My Childhood Friend and the Bible

    It all began when I got this email from this man that I didn't know or thought I didn't know.  He said, are you XYZ, and did you use to live in Chattanooga, TN., and were you related to the Edingburg's?  Wow this got my attention which the answer to all those questions was Yes.  So I wrote back but didn't offer any more than what he asked me.  He writes back and says that he's the brother of Connie and that they use to live next door to us and we use to play with each other when we were little.  

   I immediately knew who this was but never in my wildest dreams would I have thought they would remember me let alone find me.  For many many years I always thought about the little girl that I use to play with and her sister and brothers but when I would ask my mom if she knew anything about what happened to them or if they kept in contact she said no.   So he wrote back again and said that the Edingburg's were good friends with them and that they wondered what had happened to us and also that they had been trying to locate me or anyone in the family since 1962.. Big Wow.. That's a long time to keep looking for someone.  I Wonder Why???

    Then he writes back and tells me this incredible story.   The old home place that my gr grandfather Daniel Trigg Edingburg built was going to be torn down back in 1962 so a highway could be put through, and my Uncle Joe who is my uncle through marriage was in the house going through things  throwing just about everything out, including photos, dishes and more. No one knew exactly what he was doing though until one night the next door neighbors which actually didn't live that close, they came over after he left to go home and started looking in the trash to see what he was throwing out. The first night they saw a bunch of junk, and so didn't pay much attention to it. The next night he was back again and was throwing more stuff in the trash, so they came back again and looked in the trash and saw photos but the photos were too ruined to be saved by the time they got here, but they saw on top a huge bible so they took out the bible and went home with it. They looked at it and decided that it needed to go back to the family so they put it in a box and up to the attic it went, wrapped in plastic, then they set out to try and find my father, mother or me. 

He gave me Connie's email and we first exchanged photos of each other and got caught up on what was happening with each other. Then we talked on the phone.. They said they wanted to mail the bible back to it's home.  This was really interesting because I didn't know anyone in my family had a religious bone in their body.  No one talked about religion or anything related to it, so i just assumed that all the family was like that.
Connie said that she wanted to mail it to me but it was so fragile they weren't sure what was the best way to send it, the pages were so brittle, it was just in terrible shape.  They packaged it up in it's original plastic and in a tight fitting box and sent it out UPS. 

When it arrived a few days later, it was huge, and very much in poor shape.  I started looking through it at all the tons of pictures. This book belonged to my gr grandparents, it has their names on the first section in the back, and where they were born, when and where they got married, then it has all their children listed when they were born..my father and uncle are listed  also who delivered them if it was in the hospital or at home, and what time they were born, and the doctors name.  Also in between some pages were report cards from my Aunt Hattie and Aunt Blanche my grandmother's sisters from their grammar school days.

I did some research on the bible and found out in 1855 The Southwestern Publishing Company out of Nashville, TN  published it, and after the Civil War they started selling the books door to door mostly college students selling them. This book was published in 1881.  It was exciting holding something that my gr grandparents owned, touched and wrote in.

This bible sat in the attic 51 years before I received it.  Who would have thought that something like this would happen.  So as to how they found me,  apparently my mother kept in contact with one of her college friends from Chattanooga, and by chance one of the family that had the bible ran into my mom's friend and asked where we were living or if she had an address or email.  She just happened to have my email, for what reason I have no idea as I've never heard from her once. I had no idea she had my email.  The ancestors must have been getting the entire process in motion.

While all of this communication was going on, I was taking care of my mother, she had moved in with us. I wanted to visit with Connie and see the family but it wasn't possible.  In 2012 in April my mom passed away and we made plans in August to go to my husband's family reunion in Atlanta, GA. so while there we also made arrangements to visit with Connie, meet her husband and also got to see her little sister.  We spent the day with Connie  going around to the ancestors cemeteries taking pictures of tombstones and her ancestors headstones as well.  I found out that her younger sister named her daughter after  me.  None of us realized what an impact us moving away had on the other.  We all wondered what happened to our friend or friends. It was such a long time ago I had forgotten my friends name but I remembered that she lived next door across the field and she use to come play with me. She would go with us to Tuskegee, Alabama to the Veterans hospital to see my grandfather.    

  It was quite an adventure.  It took 51 years to reach the family, and reconnected old friends.  I'm sure my gr grandparents Daniel and Minnie Edingburg are happy now that their bible returned home.

You did an excellent job Daniel and Minnie Edingburg paving the pathway for your book to return to it's family home.