I wrote about my maternal grandmother’s Bible and the things I found in it in an earlier Sepia Saturday post, here Fannie Mae Turner’s Bible. Today, I posted some of the articles, prayers, postcard and a church bulletin that were in the Bible, along with all the swatches of hair. Click to enlarge.
My family didn’t have a Bible, so it is sort of surprising to me that so many people saved things in their Bible. All the loose scraps must have made it a bit difficult to use. Maybe people had one Bible for saving things, and another to read.
I think she really read this Bible because it is falling to pieces. Pages are lose and coming out. It’s really a mess. In later years I hope she read a different one.
What a marvelous collection of memorabilia she had in her Bible. I don’t keep anything in our Bible, but I make a pocket in the front of each of my yearly journals & if I find something that really interests me – be it an article or picture or even – maybe especially – a comic strip, I pop it in there. Actually, I just started doing this about 3 years ago so it will take a while for those things to age & be something to look back on, but I think it might tell my great grandchildren or whoever, years from now, what sort of personality & sense of humor their great (great?)granny had – that is if they read my journals? Who knows if they will. I hope they do, but there’s no certainty about it.
I do that in journals too, tuck stuff into them.
Every time I read your posts they bring up memories of my grandmother. She keep a bible just like your Fannie did. Worn, pages, notes, things pressed between the pages. What a blessing that you have it. Thank you so much sharing a part of her story.
It is a blessing to have it. I have learned to know her as more than my grandmother by reading the things tucked into her Bible and the little journals she kept.
What a neat collection. I have a lot of stuff in my Bible too, including special pictures of my kids when they were little.
For Christmas this year, my Mom gave me the Bible that gets handed down to the firstborns (my Grandpa, her, me) and it came over on the Oregon Trail.
I just wanted to stop by and say hello. Hope that you are doing well.
Kathy M.
Your grandpa came over on the Oregon Trail? Wow. How long ago was that?
Thanks for stopping by. I’m doing pretty well.
Your collage looks like an archaeologist’s collection. I think many people from that early generation shared a frugal habit of saving paper mementos in books, especially in something as well read as this bible.
It also makes the Bible much more interesting than if it were just a tattered Bible.
I have family bibles from my great grandmother and my father, but they have nothing like the wonderful inserts you found and presented so well in the collage. I do like the idea of keeping a pocket or file for ephemera collected over the year and which might interest our descendants. Something else for my “to do” list!
I’ve been keeping ticket stubs and stuff stuffed between folders and in notebooks. I can rarely find them when I want them without going through so much that I think it would be easier if I started sticking them in a Book.
I love the way you have collected them together – It is the range of them, the variety and the contrasts which is as interesting as the individual items in themselves.
I thought so too. All together they give me a picture of my grandmother.
This awesome! What precious memories you have & priceless treasures! These make a world of difference to us who value & treasure their worth! Thank you so much for sharing!
The little things my grandmother tucked into her Bible and her journals really have given me a glimpse of her that I didn’t get from knowing her as only my grandmother.
Kristin…Fannie’s Bible looks similar to mine…I keep dried flowers, Christian bookmarks, etc. in mine. You are right she seemed to have made good use of her Bible. Thanks for giving us a peek at what was important to her!
She did have another Bible but this one seems to have been the one she used to death.
My grandaunt had a scrapbook where she glued religious poems, snips of hymns, and such, but nothing as colorful as Fannie’s keepsakes.
My grandmother also had a larger scrapbook, which I couldn’t find for this prompt, that she had gluded recipes, poems, prayers and just about anything paper into, in layers. Sort of a collage in progress. That makes it very hard to read the items under the top layer.
The notes, bulletin, postcard, etc. add so much richness to the Bible. The artifacts provide provide a sense of her personality. It’s interesting the items she chose to save (or at least never got around to cleaning out of the Bible).
It is indeed. I have the feeling she just added more, never removing anything. I could be wrong. And who knows what got left when they moved late in life and then when they died and the house was cleaned out by my mother. I wish I could go back and be there!
I love the collage you made, so evocative. All the little notes and mementos squirreled away over the years and the thought of her doing it make a great connection to your grandmother.
It really does.
Every now and then I take Daddy’s and Mom’s out. I’m the Keeper of their Bible. The Fan got me! I wonder where some of those people are now that are mentioned in Annoucements? I hope my Bible gets WORNED like that!
True, they are probably all dead. I know that Rev. Horace White died in 1959 and Moses Walker died long, long ago. My grandparents were born in 1888 so their contemporaries and even most of their children, are all gone now.
What a great way to display all those treasured items of ephemera from your grandmother’s Bible; it makes a striking collage.
A collage to treasure as well as the individual contents inside a Bible.
Thank’s Bob. I guess I make collages like my grandmother saved bits of her life on paper.
How marvelous, what treasures you had within the pages. So many precious keepsakes, that every now and then need to be revisited!
I’ve just enlarged your collage and read each piece, including your grandmother’s handwritten notes. It’s moving to study the things she saved in it, and no comments are needed. Now I need to go and look up the two other Psalms she mentions as favorites.
My husband’s grandmother used to write notes to herself on little pieces of paper and attach them to the inside pockets of clothes. I think we have one or two of them still but I wish we’d saved them all. She was well educated but rather solitary, especially after her only child (my father-in-law) was grown, and had little outlet for her intellect. If one studied them all closely, those notes would say a lot.
My grandmother also was solitary after her children were all gone from the house. I wish I had spent more time downstairs talking to her during those few months we shared the house.
I suppose that reading it every day meant it was the perfect place for reminders or special items. Isn’t it special to have such treasures.
It is very special.
The Bible and Holy Books of our Ancestors functioned in many ways as a “safe place” for memories, thoughts, reflections that the messages of these revealed books inspire.
It was a perfect place to save them. I still have them after all these years.
My mother did exactly the same thing with her bible. She called it her filing cabinet.
I remember you sharing some of the photographs you found in her Bible.
oh It’s So Nice That These Keepsakes are kept & treasured.It’s the individual experiences that define any belief.
I still have my Confirmation Book & their personal inscriptions & they mean the World to me.
Your GrandMother’s collection is impressive and speak volumes about her.
Kristin.You look after them Well.
I found a painting in antique shop signed Fannie Mae Turner. Would this be the same person?
I don’t think so. I never heard that my grandmother painted. Where was the Antique shop and when was the painting done?