A Wonderful Accidental Find

Sometimes I get so excited on this genealogy journey of mine that I can hardly keep from whooping and hollering from the roof top. Let me tell you about what has me so excited this time.

On August 9 I was reading my email from Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter mailing list that I subscribe to. I saw a link to an article that sounded interesting to me, so I clicked on it. http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2012/08/lost-photograph-connects-to-familys-long-history.html     This is what I read:

August 09, 2012

Lost Photograph Connects to Family’s Long History

The DailyAdvance web site has an interesting article about an old photograph apparently dropped in a Shawboro, Currituck County, North Carolina parking lot. Using great genealogical and historical detective work, two women were able to identify the photograph as that of Molly Fulford. (Molly is a nickname for Mary.) The photo was taken some time prior to 1880.

Now the two detectives are looking for the person who dropped the photograph so that it may be returned to the family.

You can read the full story at http://goo.gl/0xtMp.

My thanks to newsletter reader Wendy Stevens for telling me about this interesting story. 

I clicked on the link to the full story. (You can use the link above to read the newspaper article.) The writer mentioned that the photo ended up with Linda Jordan who lives just over the state line from North Carolina in Virginia, a little south of Virginia Beach. At the end I read, "Jordan says that if the photograph of the young Molly Fulford looks familiar and someone is searching for a lost antique photograph, they can contact her through her website, www.genthreads.com."

Being the curious person I tend to be and one who enjoys looking at genealogy websites and blogs, I went to her website, GenThreads, to see what kinds of things she had on her site. First, I went to look at photographs. I drooled over her wonderful family heirlooms photos and was (I hate to admit) envious of all the old family photographs found under the Photos tab. Next I looked at the contents of the other tabs at the top, and lastly, I looked at the Bibles tab.

I clicked on the first family Bible that belonged to James Edward Cartwright. When I looked at the photo of the first page, I just about fell out of my chair. I thought to myself, "That looks familiar." Then I looked at the second page and that sent me searching for my Gilley Family Bible photographs on the computer. The Gilley Bible had the same kind of pages for family information as the Cartwright Bible. There was a huge difference, though. Linda's family pages were actually in the Bible and in very good condition. The Gilley Bible pages had been torn out of the Bible and were torn themselves and some were taped. They weren't in good condition at all.  (Click on the right side under 2011 and then September to see three posts about the Gilley Family Bible.)

At the bottom of the of GenThreads home page was the email link, Contact Me, with a message underneath that read, I will always get back to you sooner or later. So I sent an email, and let me say, Linda got back to me sooner than later. She not only answered the email within a few hours but also took more photographs of the Bible! She also sent a link to Dropbox where I could see the photos and download them. Then the next day (August 10) I got another email to tell me she'd uploaded three more photos. Can you see why I've been whooping and hollering?!!?

Now I know what my great grandparents' (Thomas Gilley, Jr. and Margarett Emma Pritchett Gilley) family Bible looked like originally. I do wonder what happened to the Bible. Why were the pages were torn out? How did they end up with my grandmother, Annie Gilley Jowers? I know that after my grandmother died in 1985, her son Hubert gave the pages to his brother, Henry. Uncle Henry and his wife were the family genealogists at that time. I happened upon the pages when Cousin Jane loaned me a box that held the genealogy work of her parents, my Uncle Henry and Aunt Nita. Until that day, I never knew they existed. In fact, the contents of that box broke open the female line of my American family as well as other discoveries.

Another question rattling around in my mind is how did this Bible, published by Bradley, Garretson & Co., sold by subscription only, end up in rural southeastern Alabama in the latter part of the 1800's? I suspect a traveling salesman. I did find out something about the company, but that's a post for another day.

Linda wrote something in her first email that sums up how I feel about my tattered and torn and taped family Bible pages. She wrote  "Oh my - it broke my heart to see how your Bible pages are. But we cherish what we can get, don't we?" The answer is a resounding YES! Even though may never know the answers to my questions, I do cherish the fact that more than one person took enough care of these pages, as fragile as they are, and that they're still in our family today.

Now for the fun part . . . photos!

The James Edward Cartwright Bible, Front cover and spine

Spine

Personalized Front Cover

Back Cover

End Page

Rubbing of the Cover Corner 1

Rubbing of the Cover Corner 2

Rubbing of the Cover Corner 3

Rubbing of the Cover Corner 4

Title Page

First Background Information Page

Illustrations

Close-up Illustration

Beautiful Color Page

Cartwright Bible

Gilley Bible

Cartwright Bible

Gilley Bible