Submitted by Rita:  mylonnie@pacbell.net

  It was the summer of 1994, my friends Sam and Penny who owned The Book Faire, a used book store in Placentia California, phoned me to say they had the first edition of General William Sherman's Memoirs written after the Civil War. I collect Civil War books and photographs as a hobby. When I arrived to buy my sought after books, Sam reached behind the counter and lifted this extremely beautiful heavy Bible up on the counter. He knew I collected antiques and suggested I take the Bible home as a conversation piece. The Bible had been found in an abandoned house in Eagle Rock, Los Angeles County, and Sam had purchased it from the Salvation Army in Los Angeles. He was asking $20.00 for the Bible, and after my continual resisting, he gave it to me and gladly carried it out to my car, joking he didn't feel comfortable with it in the store, probably because he was Jewish. I really didn't want it, but as I looked at it sitting on the passenger seat, I realized how old and beautiful it was. It was covered with rich brown leather, with the Last Supper in gold carved on the leather cover. Everything page inside seemed to have been hand done, filled with numerous colorful religious paintings. Inside I found a wedding certificate, 1875, from Foxburg, Clarion Co. Pennsylvania. Many personal letters, marriage, birth, death, holiday cards, tintypes old newspaper clippings were neatly tucked away in the numerous pages. One odd thing, I noticed was was a page written in spirit writing, done by a physic named Zelda in the 1920's. On the other side, someone was trying to decipher Zelda's message. The owners of the Bible were named Adams. I put the Bible on my library table and basically forgot about until 1997, when I was dusting it and I was surround by an extreme cold feeling and had an extreme urge to find the descendants of the Adams. I started by calling Foxburg and found it only had a small library opened two days a week and a fire station. Luckily, the librarian listened to me and said the Adams were very popular in that area in the1700's, and were English. They hired Indians to stake out the area and claimed extensive areas as the Adams' property. She suggested I get in touch with a young man named Richard, who was an historian in this area. Well, after talking to Richard, giving him all the information I had, he began his search. After traveling to Washington Boro in Lancaster Co. he found Mrs. Adams' grave without a headstone. This was a dead-end for the both of us. I happened to look in our newspaper, the Orange County Register, and noticed a column finding missing people. I wrote the article about the Adams and hoped they would publish it. They published it on a Sunday. Two days later, a lady knocked on my door, and told me she was the great grand daughter of the Adams and that her grandmother had married a Palmer, a citrus rancher, whose ranch was about a half mile from my home. I invited her in and brought the Bible to her. She began to weep, for she had not seen the Bible since 1960. She began to tell me the story. Her grandparents had sold the property, for construction of homes. All valuables had been locked in the ranch house, when someone broke into the house and stole everything, then setting the house on fire and burning it to the ground. She had never left the area and lived very close in Anaheim Hills, and her mother resided in a mobile home park within a mile of my home. Our home was built in 1962, on citrus ranch land. I was born and raised in San Bernardino County and I realized during our conversation, my grandparents who were citrus ranchers, knew the Palmers. We moved here two years after the Bible was missing. Did our family spirits gently arrange the return of the Bible? I know now their forces were at work. I made a very interesting friend, and her mother, who was suffering from dementia, regained her memory when she looked through the Bible. Where had it traveled for 34 years, only to return intact, to it's place of origin, where it was cherished.

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Thanks Rita for sharing your story with us.  :)