Treasured Civil War-era Bible has a new home
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Like many patrons of the public auction scene, McBride knows a bargain when she sees one, like an old book she managed to buy some time ago at a auction near her home. McBride caught sight of her quarry well before the auctioneer stepped up to the podium. Her quarry in this case being a small, ancient looking Bible mixed in with some other trivial items in a box that was going to be sold at this particular auction. But even though she was keeping an eye on it, she almost missed out.
“I was watching it,” she recalled, “but some lady talked to me and got my mind off it and some man got it. And I said, ‘Oh, I wish you would hush, I wanted that there box.'”
But as fate would have it, fortune still smiled on her in the end.
“There was a little girl standing beside of me,” Lela said, “and she said, ‘My daddy got it. He’ll let you have it.’ She went to him and came back and he said ‘No.’ And I said, ‘Well, there just an old book in there is all that I wanted.'”
At this point, the man come over and told McBride if she would give him what he paid for the whole box of items, she could have the “old book.”
“So I got it for a dollar and a half,” she said with a grin. “I’ve been told not to sell it for less than $100.”
McBride’s nephew, Bill Lee, was excited on examining the volume and suggested McBride would do well to hang on to it and try to find out more about it. One of the main things that intrigued McBride about this Bible was a handwritten inscription on one of the flyleaves in the front of the Bible.
Capt. J.M. Parks
Bible cared (carried) through
the War 1861 – 1865
Given to G.W. Parks
By His Mother after his death
A search on the Web revealed a J.M. Parks in the 16th Regiment, Tennessee Volunteers. The reference was to a document attributed to a G.W. Parks, the man who apparently wound up with his relative’s Bible. The reference reads: “A Faithful Watch and its History,” George W. Parks, Irving College, Tenn., Vol. XVII, p. 604.
McBride had found out quite a bit on her own, without the aid of the Internet.
“I started asking around,” she said, “and I can’t remember who told me, but someone told me it belonged to a man from Irving College and had been given to him by a relative. And somehow, it just wound up in this sale with some items from his estate.”
The title page of the Bible identifies it as a “Polyglott Bible.” Research on the Web reveals this particular version of the Holy Word has some errors as compared to the King James version. Turns out McBride had discovered this fact as well.
“I would get down my Bible and find a passage,” Lela said, “and then compare it to this one and I found some differences.”
According to it’s title page, McBride’s Polyglott Bible was published by J.B. Lippencott with a Roman numeral date of MDCCCLX, which translates to 1860, making this Bible 145 years old. Obviously, Capt. Parks purchased the Bible just before he went to war and carried it with him during his travels.
Naturally McBride is pleased to find she has a very special Bible, steeped in Warren County, and Civil War, history. Auction sites on the Web indeed show Bibles of this type generally go for around $100, just as McBride was advised. But she says she has no plans to sell the treasured book.
“I’m just going to pass it down through the family,” she said.