Genealogy: In Between AHA! and Oh, hey?

I had a serious AHA! moment this afternoon. You know when a thought tickles the edge of your brain and it makes you work for it? All afternoon I had an “I know there is something that I should be knowing” feeling. Then it hit me like a lightning bolt! I remembered a Bible, somewhere, that was a gift from my Mawmaw and Pawpaw to Ma like around her graduation from high school and in it she recorded her marriage with my birth father (in ink) and then she marked through it with pencil to record her marriage to Daddy. And that AHA! moment was: my birth parents’ exact date of marriage!!! What?!? So, then I was stumped by which Bible and where was it.

I have a collection of maybe 15-20 Bibles. Odd, how that many have accumulated in my life. There are a handful of Catholic Bibles, there are study Bibles, there is a Bible once owned by Mary Kizka who lived across from my house growing up, there are the kids’ Bibles that ended up in my collection…I could go on and on. I am Bible rich.

For the LIFE of me I could not remember where I saw the Bible and then the second bolt of lightning hit me! In the basement with boxes of random Daddy stuff that I have not gone through. And, because I have issues with attention (yes, I have chased a number of squirrels this evening), it took me about two hours to find it. But, find it I did:

Rough looking, isn’t it? I believe it might be the roughest looking Bible in the house! And inside, there is a “presented to” page to Ma from her parents and it is dates 7 Dec 1965. Not sure what the significance was for that date.

And, inside were two great finds. First there is the page in question with the penciled through “new and updated” husband information. She was married to my father on June TWENTY EIGHTH 1968. At 147 North Broadway, South Amboy, NJ by a John Mullane. Present were John Moffett, Velma Moffett and her best friend Lynn. All kinds of questions wrapped up on that one page. Also, this shows Ma was not afraid of some bad juju, using a Bible and marking through names like that! Now I can order a copy of their marriage record from New Jersey. Not having an exact day was holding me up.