Sepia Saturday – Can I Count This?

Posted on July 28, 2013 by kathy

Sepia Saturday provides bloggers with an opportunity to share their history through the medium of photographs. Historical photographs of any age or kind become the launchpad for explorations of family history, local history and social history in fact or fiction, poetry or prose, words or further images.

How can I not participate in Sepia Saturday this week? Five of the images that make up the collage/prompt for today are pictures I took of the Bryan Family Bible – a Bible that belonged to my ancestors – George Washington Bryan and his wife Sarah Stokes.

I was in a blogging slump due to some weird symptoms I was having so, just to get back into the habit of blogging again, I decided that this Bible would give me the focus I needed. I let the Sepia Saturday Facebook group know that I would not be participating for a while, but had found something I could do. Somehow my comment and first post about the Bible morphed into the prompt for this week.

I had no plan in mind as I started blogging about the Bible and just wrote about whatever interested me at the moment. I’ve gotten sidetracked again by some personal things, so for Sepia Saturday, I ask that you visit one of my previous posts:

Treasure Chest Thursday – Bryan Family Bible: introduced the Bible and includes the pictures above. George Washington Bryan and Sarah Stokes were my 2nd great grandparents.
The Best Laid Plans: I wish I hadn’t published this, so don’t bother. My point was to get myself blogging again and I did, but this one should have remained unpublished because I didn’t fully think it through.
To Honor a Life: In this post, I discovered what I believe was the catalyst for the family to begin recording events in the Bible.
George Washington Bryan Wrote Here – I Think: I made a case for identifying one handwriting style as belonging to George Washington Bryan.
Just the Facts, Ma’am: after discovering what a goofy post the second one is, I decided to stick to pictures of the writing in the Bible and a transcription.
A Strand of Hair That Matches Mine: There were several items tucked between the pages of the Bible. One is a strand of hair that closely matches a lock of hair I saved from the fourth grade.
Family Relationships Explained: The transcript and writing in the Bible are put in the context of family relationships and I followed what I think is the provenance of the Bible.

I have a few more ideas to pursue with the Bible. There are the rest of the items that were between the pages of the book…. I think I might be able to make reasonable guesses about who one or two of the other handwriting samples belonged to…. When I went through the Bible, I also noted all of the passages that had been underlined or had notations beside them – wondering if I could gain any insight from them.

I apologize for not fully participating this week, but it’s the best I can do for now.

Please visit other contributors to Sepia Saturday.

Bryan Family Bible – Family Relationships Explained

Posted on July 23, 2013 by kathy

Photographs and a transcription offer the names and dates for births, deaths and marriages found in the Bryan Family Bible. But how do the people in these long lists relate to one another?

The Bible belonged to George Washington Bryan and Sarah Bryan nee Stokes.

George and Sarah had eleven children, listed in order below the birth entries for George and Sarah.

Below the birth entry for Sarah Elizabeth Bryan, the youngest child of George and Sarah, are entries for two children born to Samuel David Bryan (ninth child of George and Sarah) and his wife Miranda Bryan nee Cunningham – Mary Marinda and Charley Jefferson.

James Washington Bryan was the eighth child born to George and Sarah. He married Rosa Hoskins in 1884. James Washington Bryan’s birth is recorded on the page above. It is recorded again at the top of the other Births page along with his wife, Rosa Hoskins.

The list of births recorded below James and Rosa are their fifteen children. They take up the whole page!

The Deaths page records the deaths of George Washington Bryan and Sarah Bryan nee Stokes (entries 3 and 6). Also recorded are the deaths of their children William Wesley, Eliza Ann, and George Larkin (entries 1, 2, 4). Uncle John W. Bryan refers to John Wesley Bryan, George Washington Bryan’s brother.

Joe Bryan (entry 7) is a grandson of George and Sarah, and the son of James Washington Bryan and Rosa Bryan nee Hoskins. His death is recorded a second time on an otherwise blank page. There he is recorded with his given name, Jesse James Bryan. He apparently went by the nickname Joe.

The Marriages page lists only three marriages – that of George Washington Bryan and Sarah Stokes, followed by the marriages of two of their children – Mary Hester and James Washington.

Other marriages are listed on the inside of the back cover. At the top of the page, the births of George and Sarah are listed again. These are followed by the marriages of four of their children, Nancy Jane, George Larkin, Marion (Jones Marion), and Samuel David.

There is no entry for the marriage of my great-grandmother, Sarah Elizabeth Bryan, the youngest child of George and Sarah. Sarah Elizabeth Bryan married Thomas Franklin Hoskins in 1884. As far as I know, Thomas Jefferson Bryan and John Franklin Bryan never married. George’s and Sarah’s other two children – William Wesley and Eliza Ann – died in infancy or childhood.

I think that accounts for everyone whose name appears on these pages.

The front cover and the first few pages are missing from the Bible. It is possible that additional information was recorded on the inside of the front cover as it was on the back cover. That is something we will never know.

The Bryan Family Bible ended up in the possession of my mother after both of her parents had died. Before that, it was apparently in the possession of her father, Thomas Hoskins, son of Sarah Elizabeth Bryan and Thomas Franklin Hoskins.

Sarah Bryan nee Stokes died in 1914 at the age of 93. The 1885 Iowa State Census shows Sarah living on her farm with three of her unmarried sons – John, Thomas, and James. By 1900, she was living with James and his wife Rosa and is listed as still living with themin the 1910 census. Sarah’s belongings, including the family Bible, surely went with her when she moved in with James and Rosa.

It makes sense, then, that the Bryan Family Bible remained in the possession of James and Rosa Bryan after Sarah’s death and that the births of their 15 children are recorded in its pages.

My mother remembers going with her father to visit his aunt, Rosa (more commonly called Rose), when my mother was a little girl. Perhaps Rose, who died in 1955, passed the Bible on to my grandfather, Thomas Hoskins Jr.

Bryan Family Bible – A Strand of Hair That Matches Mine

Posted on July 17, 2013 by kathy

One of the fun things about going through an old Bible is finding little items tucked in between the pages. The Bryan Family Bible contained a few such treasures. I’m sharing just one of them today – a strand of blonde/light brown hair wrapped with a piece of thread.

I wonder who saved this little strand of hair and who the hair belonged to? I think I’m pretty safe in assuming that it belonged to a member of the Bryan family – perhaps one of George’s and Sarah’s children. Maybe it belonged to my own great-grandmother, Sarah Elizabeth Bryan, or to one of George’s and Sarah’s grandchildren.

A while back I was going through one of my stacks and came across this envelope.
That’s my handwriting from many years ago. I don’t remember saving a sample of my hair in an envelope, but here is what was inside.
These look like they are just about the same color, don’t they?
And just to make it abundantly clear how closely they match since the lighting in the picture above makes the hair look redder than it really is, here they are together and closer to the actual color of the hair samples.

A pretty close match, especially the darker parts of my hair, even if I don’t have the best photography skills to prove it.

It is kind of awesome to find a strand of hair tucked away in an ancestor’s Bible that is over 150 years old – and have it match your own hair. I think we may be related.

Related posts:

Abbie and Eveline

Monthly Archives: July 2013

Sepia Saturday – Can I Count This?

Bryan Family Bible – Family Relationships Explained

Bryan Family Bible – A Strand of Hair That Matches Mine