Over the years, I have been on the receiving end of several family treasures, including a family Bible, my grandmother’s diary, a spoon from her wedding silverware, a set of quilt blocks she stitched, my uncle’s baby book dating from 1908, and my father’s bronze toddler shoes. These items have special meaning to me, and they add a very human touch to the paper records I have compiled.

As an avid eBay browser, I have noted a number of family records for auction. When I have available funds, I try to buy some of these documents. Recently, I found and successfully bid on a family Bible. Considering how much I value the artifacts of my ancestral families, I was determined to place the Bible in the hands of a living descendant of either family connected to the Bible. I began searching for that person.

I knew that the Bible was given to Mary Affleck Cleghorn in 1841 by John Stewart of Lewiston, New York.

As is typical of many family Bibles, this one had a family records section between the Old and the New Testaments. Recorded in its pages were births, marriages, and deaths.

I found inserted in the Bible the title page of a scripture book published in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1803. Perhaps it was taken from an earlier family Bible. On the back of the page were the names and birth dates of seven of the nine children born to John and Mary Cleghorn. A second handwritten page inserted in the tome appeared to be more modern in origin. It traced the family of Patrick Callan and Bridget O’Donnell and listed members of the extended Cleghorn family.

I found the name of a living descendant recorded in the pages of the Bible, so I sent an e-mail to her with the family information contained in the Bible. Her response was reward enough. She said it was the “things dreams are made of.”

The International Genealogical Index (IGI) listed the marriage of John Cleghorn and Mary Affleck. However, none of their Scottish-born children were found in the Church of Scotland records (also found on the IGI). The family immigrated to America in 1828 and settled in Lewiston, New York. Using my 1880 United States Census and National Index CD-ROM, I found both families still living in Lewiston. 

I also searched several other censuses using the Ancestry.com Web site. The name indexes to the 1850 and 1860 censuses quickly produced various members of the Cleghorn family. My home-based research was rapidly adding to the information I had for this Scottish family. The 1920 census listed members of the Peter Callan family living in Niagara Falls. A previously unknown Callan granddaughter was enumerated in this census.

I then decided to surf the Internet in hopes of finding people who were researching these particular Cleghorn and Callan families. Using a search engine, I searched by keyword for the families and had three hits. Two messages posted online pertained to the Callan family, but I was unable to contact the people who posted the messages.

The third message was posted on a Niagara County, New York, genealogy Web site and was from the descendant of James Nasmith Cleghorn, son of John and Mary Affleck Cleghorn. She was the same person I e-mailed when I first received the Bible. She and I sent numerous messages back and forth.

I am still amazed at how much I was able to accomplish at home with the resources in my library and on the Internet. I was not only able to find information about the Cleghorn and Callan families, I was also successful in locating a living descendant.

I finally mailed the Bible to the woman with whom I had been in contact. She is happy to be the custodian of the Cleghorn family Bible; I am happy to have played a part in placing it in her hands. For me, the reward of knowing that this treasure ended up in the hands of a family member who will cherish it as I do my own family treasures is the greatest reward of all. 

Judith Eccles Wight, AG, CGRS, is a professional genealogist who worked as a British reference consultant at the Family History Library. She is currently focused on researching, writing, teaching, and lecturing.

Return to the Ancestry Magazine May/June 2002 Table of Contents.