The Tampa man who reunites old family bibles with their original owners has been getting requests for help after we aired his story.
- RELATED: Tampa man connects families with their history
- Andy Smith's unique hobby caught the attention of at least one of our views
- Together, Smith and Chachere connected a North Florida family with their history
Andy Smith, the man with that unique hobby, uses his investigative skills and family tree websites to return family bibles back to descendants of the family. Smith uses clues from the inscription pages of the Bible.
Tampa resident Vickie Chachere saw the story and asked Andy for help with a family Bible she’s had that dates back to 1879.
Chachere and her father picked up the Bible at a garage sale in Oregon in the 1980s.
“We were hunting for old antique books, and we found this one for 25 cents,” said Chachere.
It was one of the many antique book purchases Chachere and her father would make over the years. They shared a special bond over collecting old books. Her father, born in 1911, was a first generation college graduate.
“Anything that was printed material to him really represented an opportunity to learn,” Chachere said.
But Chachere never learned about the family who owned the Bible originally. When her father passed away, she inherited his book collection. She desperately wanted to find the Bible's owners after seeing handwriting on the front page.
The inscription reads, 'R.P. Bell in Washington County, Pennsylvania.'
That’s all she knew, until Smith stepped in to help.
Smith spent three weeks looking through U.S. Census Bureau records, family trees and obituaries. He learned the Bible traveled from Pennsylvania, to California. It was then sold in Oregon to Chachere, who then moved to Florida.
And as luck would have it, descendants of the Bible’s original owner now live in Apalachicola - a small fishing community in the Florida panhandle.
“The Bible has been from one end of the United States to the other," said Smith. "And back again. It’s had its own little journey.”
Smith says the family is excited to see the Bible they didn’t even know existed.
“It’s really special because things disappear," said Chachere. "But stories don’t."
Smith has reunited more than a hundred bibles to their original families, but this was a first for him. Usually Smith finds the bibles online.
“As long as I’ve been doing this, this is the first time I’ve been able to touch the Bible I’ve been reuniting with the family,” Smith said. “You know what, it’s not my family, but it doesn’t make a difference. It feels like my family because I’ve spent so much time investigating.”
Thanks to Smith, another family will get to carry on their story for generations to come.