Abraham Lincoln's King James Family Bible Surfaces

Lincoln Bible, Unknown to Historians for 150 Years, Goes on Display

"Seven years after her husband was assassinated, Mary Todd Lincoln presented his friend and neighbor, the Reverend Noyes W. Miner, with a special gift: an 18-pound Bible, adorned with a hand-tooled leather cover and gilt-edged pages, that had once belonged to the president. The Bible remained in Noyes’ family, unbeknownst to historians, for 150 years. But the precious the artifact has now been gifted to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Illinois"

"A Baptist minister, Miner had lived across from the Lincolns when they resided in Springfield, Illinois, and was 'a friend very much beloved by my husband,' Mary once wrote. In the wake of the assassination, Miner was among those who escorted the president’s body from Chicago to Springfield, and he read from the Book of Job at Lincoln’s funeral."

 

Lincoln's leather King James Bible moved airline worker to tears as it was scanned on its homecoming journey from San Francisco to Springfield, Illinois

"The Bible was last inherited in 1994 by Miner’s great-great-great-grandson, William Prescott Wolcott of San Francisco. Its power as a tangible link to history was evident in the way an airline employee became teary-eyed while viewing it as it went through a private security screening while en route to Illinois, said Ian Hunt, the institution’s acquisitions chief."

"State historian Samuel Wheeler said the Bible binds Lincoln’s developing spiritual outlook and reliance on scripture....'During the Civil War, there is an evolution that takes place in Mr. Lincoln’s religious thoughts. He is searching for God’s purpose. He’s redefining his relationship with his maker, and he’s trying to figure out what is God’s purpose in this war,' Wheeler said....multicolored ribbon markers are distributed throughout the book, which Mary Lincoln told Miner her husband had placed"