Fanny’s Bible

We’ve been cleaning out Fletch and Shirley’s house and looking hard for the missing Smith family bible from the 1800s without any luck. I’m so glad that I scanned the genealogy pages years ago – it makes me sick that we can’t find the book now.

That Bible has always been a mystery to me. At one point, it apparently belonged to Averilla Hollis Frank, who never had any children. All of her adult life, my son’s 4th great-grandmother – Skip & Matt’s 3rd great-grandmother, Frances A. “Fanny” Gash Smith – lived with Averilla, Averilla’s mother, or another of the Hollis sisters. Fanny is buried with Averilla’s mother, Martha Hollis, in Brooksville, Kentucky. We don’t know how Fanny and the Hollises were related, but Fanny’s son Henry [Barnard or Barnet] Smith ended up with Averilla’s Bible. That’s the one that is now missing.

Fanny’s husband, O.F. Smith, is also a mystery. I have found only two records for him besides Averilla’s Bible: the record of his marriage to Fanny in Kentucky, and his death, which was recorded in the 1880 census mortality schedule in Polk County, Iowa – over 600 miles from Fanny and their son Henry in Kentucky. The census reported that he died at the county’s poor farm. One record says he was born in Ohio; the other says he was born in Pennsylvania. For a man named Smith, that’s not much to go on.

This afternoon, on a high shelf at the Smith home, I found a worn album of tintypes, daguerrotypes, and old studio photos from the 1850s through the 1890s. There was a note from one of the childless Smith relatives inside. Shortly before her death at a great old age in the mid-1990s, this relative had written to Fletcher that she didn’t know who the people in the album were but wanted him – her only living relative – to have it. One of those photos is identified as Averilla Hollis Frank. Others are identified, but the names aren’t familiar to me. More have no identifying information beyond the studio’s name, and sometimes its location (always in Ohio), printed on the cards.

Next, I reached for the worn, leather-bound book shelved beside that album. Its spine was illegible, but the name “John Barr” was inked thickly into the edge of the pages opposite the spine. I opened it. Scrawled inside the front cover was a poem of sorts, or possibly a dedication: “John Barr his hand and this 18th day of March 1838 / Steal not this book my honest friend for fear the gallows may be your end. Oliver P. Gash March the 18th 1838.”

Oliver was one of the Gashes who lived in the Ohio/Kentucky area where Fanny lived, but I had not made a firm connection between them. My heart started beating fast. “Matt, look! Here’s a dedication to someone named Gash!”

I flipped the page. It was a bible! It isn’t one of the big ones we normally find from that time, but an ordinary-looking book about the size of a fat mass-market paperback. I flipped through, but no interior genealogy pages appeared. Then I flipped to the back cover.

Names. Dates. All of them Gashes.

“Oliver P. Gash was born July the [ ] 1817” – meaning he was 20 when the front matter was written. “Martha Elizabeth Gash was born February the 9, 1827.” “Fanney Ann Gilbert Gash was born November 14th, 1829.”

“FANNY! It’s FANNY!” I exclaimed.

By now, Matt was standing right next to me. “You just got chill bumps,” he observed. Chill bumps? I was shaking. Ecstatic!

Names of Gashes I have not been able to connect to Fanny appeared in order by date of birth, in different inks, in pencil, and in different handwriting. I turned the page. They had to be her siblings. Right? I had found them, but they were not firmly connected to one another like this. For a few years now, my working hypothesis has been that they were siblings, but I didn’t have anything to support that other than they lived in the same area at the same time and were close in age.

Below the Gash entries, I could barely make out, “Henry Bernet Smith, born October 5, 1851.” Fanny’s son! Then, “Barnard Preston Gash was born June the 23, 1786.” “Isabel Gash was born August the 2, 18__” “Bernard P. Gash died March 1837.” “Isabel Gash died December 12, 1874.”

And then, “Fanny G. Smith died July 28, 1886.”

Oliver was only 12 years older than Fanny, so he couldn’t be her father. Barnard Preston Gash died the year the youngest Gash child listed in this Bible was born. Could he have been Fanny’s father and Isabel, her mother? Isabel appears in the census as head of household in 1840, 1850, and 1860, with children but never a husband. I had wondered if she might be Fanny’s mother.

But who was John Barr? One of the recorded births is Martha Jane Barr, born January 3, 1837. Now I wonder about the family relationship between John Barr, Martha Barr, and all these Gashes!

Flipping back to the front of the bible, I found an obituary for Martha A. Shetler, the wife of George Shetler, Sr. She was the mother of four children and died in Marshalltown, Iowa – near where Fanny’s husband, O.F. Smith, died. The obituary said she was born in Ohio and married in Pennsylvania.

And later, when I picked up the book to photograph it for this post, I saw that a copy of a genealogy page from Averilla Hollis’s Bible – the very one that originally identified Fanny Gash and her husband O.F. Smith to me – is pasted into the front of this bible, too, carefully folded to the right size to have been undetected when my shaking fingers first started looking for names in this little book.

Today’s treasure trove of the little bible and the photo album may crack the Smith/Gash ancestry mystery. Now I need time to puzzle it out – although a few more hints and records would help!

UPDATE: We found Averilla’s Bible!

Last Updated on October 16, 2024 by