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The Family Bible
By Betty Anne Belt Sadler
We were happy to be together: five sisters and a sister-in-law,
yet the occasion was melancholy. We were closing my mother's
house and sorting her belongings. Last week we were together
at her funeral sharing our loss and celebrating her life with
other relatives and her many friends. Today we were sharing
our memories and thoughts as we made decisions concerning
the accumulations of 81 years of living. Among my mother's
belongings was a box containing a family Bible wrapped and
tied in a clean dishtowel. Lucie said Mother gave the box
into her care before her death. More than 150 year old, the
Bible looked its age and more. Originally it had been a volume
to be proud of, in size about 11x14x7+ inches, bound in hand-tooled
leather with gilded edged pages. It now was very fragile,
missing one cover, and pages crumbling at the edges and many
coming loose from the blinding.
"Oh, how sad."
"It's from dad's family. I wonder how she came to have
it. After all, she was only a daughter-in-law?"
"What can we do with it except wrap it back up?"
"We should have it restored."
"It will cost a fortune; that is, if we can find someone
who can do it."
"You can't put a price on a piece of family history."
"I'll find some one at the University Library. Surely
they have dealt with problems like this."
"Whatever it costs, let's do it."
And we did. I found a bindery, Seidel and Sons in Houston.
Mr. Seidel proudly told me he had just hired had an expert
who learned his trade in Germany.
Mr. Schmidt
was a rare find for their business, a craftsman/artisan trained
in restorations. In very broken English, Mr. Schmidt expressed
as much excitement about the prospect of restoring our family
Bible as I felt about getting it done. It would take months,
he told me, but he would keep me informed of his progress.
First, he took the Bible apart, carefully so as not to damage
it any further. As he did so, he discovered a few items stuck
in between pages: a small faded death announcement edged in
black, some letters to my father from his grandfather, written
late in the nineteenth century when my father was around ten
years old, a record of payments for the Bible, and a lock
of light brown hair. The death announcement and the lock of
hair were probably connected. The letters were about the weather
and relatives, with an admonition to my father to take good
care of his little sister Nannie Mae. They were unremarkable
letters from grandfather to a grandson. However, this grandson
and grandfather were not altogether as ordinary as their letters
might seem. Theirs was a rural families; the time was the
last half of the nineteenth century. How many rural families
of the time were literate? My father and the seven siblings
who survived infancy could read, write, and calculate because
their mother, Josephine Edward Sales Fairbairne, had taught
school before she married. When there was neither school nearby
nor a teacher to fill it, she taught them at home.
My oldest sister Nancy and I studied the faded writing and
difficult penmanship to decipher the letters, and our reconstruction
of them appears in a study of ABOUT 600 DESCENDANTS OF HUMPHREY
BELT by Walter E. Belt, Jr.
The receipt showed the Bible had been purchased on a time
payments contract. Each payment seems very small to us now,
but the amount would have been substantial to farmers who
had very little cash and that only when crops were harvested
or livestock sold. I can't even guess what a comparable book
would cost today; I would not even know if I could find one.
But I am sure that this Bible was valuable to the family who
made those payments. No doubt, they felt that the cost was
worth the sacrifice just as we did when we decided to have
it restored.
Mr. Schmidt had to separate each page carefully, smooth edges,
rescue crumbled and tattered pieces and gently and fit them
together. Then he painstakingly enclosed each page in a special
protective paper. It was a time consuming task even for an
expert and Seidel's bid on the job was based on our agreeing
to let the craftsman work on it between other jobs. The text
pages of the Bible were on a kind of thin onion skin-like
paper; other pages with information and illustrations were
on somewhat sturdier paper.
The front cover was missing altogether, but the back cover
was in remarkably good condition. There were Biblical scenes
tooled in the leather and enhanced with touches of gold worn
by age. The Biblical scenes depicted the classic picture of
the Last Supper, Adam and Eve being driven out of Eden, Mary
and Joseph on their way to Bethlehem, the tent of the Arc
of the Covenant, and Judgment of Solomon depicting the King
with the infant in one hand and a drawn sword in the other,
ready to divided the disputed baby between the quarrelling
women.
Mr. Schmidt took this beautiful, elaborate back cover and
altered it to use as the front cover. Then he created a new
back and spine by aging some leather and forming a back and
spine. Restoring the edges with their former "gilt"
was impossible because so many of the edges were no longer
paper, but the material that had used to enclose them to prevent
further deterioration. Next the pages were handsewn into the
binding. Finally, the companies affixed inside the front cover
a small label, saying "Restored by Seidel & Son,
Bookbinders. December 27, 1985."
It took almost a year and, and if I remember correctly, cost
one thousand dollars. Finally the Bible was ready for the
closer look that we had denied ourselves earlier for fear
of damaging it further. We discovered one interesting feature
of the restored book that was not true of the book we took
to Seidel and Company: the New Testament now preceded the
Old, a mistake of a craftsman with limited English, I guess.
The title page declares it to be "A Pronouncing Holy
Bible with the old and new versions of the New Testament Illustrated."
It contains a Temperance Pledge page with places for signatures.
Our grandfather and grandmother, Charlie Tilman Belt and Josephine
Edward Sales Fairbairne, have their marriage recorded on one
of the document pages with the place of marriage, Branond,
Robertson County, Texas, and the date, December 9, 1880. To
help the reader in studying this Bible, there is a chronology,
four thousand questions and answers, scripture difficulties
explained, a dictionary, and an alphabetical index. Another
feature it boasts is "Psalms of David in Metre."
(A complete(?) additional items can be found in the appendix
to these notes.)
What a wonderful family heritage!
Now, the Bible is in the care of the second daughter, Lucie
Jean Belt Brumley, beautifully displayed for each of us to
enjoy, with the understanding it belongs to the whole family
and any member can volunteer to be the caretaker at any time.
In early January 2007, Lucie Belt Carpenter Brumley and I
checked the above text and agreed it was as close as we could
describe it. Unable to locate a table of contents or an Index,
we went through the pages as carefully as possible to record
"extra items." A list of those along with information
on the pages follow:
Title page: Pictorial Family Bible
A list with birth dates of the children of Morris Arthur and
Cloye Taylor Belt in
Cloye's handwriting
Marriage information of Josephine Edward Sale Fairbairn and
Charles Tilman Belt
At Bremond, Robertson County, December 9, 1880
List of Births of the children of Josephine and Charles
List of the marriages of children of Josephine and Charles
Some family death entries
Scenes and incidents in the "Life of Our Lord Jesus Christ"
Bible Stories for the Young
Pronouncing Guide
Self Pronouncing New Testament, A.D.1611 with revisions of
1881
New Testament with pictures, some in colors
List of reading and renderings preferred by the American Committee
recorded at
their desire (See Preface)
Chronological index of the Bible
4000 Questions and Answers of Old and New Testament
Scripture Difficulties Explained
Cruden, M. A. and Alexander Ber, Concordance of the Old and
New Testament
Concordance of the people of the Holy Scriptures
Psalms of David
Self-pronouncing Dictionary of 4000 names
Beginning of the Old Testament
A Table of passages of the Old Testament quoted by Christ
and the apostles in the
New Testament
Characters of Prophetical Books
The Aprocrypha
Chronological and Other Valuable Tables
Tabular Arrangement of Biblical History: Old Testament Tables,
Probable authors
time covered by the writings.
Table of Life, Teachings of our Lord and References to the
Holy Spirit
Other Tables
Proverbs of Solomon
Description of the Temple
History of Religious Pronunciation of the World
Dictionary of the Bible (illustrated)
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