200-Year-Old Bible Found By Denver Goodwill, Sparks Extensive Efforts to Reunite Precious Heirloom With Family
An heirloom bible discovered at a Goodwill store in Denver, Colo. has been rightfully returned to its owner on the east coast thanks to an employee's interest in genealogy.
The Denver-area Goodwill store recently received a large, weathered-looking bible placed in a donation box along with various computer parts. Employees at the store opened the tome to find an inscription written in black ink that read: "Wm Burbidge, Long Bucky, Northhamptonshire, born May 20th 1812, Died August 9th 1882."
The inscription ended with "Grace Ann Burbidge, Born July 31st 1854, Died 12th May 1932."
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According to Denver's NBC affiliate KUSA, the bible was originally printed in 1812 in England. News of the rare donation worked its way up to the company's Chief People Office Joyce Schlose, who used her interest in geneaology to track the descendants to William and Grace Ann Burbidge. Schlose eventually discovered a descendant living in Denville, New Jersey named Roy Evans, whose great, great grandfather was reportedly the nephew of William Burbidge.
Evans, who also has family living in London, told KUSA that he has no idea how the Holy Book ended up in a donation box in Denver, but he intends to "take good care of [the book] for future generations" to come.
Goodwill's rare find has generated buzz on Twitter and other media outlets, with readers expressing how impressed they are with Goodwill's ability to track down Burbidge descendants.
"This is great news. I love stories like this," wrote one reader named Julie on People's edition of the story, adding that she found the discovery to be "very awesome" and congratulated Goodwill on its "good detective work."
Others on Twitter congratulated the nonprofit organization for "going the extra mile" in returning the Holy Book to its rightful owner. Andrew Glen Kizer, who describes himself as a Goodwill supervisor on his Twitter page, congratulated his company on going "above and beyond" to return a precious family treasure.
There have recently been other news stories describing the resilience of decades-old bibles. When the Spanish Christian Church in east Harlem, New York was destroyed by a gas explosion in mid-March, a decades-old bible used by the 80-year-old church's founders was discovered in the rubble. Although the bible was visibly charred, its pages and Scripture remained intact.
The Rev. Rick Del Rio of Abounding Grace Ministries, who attended a prayer service for the destroyed church after the explosion, took the survival of the bible as a sign that the spirit will remain, even when physical elements disappear.
"The Word was preserved," the Rev. Del Rio said, according to the New York Post. "We thank God for that […] The building has come down, but the spirits are alive."
When a violent tornado outbreak tore through parts of Oklahoma in May 2013, residents of Shawnee, Okla. found a tattered bible that had somehow survived the devastating natural disaster. The Holy Book was open to Isaiah, chapter 32, which reads, "A man will be as a hiding place from the wind, and a cover from the tempest."
