McIlvaine Bible

McIlvaine Bible


This book is in the possession of
Charles Wohlers , who generously transcribed and digitized it.


Bible was owned by Dr. William McIlvaine of Bristol, PA.

The Bible / Prayer Book predated him by a century (printed in 1666) - there
is one other name in it, "Caleb Emerson", who happens to be Wm. McIlvaine's
maternal grandfather. Nothing about him, unfortunately, except he was
married in Philadelphia & died in 1748.

The book, as was common in those days, is actually several books bound
together, namely:
The Book of Common Prayer, printed by John Field at Cambridge Univ., 1666
The Bible: OT, Apocrypha, & NT - no publishing data
Sternhold & Hopkins' Psalms in Metre, also printed by John Field in 1666.

The printing is _very_ small - I'd guess it was designed to be economical -
so it really isn't as big as one might imagine. It doesn't look like it was
ever used a whole lot - apparently neither the Emersons nor Dr. McIlvaine
were terribly religious. :-)

Caleb Emerson's signature appears at the very end of the Bible - i. e., just
at the end of the book of Revelation.
The list of slaves appears on the back of the title page of the Psalter - i.
e., just a couple of pages after Caleb Emerson's signature.

Info is here:

http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~marshall/esmd10.htm

and here:

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Parthenon/6329/buckskm.html


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[Anyway here is what's written on the back of the title page to the Sternhold
& Hopkins Psalter, as best as I can decipher it:]


Ages of the Blacks belonging to William McIlvaine
Robert born Febry 28 1763 sold, to be free April 24th 1790
Flora Augst 1772 (one short word, undeciferable)
Jenny Dec 1775 sold to be free 1803
Casas (?) July 14th 1778 to be free 1806
Rosetta May 3rd 1780 sold to Lewis Coconin (?)
Anthony Oct 1784 dead
Sarah Nov 1786 given to Lewis Coconin (?)
David. Son of Celia July 15th 1781 bound to Edw [...] [...] 1801
Sarah Coconin (?) May 28th 1789 given to Lauri Coconin (?)
Robert March 1st 1793

[Could the 'Coconin' be a form of 'Corcoran'? It's really hard to make out
that name, even tho it appears several times.

One can tell that it was all written in the same hand, but not at the same
time.


Could the two sets of dates (the second starting with David) indicate two
different families?
]

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