"ONCE UPON A TIME AND HAPPILY EVER AFTERS"

When I was in college, I worked in the campus library to make some extra money to fuel up my car and purchase textbooks and other supplies.  It was one of my favorite jobs of all time.  Why, you ask?  I was surrounded by books...and quiet!  In the summer months, the library was not a "happening" place except for myself and the other student workers who would make up our own entertainment on the lower level racing book carts up and down the stacks of shelves.  After the novelty wore off, we were sent off to our respective duties for the day.  We all needed to take turns behind the front desk.  When it was my turn, I would slip into the "Restricted to Lend" books and select one of the very old, very awesome volumes of "Staten Island and Its People".  I would perch myself on the stool by the circulation desk and read about the history of my hometown.  I was so entranced by the vintage-feel of the book, that I asked the head librarian if I could purchase the five volumes.  To my dismay, she said no.  As far as I was concerned, I was the only person who ever viewed these books over and over again.  I really do have a passion for old books.

Sometimes when I am at a yard sale or a flea market, I will seek out the old book section just to try to find another set of "Staten Island and Its People".  So far, I've had no luck.  However, a few months ago, my brother showed me a book that he purchased at a yard sale in the mid-1980s.  Well, it used to be a book; in fact, it was an old family Bible.  The reason I say that it used to be a book is because my brother tore out the first couple of family history / information pages and discarded the rest of the book.  He showed it to me because he thought I would find it very interesting.  I did find it very interesting, but I also felt a twinge of "cyber-sleuthing" coming upon me like a freight train.  I asked my brother if I could borrow his laptop and I logged into my Ancestry.com account.  I began searching some of the names that were in the family history / information pages.  After about half an hour, I located one of the names in another person's family tree.  The information was exactly the same, including the spellings, the location, and the dates.  I contacted the owner of the tree and let him know that my brother was in possession of some documents that might be of interest to him.  

My brother gave permission to send the pages off to this gentleman who we are now Facebook friends with.  It truly was a great gesture on my brother's part.  It also put together some missing pieces regarding the other person's family tree.

The moral of the story...we are all linked.  There are reasons why certain things come into our possessions and, if we have the time and a little patience, we can locate the proper owners and give them their "happily ever afters" in genealogical discoveries.

Above are pages torn from the old Bible my brother purchased at a yard sale many years ago.

Thanks for reading and happy hunting!