Many of our ancestors valued their family Bibles for more than the spiritual content. Bibles often had blank pages in them, which made them ideal repositories for important family information. Because many families in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries did not have access to courthouses or hospitals, births, deaths, and marriages were often not recorded elsewhere. If you are the lucky inheritor of a family Bible, you may have valuable information on some of your ancestors on its pages.

Over the years, some St. Louis Genealogical Society members have submitted family Bible information for publication in the society Quarterly. These unique family records may not be available elsewhere and include vital record information on the families.

Most of the families have a connection to St. Louis, but it is not always obvious from the Bible records. The society does not have copies of the actual Bible records, nor do we have the facilities to accept and preserve actual Bibles.

If you have a family bible that you do not want to keep or one that you found that is not your family’s, there are now organizations collecting both the bibles and the information in them.

Others can be found by searching online for “Bible records.”