The following is an excerpt from the upcoming issue of Family Chronicle...

The Importance of Bibles: A Case Study

According to Diane L. Richard, you shouldn't underestimate the importance of the family Bible

Genealogists and family researchers like Bible records. We especially like those where the Bible is old enough that the entries might be from when events actually occurred, where we see different handwriting suggesting multiple authors and where specifics are provided (e.g., names, dates and places). Though truth be told, we’ll take any Bible, even if it just has names — it can still be a great source to either corroborate found information and/or be a primary source when needed.

I’m going to talk about a project for which census, marriage and newspaper records gave a fairly good picture of a family, though we had some information that seemed a bit inconsistent and some troubling gaps. Finding a family Bible online at the Library of Virginia (LVA) website, www.lva.virginia.gov, really helped fill in some of the missing details, and it was eventually discovered that the wife’s family started in Petersburg, Virginia, then moved to North Carolina, her father died in North Carolina, her mother moved back to Petersburg, and her mother eventually returns to North Carolina and died there.

And, before I get too far ahead of the story, let’s see how the project research played out.
First, what did we know to start?
As with any project, you typically start with some information. In this case, we knew the following:
• Robert A. Watson, b. abt 1826 in KY, d. 23 Jan 1912 in Edgecombe Co., NC
• Robert’s wife was Georgeana Smith, b. 10 Nov 1833 in Petersburg, VA, d. 25 Sept 1919 in Edgecombe Co., NC [her death certificate]
• For the 1870 and 1880 US census, they were living in Edgecombe County
• Parents of Georgeana were father = James E. Smith and mother = Lucy Crowder.
• Family papers received from LVA state that James E. Smith was a contractor and architect who served in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. He was killed in the southern part of North Carolina during the latter part of the War.
You also start with a research goal — ours was to learn about the ancestors of Robert and Georgeana.

Though extensive research was also done on Robert A. (or RA) and his ancestry, for this case study, we will just focus on Georgeana’s family. Starting with this information, the following initial research strategy was established: look for missing census records, missing vital records (birth, marriage and death) and newspaper records — death notices, obituaries etc.
Second, what initial research did we do?

Census Records
Using the information from Georgeana’s death certificate, we found the “Smith” family in the 1850, 1860, 1870 and 1880 censuses. These revealed that the entire Smith family was in Petersburg in 1850 and then came to North Carolina in 1860. Since Levicy [not Lucy as on Georgeana’s death certificate] was a widow with young children in 1870, living in Petersburg, we assume that her husband, James, died before 1870.

Vital Records
For this early time period, the only vital records that we were likely to find were marriage bonds. Fortunately, we did find the 1864 marriage record of Robert and Georgeana in Edgecombe County. This is consistent with her family moving from Petersburg to Edgecombe by 1860. Since, at this time, marriage bonds and licenses only conveyed the groom, bride, place of marriage, date and person performing marriage, no other information could be learned — such as, was her father still alive in 1864.

Newspaper Records
Increasingly, more newspaper archives are being digitized — and, this can only occur if such an archive still exists. There were four newspaper collections that I looked into: The State Library of North Carolina (which has an extensive of collection of early
20th century and older newspapers), libraries in Edgecombe to see what they have, the LVA website (to see what I could learn about surviving Petersburg newspapers) and the Godfrey Memorial Library, www.Godfrey.org, (for access to their 19th Century US Newspapers collection)...

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