ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, March 17, 1997 TAG: 9703170083
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY THE ROANOKE TIMES
The family Bibles are the third most-used genealogical source at the state library.
Drop what you're doing right now, and do history a favor: Call up grandma, or your great-aunt Millie, or go root through the attic. Wherever it is, find the old family Bible, and photocopy the hand-written entries of vital statistics and family lore.
Then, mail the copy to the Library of Virginia's official archives.
What would the state library, that august repository of Virginia records back to Colonial times, want with the meager inscriptions in your old family Bible?
You'd be surprised.
The library has been collecting family Bibles - more accurately, copies of the family entries - since 1928, when Virginia began seeking unofficial documents to make up for a lack of official vital statistics. An entry from a family Bible was considered the gospel truth, from a legal point of view, whenever it came time to prove a birthdate or a marriage date.
Since then, the Library of Virginia has taken in more than 5,000 family Bibles entries, and the number is still growing. "We get them almost weekly," said Conley Edwards, the state archivist who oversees Virginia's collection of historic documents.
Most come in out of the blue, the result of library staffers talking up the subject whenever they speak to history-minded groups around the state - as Edwards did Sunday to almost 100 amateur genealogists gathered at Center in the Square in Roanoke.
These days, the purpose of acquiring the entries from family Bibles has changed from addressing a quirky legalism to beefing up an already-rich genealogical treasure trove.
Fact: The family Bibles now rank as the third most-used genealogical source at the state library, behind only census records and county courthouse records. "They're used daily," Edwards said.
Sometime before June, the library plans to put copies of all 5,000-plus Bible entries on the Internet, an event which is expected to boost usage of the library's already-busy home page.
The Bible entries are valued by researchers, Edwards said, because they record "all kinds of personal events" besides the dry prose of births, weddings and deaths. He showed off one sample page from a Bible from the early 1800s in which the record-keeper noted meteor showers and personal injuries:
``November 12th, 1833 ... The stares was a falling from heaven all night."
"My arm got broake March 18th 1835.''
Such entries may seem trivial, but enough of them help researchers paint a picture of the life of a community, Edwards said.
Pre-Civil War Bible entries that record events related to slaves are especially valuable, he said, because the antebellum census didn't record slaves by name. However, the state taxed slaves by age, so slave owners often kept their own vital statistics - and recorded them in a family Bible. "They are used less often as a resource for African-American history than they could be," Edwards said.
There's another reason, Edwards said, to send copies of your family Bible to the state library: Safekeeping. "I can't tell you how many times I've heard, `Oh, I wish I'd copied my family Bible before it was burned or someone threw it out.' We hear that a lot."
To submit your family Bible, photocopy the title page (which gives the date the Bible was published), all the hand-written entries, and send a brief account describing the family to: Library of Virginia, 800 E. Broad St., Richmond 23219. For more information, call (804) 692-3500.
For an Internet index of family Bibles already in the library's possession, go to http://leo.vsla.edu/
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