Another good reason for being a packrat

While we've been home this past week, a project has been to sift through some boxes I've let pile up, to sort the wheat from the chaff.  I've thrown out bags of chaff, but have also unearthed some nuggets that make me glad I didn't just toss it all out.

I started looking through an old Bible, published in 1854.  I've recently become enamored with genealogy and know a lot more family history now than I did a few years ago. A few years ago, I didn't know who the owner of this book was. Or care.

This says "Edmund Parham's property, Dec 2nd 1855."   I know now that Edmund was my great-great-grandmother's younger brother who was born in 1833.  He died in 1864 in Spotsylvania, Virginia, fighting for the Confederacy in the War Between the States. 

If he had this book with him when he died in Virginia, I have no idea how it would have found its way back to his home in Georgia.  But no matter - what he has written in the front of the Bible is haunting:

"...my country though sad and forsaken, in dreams we visit thy seabeaten shore,

but alas, in a foreign land I awaken, and sigh for the friends who meet me no more."