{"id":1779,"date":"2012-09-27T18:44:00","date_gmt":"2012-09-27T18:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.genealogybank.com\/?p=1779"},"modified":"2019-03-28T10:34:46","modified_gmt":"2019-03-28T14:34:46","slug":"genealogy-serendipity-ancestors-bible-journals-returned-to-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/genealogy-serendipity-ancestors-bible-journals-returned-to-family.html","title":{"rendered":"Genealogy Serendipity: Ancestor\u2019s Bible & Journals Returned to Family"},"content":{"rendered":"

Let me tell you about my cousin Ransom and the kindness of a stranger who returned his long-lost Bible and journals through a serendipitous chain of events.<\/p>\n

\"photo<\/a>
Photo of Ransom Smith\u2019s Bible and journals by the author<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ransom\u00a0Ferdinand\u00a0Smith\u00a0(1864-1940) lived in Woodstock, New Hampshire. He was a first cousin of my great-grandmother Frances Lila (Sawyer) Huse (1863-1958).<\/p>\n

On Monday (Sept. 10th) I entered the details of\u00a0Ransom\u00a0F.\u00a0Smith\u2019s life on my family’s online tree site.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday (Sept. 11th) I received this e-mail: \u201cMy search for\u00a0Ransom\u00a0F.\u00a0Smith, married to Carrie and living in\/around Grafton, N.H., from 1812-1922 led me to your family’s online tree. I acquired his Bible and 4 daily journals (3 small, 1 large) at an auction in MA about 30 years ago. They were in the bottom of a box lot of linens! If you are interested in having them, would you please email me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Imagine that\u2014I put the family’s genealogy information online Monday. The very next day a woman is cleaning her house and unpacks a linen box she hadn\u2019t looked at for 30 years. At the bottom of the box she finds a Bible and four journals, and tries to return them to the original owner\u2019s family.<\/p>\n

She Googled Ransom\u2019s name\u2026<\/p>\n

Bingo\u2014she found my online family genealogy page, contacted us, and mailed these priceless family records to us. Serendipity!<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a great day for genealogy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thomas Jay Kemp writes about the kindness of a stranger who found and returned his cousin Ransom Ferdinand Smith\u2019s long-lost Bible and journals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48979,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12557],"tags":[943,12,18861],"class_list":["post-1779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-genealogy-stories","tag-family-bibles","tag-genealogy","tag-letters-and-diaries-or-journals"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/photo-0927-2012-featured-graphic-bible-journals.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1779\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}