Thursday, April 25, 2013

Nana's Bible from Scotland ~ Treasure Chest Thursday

I will always be grateful to my great grandmother, Melvina Jane Hamilton Bustin (1886-1974) for her notations on so many photographs that have come into my possession over the years.

So you can imagine how thrilled I am to have discovered her personal New Testament.




It measures roughly 4 by 2 1/2 inches and is leather-bound.




The front cover is embossed with a seal of the National Bible Society of Scotland. My great grandmother was born and raised in Nova Scotia, and her mother was born a Mackay, so this makes perfect sense.,


The frontispiece is the most treasured page, since it is inscribed:

Melvina J. Hamilton
Burnside

This is not my grandmother's handwriting, which I have become quite familiar with, so this makes me think that this miniature volume was a gift.

[The pencil notation of "October 1901" under "Burnside" appears to have been added later by her(?)]

Burnside is her birthplace, a small farming village, part of Upper Stewiacke, in Colchester County, Nova Scotia.


The title page states that the New Testament was printed to be read in churches, and was published by authority of His Majesty in Glasgow in 1891.


It contains all the books of the New Testament,
 as well as the Psalms of David,
"In metre:
According to
THE VERSION
approved by
THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND"

On the last fragile pages are "Translations and Paraphrases, in Verse, and the lyrics of three hymns.

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