Family Records from Bibles and Prayer Books

Cover Image:
Listing of births
Olcott Family Birth Records, 1846 - Image Source

Collection Facts

Extent:
17
Dates of Original:
1702-1923

Scope of Collection

An assembled collection of 100+ images of handwritten family genealogical records (i.e. marriages, births, deaths) in Bibles and prayer books.The collection includes 14 transcriptions of family records (marriages, births, deaths), personal notes, letters, and newspaper clippings from 17 Bibles and prayer books.

The publication dates of the Bibles and prayer books range from
1702-1882 and were owned by residents of Albany County, NY. The handwritten genealogy records and other records written in English, Dutch, and Italian span 1742-1923.

There was a tradition in Christian communities of writing family records on the pages of Bibles and prayer books. This led printers to create ornamental pages for the family records often located between the Old and New Testaments or at the end of the text. These documents are significant because they provide highly accurate family history records that may not have survived otherwise.

Special Content:

Thank you to the following for their work on this collection: 

ACHA Staff: Bradt, Aaron (Project Implementation, Digitization, Meta-data); Kosto, Kathryn (Arrangement, Dutch Translation)

ACHA Archive Volunteers: Abram, Susan (Transcriber); Brankman, Anthony C. (Transcriber); Bartram, Carol (Transcriber); Garabedian, Beth (Transcriber); Gretter, Worth (Transcriber); Rector, Rebecca (Transcriber); Wehren, Vida (Transcriber); Younge, Lee H. (Transcriber)