Inherited object bring heritage with them, but also their own burden of responsibility. Generations end up keeping them because they’re family things.
What to do with this stuff?
I used to wonder if I’d ever inherit anything. My grandmothers lived to be 93 and 97 years old, but didn’t have any money, no grand treasures to leave their aging children and middle-aged grandchildren.
But they left other heirlooms, including old Bibles. I’ve become the keeper of family Bibles from my motherline.
Laura Goff’s Bible
Laura was my great grandmother. Her daughter’s memoirs alerted me to check inside the old Bible with boxes of my mother’s keepsakes, which also included her mother’s mementos. Yes, Laura Goff had bought the Bible when they lived in Key West, Minnesota, in the early 1900s.
I also learned that Great Grandmother Goff had read it through twice after she was widowed and moved from Dexter, Iowa, to Omaha, Nebraska. It looks like she read it a lot more than that through the decades.
Clabe Wilson’s Bible
Clabe was Laura Goff’s son in law, married to daughter Leora (Goff) Wilson. His handwriting is on a clipping saved within the New Testament’s pages.
Folded into pages here is a clipping called “Why Is Gossip Harmful?” based on James 3:1-6. He probably save the clipping because he’d been hurt by gossip.
Clabe, a shy man, wasn’t a church-goer. But he must have drawn strength from passages in the New Testament.
Leora Wilson’s Bible
Leora was my mother’s mother, the record keeper, the caretaker of family letters, postcards, telegrams, Bibles. You can tell that she spent plenty of time reading her Holy Bible. It’s interesting that Clabe gave her this Bible the second Christmas of World War II. By then they had three sons in the service. A year later, one would be Missing in Action.
Danny Wilson’s Bible
Servicemen were given small New Testaments. The most poignant family one was returned with Danny Wilson’s effects after he was Missing in Action the spring of 1945 in Europe. I’ve wondered at what point my grandmother, or one of her daughters, actually opened the small Bible. What tears they must have shed, as I did when I discovered what Danny wrote in it.
A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children. – Proverbs 13:22
I have very few treasures handed down ~ but I need to revisit them with new eyes. Great post, great treasures!
It’s a good thing I looked farther than the way Great Grandmother’s Bible appears on the outside!
You are lucky to have such treasures. The oldest family Bible I have is from the 1850’s, not very old, However I do have a family baptismal gown that was hand made over 300 years ago.
What treasures! How do you keep the baptismal gown–framed? Even the bridal gown my grandmother made for herself in 1914 didn’t survive the Great Depression.
Oh, it’s not framed. It was last used in 1995 but is probably destined for a museum here in Italy shortly.
Hope you’re write a blog post about it. Has a record been kept of everyone who wore it for their baptism?
To think how much history there is in a family Bible! I read the newspaper article that Clabe saved. It applies as much today as it did in his day. Thank you for posting it.
It helped me get into some of his personality. He once said he grew up like a wolf, observing things from a distance.
Family Bibles are a genuine keepsake!!!!
Thanks for sharing your family treasures. You are fortunate to have them passed on to you.
Helps to be the oldest daughter of the oldest daughter of the oldest daughter of the oldest daughter!
Now that’s a treasure.
Clabe’s helped me to understand him a little better.
Wow- what a moving inheritance!