I’ve found an enormous - I mean enormous - old bible in the rafters of my loft

[TheBramley]

It’s got marriage, birth and death inscriptions in the front pages from 1840. It’s in a bad way but fully intact. What should I do with it? I live in an ex local authority properly from about 1950. It was behind the old wadding.

My grandfather had a couple like that. He was a church minister. I don't think that they are massively valuable, but lovely to own.

How wonderful!

Or a pint of milk

Family bibles like this are hugely valuable to anyone researching their family tree. There may be a Family History Society near you - your local library may be able to help or have a quick scan on Facebook if you're a user. Whilst you might want to keep the bible with the house, the information might be just what someone is looking for! I have a similar Bible from the 1850s and I found bookmarks, an old Christmas card and lots of other bits and pieces in it too.

It's from 1840's - the house was built in 1950's can't imagine anybodys in Facebook

Google lens to find out more.

@neverknowinglyunreasonable I’m embarrassed for you. Are you the sort of person who absolutely has to make everything a joke. It must be very trying for everyone around you.

There are people in my village whose families have lived here that long. We have streets that have family names on.
If you posted that on social media round here, someone would know a relative, if there was one, even if they’d moved away!
And my local town is more like a cluster of villages. They’d track them down.

I have a huge old bible I bought from a charity shop. It was inscribed with the name
REV......... I assumed it once belonged to a church

How exciting. We used to have a huge bible with family names written in dating back to the 1700s I think. This must have been a thing back in the day!!

So strange - was the loft the place to store them?!

Contact your local church, they should still have records and may be able to tell you about the family whose records you have. Sounds fascinating though, we once caught MIL about to have a clear out of the detritus from 4 family homes. She was about to chuck certificates, Christmas and birthday cards from the Somme etc..

Amazing. Ive never heard of family bibles. What is written on the pages?

familysearch.org which is the massive Mormon site based in Salt Lake City is free and comprehensive.
Your local library should be able to give you access to one of the pay sites, Find My Past or Ancestry, for free too.

Ha ha!! Hello fellow dullster

A friend found something similar and I was able to use Ancestry to put together a family tree and identify a couple of present-day family members - one of whom was more than delighted to drive for two hours come and collect it. Something like this is literal treasure to anyone researching the family.

Dear God put it back before the witching hour strikes!

DH would be like your MIL and try to chuck this and I’d have to figure out if anyone wanted it. One of my parents would keep things like this, the other would firmly class it as clutter.

Closest spot to god innit

Ask your local records office…they may find it useful for their archives and help with the family genealogy.

We still have one! One of our wedding gifts from an elderly Christian couple was a beautiful leather bound King James Bible with spaces to write our family in. I treasure it.

how exciting to find OP. I’d let the county records office know of its existence and maybe some of the names in it.

We bought a victorian doer upper - found an old bible in a crumbing garage.

I brought it back in the house! Just in case!

The engraving is after Rubens (Daniel in the Lion’s Den)

Who published this edition? There should be details on the title page.

I have no doubt that then I depart this earth a lot of what's upstairs will be chucked out. To be fair, I'm not sure why it's there, a lot of it I have no idea about!

That is very large. Amazing !
I have an ancestry sub so PM me if you want me to look up any of the people .