Monday's Diggings

 

The Mentzer Family Bible

Do you have family Bibles tucked away among your family treasures? If so, have you taken the time to photograph or scan the family register pages?

I'm fortunate to have several family Bibles that were part of my grandmother's collection. One of those Bibles belonged to the family of my grandmother, Pauline Edith Mentzer Briles. Like many family Bibles, its handwritten pages preserve information about births and a marriage that might otherwise have been lost.

For this week's Monday's Diggings, I'm sharing two pages from that Bible.

Parents' Names

The first page identifies Pauline's parents and records their birth dates and marriage date.

Transcription

Family Register — Parents' Names

Husband: Charles E. Mentzer
Born: 1869, July 1

Wife: Nettie F. Wells
Born: 1873, Feb. 5

Married: 1893, Oct. 3

This page is particularly valuable because it connects the children recorded elsewhere in the Bible directly to Charles E. Mentzer and Nettie F. Wells.

Children's Names

The second page records five children born between 1894 and 1900.

Transcription

Children's Names

Gladys E. Mentzer — Born July 9, 1894
Paul E. Mentzer — Born March 28, 1896
Pauline E. Mentzer — Born March 28, 1896
Leslie G. Mentzer — Born Aug. 23, 1898
Herbert Wells Mentzer — Born July 20, 1900

One detail immediately stands out: Paul E. Mentzer and Pauline E. Mentzer share the same birth date, March 28, 1896, indicating that they were twins.

And one of those children is especially important to my own family history. Pauline E. Mentzer was my grandmother, Pauline Edith Mentzer Briles.

More Than Names and Dates

These two pages contain only a handful of handwritten entries, but together they document an entire immediate family. They identify the parents, give their birth dates and marriage date, and record the names and birth dates of their five children.

The Bible also provides something that a census, birth certificate, or other government record cannot: a record created and preserved within the family itself.

Because this Bible eventually became part of my grandmother Pauline's collection of family Bibles, it also has its own provenance within the family. Instead of being an isolated record found in an archive or online database, it is an item that was preserved and passed down through the family.

That's one of the reasons I'm trying to make sure these family Bible pages are scanned, transcribed, and shared. The original Bible may someday pass to another family member, but digital images and transcriptions can allow the information it contains to reach many descendants.

Sometimes Monday's Diggings doesn't require digging through courthouse records, newspapers, or online databases. Sometimes the treasure has been sitting on a shelf in the family all along.