Treasure Chest Thursday - Ada Merritt Hobbs' Bible

Over two weekends last September, Donald and I went through my step-mother's basement finding many hidden treasures from my dad's family in the way of Bibles, books, furniture, photos, negatives, slides, china and silver. After months of airing out I am devoting some time every week to scanning and photographing these finds and sharing them here on Treasure Chest Thursday.

As I explained in more detail last week, we found a literal stack of Bibles and prayer books in that basement last September. Last week I shared photos of the Bible belonging to my paternal great-grandfather, Arthur William Matthews. This week I photographed the Bible of his second wife, my great-grandmother, Ada Merritt Hobbs.

Undated photo of Ada taken in London.

Ada was born in England in 1855. Her Bible is dated 1867 which was the year before both of her parents died. According to my grandfather Matthews, she was the last of her siblings to come to her maternal uncle John Merritt and his wife Margaret Stephens in West Pittston, PA.

Anyone have any ideas what the word under Hobbs is?

Ada's Bible is very different from Arthur's. It is much smaller, including very small print, and doesn't come with any of the extra indexes, maps or anything else that Arthur's has. It is not personalized but stamped "Holy Bible" in gold on its spine with some delicate embossing on the borders of both covers and gilt on the top, front and bottom edges of each page.

In this frame, which came to me as-is, are copies of photos of Ada & Arthur.

I inherited these photos immediately after Dad died eleven years ago.
The negatives were among the treasures in the basement found last September.

It did unfortunately come to me with some damage to the cover so I didn't take too many pictures with the book open. I also had Donald put on a pair of cotton gloves and hold the Book open for me so that we could open it as little as possible. This is a treasure I would love to be able to use myself in daily life, but it is far too delicate.

For next week, I have a Swedish "Bibeln".