From the Archives – Family Bibles

In the 19th century, ornate family copies of the Holy Bible were extremely popular. These tomes were quite expensive, but most families wanted one to proudly display in their parlor. Often, the Bibles were purchased from door-to-door salesmen (they did offer the Douay-Reims Catholic editions) and paid for via monthly installments.

Years before Ancestry.com came along, Bibles helped families record their family trees. In 1980, Margaret Downey Weeks, granddaughter of Daniel O’Sullivan and Mary Kelley O’Sullivan, and niece of Michael O’Sullivan, all life-long, active Saint Mary parishioners, died. When the family cleaned out her house on Gibbon Street, they found such a Bible. It contained a record of the extended family’s births, deaths and marriages for more than a century. There were happy occasions, such as when their daughter Margaret O’Sullivan entered the Holy Cross order; and sad ones, such as when she, now Sister M. Secunda, died in South Bend, Indiana, at the Holy Cross mother-house. In the years before there were vaccines for childhood diseases or antibiotics to cure TB (consumption), many entries recorded the deaths of young people. Daniel and Mary O’Sullivan outlived several of their children: Sister M. Secunda; Timothy, a promising young architect who died of consumption along with his fiancée; Raphael, a little boy who was hit by a train on Duke Street; and two little girls named Johanna. Two granddaughters were drowned while swimming in the Dyke Marsh south of Old Town.

Their Bible also contributed to a family mystery. One daughter, Catherine “Kate” O’Sullivan, married Joseph Monroe, Saint Mary’s organist for more than 50 years. She kept her age secret until she died because she did not want anyone to know she was older than her husband and blotted out her birthdate in the Bible. Parish records did record her baptism, but we learned that later. She was only about two years older than her spouse!

Hopefully, the families also read their treasured Holy Bible regularly and prayed for their deceased loved ones as they meditated on the divinely inspired words found in the scriptures.

— Kitty Guy, Parish Historian

In 2020, to commemorate the 225th anniversary of our parish, we started “From the Archives” as a weekly feature online and in our bulletin to spotlight the history of Saint Mary’s. Due to its popularity, we are continuing the series. An archive of the features is located here.