All entries for Tuesday 11 July 2006

The Family Bible

When my Gran died recently my Mother acquired the Family Bible amongst other items.

I'd never seen this before and when she showed it to me the other day it was really amazing.

The Bible itself is a large leather bound volume all in Welsh (which my Gran always felt was God's own language) given to my Grandfather in the early 1920s.

What is fascinating is that both my Grandparents carefully recorded at the front all significant events for the family – births, deaths, marriages (and divorces!) throughout the last 90 odd years.

The last entry my Gran made recorded the birth of Grace – my niece. It's a sad entry as her strong script of previous entries is obviously failing. Since then my Mum has added my marriage to Steph and the birth of Rhys – my nephew – events that Gran couldn't add at the time.

The blank pages at the front are now pretty full up so the last entries are in the margin of Genesis – somewhat fitting perhaps for a new owner to start there.

I hope we have the capacity to keep filling up the pages with family events. I guess nowadays you would blog this stuff, but I think in this instance I would prefer to keep recording these things in an old leather bound tome. Keeps a certain sense of gravitas I think is perhaps lost in the immediacy of the electronic world.

: 11 Jul 2006 11:25 |  Tags: Family |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem