that I found the date, although not the place, of death for Jo's brother, Lucien Eugene Williams, on 27 Dec 1900.
I loved the birth page...it has the undated news clippings of the arrivals of some huge Williams babies.
At his birth, Cedric Hazen Williams weighed a hefty ten pounds.
Paul Meek Williams, born on Christmas Eve 1894, weighed in at ten and a half pounds.
And omigosh...My grandfather, Jo Duffie Williams, weighed twelve pounds.
No wonder Maxie was done after Jo...
LC, you were right.
Cousins, right click and save...
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no subject
Date: 2012-02-05 07:52 pm (UTC)All those times we vent our frustration with our nearest, dearest and not-so-dearest when they "find" something we'd have traded a hand or arm for had we known about it earlier. I don't dare confess how much I've found in my own basement. Just wish you'd found a "my" Williams Bible.
no subject
Date: 2012-02-05 07:52 pm (UTC)Susan/Nolichucky Roots
no subject
Date: 2012-02-05 09:39 pm (UTC)The writing on most of those four pages was buried under undated news clippings that Maxie had carefully glued - along the top edge of the clipping - to the page itself.
I used my exacto knife to try and get down to presentable pages.
And scanned and photographed the news clippings while they were still glued to the page, since I knew many of them wouldn't survive that treatment...
no subject
Date: 2012-02-08 03:21 am (UTC)What an amazing Bible you have, no matter that it's condition is less than perfect. The family pages are beautiful. How very sad that the first entry for a death is their little daughter.
I'm sure you've held that Bible in your hands before but isn't it amazing when we see it as a family historian and as a descendant of someone we love. It changes everything.
Thanks for sharing the pages with us, Dee.
Nancy from My Ancestors and Me
no subject
Date: 2012-05-14 02:21 am (UTC)By the way Dee, your bookcase didn't look like it needed much dusting and cleaning in your photo. I wish my shelves were as tidy as yours in that photo . . . sheesh!
Liv @claimingkin.com