A Michigan man who says he likes to buy items of historical value at yard sales and antique shops and return them to the original owner’s descendants recently solved a mystery that had been perplexing him for years — who is the rightful owner of an 18th century Bible that had been collecting dust in his dresser for 43 years?
The answer to that question would lead Tom Sage, 69, a retired U.S. postal worker living in Petoskey, Michigan, to Columbus. He would eventually reunite a local woman with a family heirloom she didn’t know existed and reopen a chapter of the family’s history that involves a local veteran who was wounded in battle during the Civil War.
Sage said he bought the Bible, along with a wooden toilet seat and a gas can, for $2.50 at a yard sale in northern Michigan in 1978. He was immediately drawn to the royal coat of arms on the Bible and the fancy print on its title page.
“I knew that Bible had to be really old, and I was intrigued by it,” Sage said. “It was leather-covered and it was hand-stitched. Somebody had tried to repair it at one time. It was falling apart.”
The Bible, which is roughly 5 inches long, 4 inches wide and 3 inches thick, turned out to be printed in Scotland by Mark and Charles Kerr in 1793 — the same year that President George Washington started his second term in office and King Louis XVI of France was taken to the guillotine during the French Revolution.
When Sage returned home and started looking at the Bible, he said he noticed some “crude entries” that were handwritten in pencil, including one that stood out: “George F. Snively and Emily A. Linson were married October the 19, 1865.”
Sage said he attempted on and off for years to find the descendants of Snively and Linson. However, he didn’t have any luck.
A hidden clue
But there was a clue hidden among the 228-year-old pages — a torn strip of paper dated 1916 with the official letter head of the Columbus, Indiana Chamber of Commerce. On the back of the strip of paper, someone had written, “Mrs. George F. Snively loaned book to the chamber of commerce,” Sage said.
“The Rosetta Stone was that little strip of paper,” Sage said. “That’s what solved (the mystery) …If this is letterhead from Columbus, Indiana, I figured it has to have some connection to Columbus, Indiana.”
“So I took it down to the library.”
Last month, Sage went to the Petoskey District Library, where he said a librarian in the resource section helped him decipher the Roman numerals on the title page and gave him the phone number to the local newspaper in Columbus.
On March 19, Sage called The Republic and placed an ad in the classifieds, seeking to return a “1793 Bible from Scotland owned by Snively-Linson family in 1865.”
Sage said he received a phone call about a week later from Henrietta Snively, 89, who lives on the northeast side of Columbus.
Henrietta Snively told The Republic that she had immediately recognized the name George F. Snively in the ad after her friend showed it to her.
George F. Snively was the grandfather of her late husband Smith Snively, a longtime principal at L. Frances Smith Elementary School and Fodrea Community School, who died in 2017, she said.
“Isn’t that amazing? I just couldn’t believe it,” Henrietta Snively said.
“I thought, ‘OK, I’ve got to call this guy,’ she added later in the interview. “…He wouldn’t take any money for it or anything. There are some good people around, aren’t there?”
Last weekend, Sage put the Bible in a Ziploc bag, wrapped it with bubble wrap and rubber bands and then sent it via UPS to Henrietta Snively’s home in Columbus, where it arrived Tuesday morning.
After receiving the Bible on Tuesday, Henrietta Snively said the Bible is fragile and that parts of it looked as if they had gotten wet and turned brown, which had distorted some of the text.
But “if (the print) was clear, I could read it,” she said.
The Bible, however, is just one of several items Sage said he has found over the years and returned to families, an activity he described as one of his hobbies.
Sage said he has found and returned letters written by soldiers stationed overseas during World War II, land deeds to Native American tribes, a postcard from an American man sent from Paris as German forces advanced across Europe in 1939, among other items, he said.
“I just love getting heirlooms back to families,” he said. “Some people appreciate it, some don’t. …This is my hobby.”
A trip down memory lane
For Henrietta Snively, the experience has been surreal, an unexpected trip down memory lane, she said
George F. Snively, who died in 1931, appeared to be relatively well known in Columbus and was the subject of a front-page obituary in The Republic, which was called The Evening Republican at the time.
George F. Snively was born in 1843 in Ashland County, Ohio, but moved to Bartholomew County with his family when he was 12 years old, initially settling in Waymansville. His father cleared some land, built a house and farmed there, according to the obituary, which described him as a “kindly old man” who “usually walked with a cane and had a cheerful smile.”
In 1863, George F. Snively enlisted in the Union army, joining the 93rd Regiment of the Indiana Infantry with the rank of private, according to U.S. Department of the Interior, which maintains a database of Civil War veterans.
The next year, George F. Snively was shot in the left elbow during the Battle of Brice Cross Roads in Mississippi, said Bob Snively, 78, of Columbus, who also is a relative of the Civil War veteran.
About 12,000 soldiers fought during the battle, and a quarter of them died, according to National Park Service, which operates a memorial on the former battle site. The Confederates defeated the Union forces during the battle and took more than 1,600 prisoners of war.
“For three days (after the battle) he rode horseback, during which time he had neither anything to eat or drink,” the obituary states. “By the time he reached the first aid camp, gangrene had set it. For six months, he was in a hospital at Memphis, Tenn., and although his arm was not amputated, the injury left it stiff and rather bent.”
George F. Snively was awarded a pension of $9 per month to compensate for his injuries, Bob Snively said.
After returning from the war, he returned to Bartholomew County and married Linson, who was born in Knox County, Ohio in 1840 but was living in Mount Healthy, Bob Snively said.
Linson was of Scotch-Irish ancestry, and her family likely brought the Bible to North America from Scotland, Henrietta Snively said.
Henrietta Snively also suspects that the Bible wound up in northern Michigan because George F. Snively and Linson’s daughter, Louise Snyder, had a summer cottage in Petoskey, a resort town of about 5,700 nestled along the northern stretches of Lake Michigan.
Snyder died in 1962, “so it must have been her children who had gotten rid of things,” Henrietta Snively said.
“I’m sorry my husband isn’t alive anymore for all of this because he would get a big kick out of it,” Henrietta Snively said.
Sage, for his part, said “I wish I could have gotten it back decades ago.”
“I just didn’t know how to go about it,” he said.
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The Bible, which is roughly 5 inches long, 4 inches wide and 3 inches thick, turned out to be printed in Scotland by Mark and Charles Kerr in 1793 — the same year that President George Washington started his second term in office and King Louis XVI of France was taken to the guillotine during the French Revolution.
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