Sacred keepsakes

Old Bibles preserve precious memories

This family Bible, its spine tattered by age, was used by U.S. Rep. French Hill as he was sworn in to Congress in January.
This family Bible, its spine tattered by age, was used by U.S. Rep. French Hill as he was sworn in to Congress in January.

As years go, 1848 was a big one.

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Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

When Randy Frazier of Searcy acquired this Bible it had pressed into its pages this newspaper clipping. It’s of a memorial service for U.S. Army Pfc. Charles H. Alspach, “who was killed in France on Feb. 11,” likely in 1945.

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Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

U.S. Rep. French Hill cradles his great-great-grandmother’s family Bible, which dates to the 1840s.

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Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Running his finger over the entry in his family Bible, U.S. Rep. French Hill points out the date of his birth in 1956. The Bible includes many notations about events in the family’s history.

Revolutions swept Europe, starting in Sicily and spreading to France, Germany, Italy and the Austrian Empire.

The United States and Mexico ended their war with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, greatly expanding the former and diminishing the latter.

Ireland was in the middle of its great famine, a time of disease, starvation and emigration.

And in New York, the book publisher Edward Dunigan & Brother published a Bible, endorsed by the Catholic bishop of New York. A copy was acquired by one Pierce Gracie, an Irishman who migrated to the city around 1835 and eventually landed in Arkansas.

The Bible, 167 years after its printing, was on hand as French Hill of Little Rock became a congressman from Arkansas' 2nd District.

Says so right there, on one of several blank, and now filled, pages at the front of the book, written by Hill's cousin, Jay Rogers of Little Rock. "J. French Hill placed his hand on this Bible as he was sworn in as congressman from Arkansas in Washington, D.C., on January 2, 2015."

"It was a real honor for me to swear allegiance to the Constitution and the people on this deeply sentimental Bible," Hill said.

Hill has an appreciation for the longevity, for the sheer survivability, of this Bible.

"It's just unbelievable. I'm flabbergasted," Hill said in his Little Rock office.

The Bible had just been delivered to the office by an aide who got it from Hill's father, Jay F. Hill of Little Rock. It came to the office in the same way Jay Hill carried it to Washington -- wrapped in archival paper and secured in a plastic box from The Container Store.

"My dad was very nervous about it, so it never left his possession," French Hill said.

French Hill's grandmother, Elizabeth French Hill, was Gracie's great-granddaughter. It's written in the Bible that Gracie died on Sept. 13, 1864, in Flat Bayou, Jefferson County. Much else is written in the Bible of the family's births, deaths, marriages and happenings over 167 years, including Hill's birth -- 4:32 a.m. on a Wednesday -- his marriage to wife Martha, and the births of their children, Liza and Payne, both of whom are now teenagers.

The family has deep roots in southeast Arkansas, going back to Pierce Gracie's move to Napoleon, a town at the confluence of the Arkansas and Mississippi rivers in Desha County. Great things were expected of Napoleon, but it was damaged by the Civil War and extinguished by flooding.

The Bible fared much better.

"Despite Civil War and Reconstruction and floods and house fires, it's been passed down," Hill said.

The family has been fortunate, he said. "Every generation has someone who has treasured the genealogy and the history."

Hill expects the tradition to continue.

"The next generation is alive and well," he said, "and will be well-documented."

A FAMILY TREASURE

J.J. Whitney got the call. And then she got Pa's Bible.

Whitney, 41, associate chaplain at Hendrix College in Conway, is a third-generation member of the clergy, following her father, Guy Whitney Jr., and her grandfather, Guy Whitney Sr.

Whitney got that call to the ministry at 16, when her father served Heritage United Methodist Church in Van Buren.

"Dad was sharing his call," she said, "and told about how his father was called to the ministry as a boy."

She got the old Bible at 17, after the death of her grandfather, known to the family as Pa.

"Because I was called to ministry, my father thought I was the kid who should have this Bible," Whitney said in her office on campus.

A 1996 graduate of Hendrix, Whitney was ordained in 2000 and first served Hunter United Methodist Church in Little Rock. Since 2002 she has been at Hendrix, where she gets students involved in service work and helps some of them "think about a call to the ministry, and what it means to live out my faith."

Her father is 66 and retired out of North Little Rock's First United Methodist Church.

Her grandfather was a Southern Baptist clergyman. He served all over northeast Arkansas, she said, and retired at Corning. He died in 1991.

Guy Jr. was a student pastor at Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, Whitney said, but eventually found himself "more in line with United Methodist theology and practice."

Whitney doesn't use Pa's Bible on a regular basis, "but I cherish it," she said.

The Bible is a 1967 King James version of "The New Scofield Reference Bible." It has scribblings, notes and numbers.

"The more used your Bible is, the more devoted you are," Whitney said. "Dare I say these are coffee stains?"

Inside the book there is written something in Pa's handwriting: "People who are trying to make less of their religion will never be satisfied until they have none."

Whitney has two children, a son, 9, and a daughter, 3. The son has a Bible, and reads it, she said, "so you never know." But she recalls her father telling her not to join the ministry just because he had.

Whitney keeps Pa's Bible in her office at Hendrix.

"It's very dear to me and I would want it to be passed on to someone who would understand."

"Dad felt like Pa would have confirmed my ministry," Whitney said, "in the line of pastors who have brought the Gospel to the world. It's a family legacy."

A SOLDIER'S STORY

Two things are sad about a family Bible owned by Sandy and Randy Frazier of Searcy.

The first is a newspaper clipping on the World War II death of a U.S. Army soldier.

The second is that the Fraziers have been unable to reunite this Bible, and the clipping, with the family whose lives it documented.

Randy Frazier collects books. He bought this Bible, dated 1874, on eBay for $30 in 1999, from a man who ran an auction service in Pine Grove, Pa. The Bible was an heirloom of the Alspach family of West Brunswick Township, Pa. It includes family births, deaths and marriages.

"That's the goal," Sandy Frazier said. "To give it back to the family."

The Bible no doubt was published for Lutherans. A full-page portrait of Martin Luther, looking sternly into the distance, graces the front of the book. It also has a page for births and a page for deaths, and an especially colorful and ornate page for recording the "Holy Bonds of Matrimony."

Inside the Bible was that newspaper clipping, with a mugshot of a soldier in Army uniform, and the announcement of a memorial service at Faith Reformed Church on Sunday, May 13. The service was for "Private First Class Charles H. Alspach, who was killed in France on Feb. 11." No year is given, but presumably it was 1945, given that the D-Day invasion was in June 1944.

"Alspach was a member of Faith Church," the clipping said. "Survivors besides his widow, the former Dorothy Heist, and daughter, Carol Ann, are his parents and two sisters."

Efforts by Randy Frazier to find the daughter have come up empty.

"Once he got it and was looking at the family history, it was like, I wish we could find these people," Sandy Frazier said.

The Fraziers keep the Bible on their coffee table. Unlike others of his book collection, the Bible's worth isn't measured in dollars, Randy Frazier said.

"Its value is sentimental."

REMINDERS OF THE PAST

Heath Carpenter's old family Bible has a second purpose.

"It's a memorabilia album," the English instructor at Harding University in Searcy said. "Here are some of the things they stuck in it."

Carpenter spread across a table numerous paper artifacts.

• A receipt for $107.92, dated May 1927, the annual premium for a family life insurance policy.

• Letters, pictures, greeting cards and notes commenting on Scripture.

• A family temperance pledge, which asks a higher power to "remove us from the temptations of the saloon."

The Bible dates to Carpenter's great-great-grandfather, B.D. Horton, born 1878 on Joy Mountain in Romance, a town in White County. "He appears to be a pious man, but was a bit of a troublemaker," Carpenter said.

The Bible was passed to Horton's son-in-law, Reuben Pruitt, a Baptist preacher.

"He was a small-town preacher who did it on foot," Carpenter said. "He raised livestock, lived off the land, and built his own house, which still stands."

"My life is so different than theirs," Carpenter said. "You lament the things that are lost, but there are aspects of that life that should not be romanticized."

This Bible has seen better days.

"Part of me likes that it's falling apart," Carpenter said.

He and his wife, Hannah, have four children who range in age from 2 to 12. Will the Bible pass down?

"I hope so. I guess it will be to who cares. It may be a grandchild. I don't know yet."

Carpenter was close to his grandmother, Mary Evelyn Jones of Searcy.

"The Bible helps me understand my grandmother and her values and ethics," he said. "It helps you learn who you are."

"The past isn't dead. It isn't even past."

We want to hear the story of your family Bible. Email your story to [email protected] and we'll post it on our site.

Religion on 03/28/2015

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