The Bear Bible…what is that! (click on the link above and you’ll see the whole story of the Bear Bible’s travels!) I’d been reading about this bible for awhile, here and there in written Gillette genealogies. Stories of this 17th century surviving relic captured my imagination. In the back of my mind, I wondered where it was and if it still existed.
My discovery of the answer to this question, long way around, is as follows: this April, Judy and I took a genealogy trip back to Massachusetts. We had intended to go in 2018, but life circumstances meant we couldn’t make the trip. So when Daren announced he was running in the 2019 Boston Marathon, I jumped at the chance to head back to the New England Historical and Genealogy Society’s headquarters in Boston. Without any idea of what she was getting into, Judy agreed to go with me.
In preparation for our trip, I contacted the staff genealogist at Windsor Historical Society, Michele Tom. She sent me the link to their published story of the Bear Bible above.
As an aside, if you are ever making a genealogy trip, I highly recommending contacting local genealogists ahead of time. I’ve found, as in this case, they are more than willing to compile information for visiting GERDS (AKA genealogy nerds). Not only do you meet really nice people, but you significantly shorten your research time by using their knowledge of local resources. This method worked for our Irish trip a few years ago, and it has been really helpful for our upcoming Welsh trip.
In any case, I was amazed that not only did the bible exist, but it actually resides in the little museum at the Windsor Historical Society (Connecticut). So on our second day in Boston, Judy and I rented a car and made the drive West to Windsor, Connecticut.
Michele pulled out numerous resources which Judy and I spent hours going over and copying, where they were relevant to our branch of the Gillettes. I discovered that the Gillette family is much larger than I’d known, and we came away with lots of material, only part of which I’ve digested.
And we saw the Bear Bible, albeit behind glass! Another name for this bible is the Geneva Bible or the Breeches Bible. The Breeches Bible refers to how this edition calls Adam and Eve’s “fig leaf” — “breeches”. I guess the Calvinists in Geneva thought breeches would cover more territory than fig leaves!
If you look carefully, you can see indentations in the pages on the right side of the bible. Apparently, the bible was used to support a lower window sash so the summer breeze could cool the cabin. A bear trying to gain entry took a swipe at the bible and left a mark that remains 300 years later. Hence the name Bear Bible.
Here’s one of the first references I found to the Bear Bible in written genealogies, described here as the Gillette Bible, at the top of the second column.
In the Palisado Cemetery, Judy and I found the gravesite for Mary Gillette Brown and Peter Brown, husband and wife, who lived in the mid 1600s. Mary was the daughter of the original immigrants Jonathan Gillette and Mary Dolbere, who arrived in the New World in 1630. While many histories say they arrived on the ship Mary and John, the NEHGS doesn’t believe their presence on this ship is positively proven. We know they lived in Dorcester with those who were on the ship. We know they moved further West to Windsor with these same people, but before that it’s a bit murky. Darn that pesky genealogy proof standard! It makes for a better story in any case!
Another fun aside: I get brain dead when I’ve looked at too many documents. I was ready to go, cooling the neural connections, standing beside a bookshelf waiting to see another gem, an original deed of land from Josiah Ellsworth to Cornelius Gillette (my ninth great uncle), (the land being bounded by the land of Jonathan Gillette) when I happened to glance down. Hmm, a book about Winchell genealogy. Our grandmother was an Everett, and her grandfather married a Winchell. I wonder…and there they were in the almost 3″ thick genealogy: Henry Everett and Phoebe Winchell. Luckily this book is online, because there’s no way I could dive down that rabbit hole at the end of a research day!
Following the trails of our ancestors 