When researching the family history, using primary and secondary sources is essential. It has been a traditional practice for families to make a written recording of major family events such as births, marriages and deaths in the large family bible. Most Bibles even had special blanks pages within the Bible for such recordings. The closer to the actual date of the event, the information in such Bible recordings is considered a primary source.
Available on the Internet is a site titled ‘Bible Records Online‘ which is helping preserve in digital format thousands of Bible records. There are approximately 1,158 different Bibles on the site with 3,469 different surnames.
The site offers several ways to search. One is by just browsing the numerous Bibles. Here they are listed in alphabetical order by surnames. Any known locations are listed along with dates. A second method is just by surnames. Here there might two or more separate entries for one name. The surname of ‘Elliott’ had seven different Bibles. In viewing each there will usually be a scanned image of the actual Bible records and a transcription of the pages. Occasionally, it is difficult to transcript some handwriting, so there may be variations in names. Separate sections are for any newly added Bible pages and for non-English Bibles.
The site is useful for not only locating any possible ‘lost’ Bible records, but also offers a location for people to submit their family Bible pages. Even if you have found an actual Bible with none of your family members, the information it contains could be helpful to someone else. All the details for submitting such records are available on the site.
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