. . . I Once Was Lost . . . But Now Am Found . . .

Beloved by its original Dougan family owners, this Holy Bible, nearly 200 hundred years old, tattered and water-stained, was published and leather-bound in 1823 in New York City, bundled with other Bibles and carted to the city's wharf, where it was loaded into the hold of a coastal packet ship bound for New Orleans. (Canals had yet to be dug to ease transportation to Pittsburgh and the midwest, and it was cheaper to transport goods by water.)

Packet ship

There the Bibles were unpacked, some sold locally, others placed in barrels, carted to a levee, and rolled up the gang-plank of a steamboat headed up the Mississippi. The side-wheeler entered the Ohio River and about twenty-five days out of New Orleans, arrived in Louisville, Kentucky.

Ohio River

Stacked with other Bibles on a table in a dry goods store, a few days later a God-fearing man of Presbyterian descent picked it up with reverence, carefully turned its pages until finding what he sought, and then counted out $3.75 in silver.  It was wrapped in brown paper and placed in a large hemp sack with other supplies that he tied to the saddle of a smart-looking horse. Man and horse ferried across the Ohio River on a flatboat to Jeffersonville in Clark County, Indiana. He owned a good-sized farm about twenty-five miles up county near New Washington. 

Clark County, Indiana, and New Washington as red insert

And so this Good Book became the Thomas Dougan Family Bible.

Warped page identifies owner Thomas Dougan

His young wife, Sarah "Sally Ann" Dougan, prepared the ink. Thomas picked up the new dip pen with a metal nib and, after practicing on the brown wrapping paper, wrote in a fine hand the names and birth dates of himself, his wife and their children. 

Born in New York State in 1804, Sally married Thomas in 1819 in Indiana when she was fifteen. Ten years older, Thomas was born a few months after his Revolutionary War hero father's death in 1795 in North Carolina. Thomas Senior's life is HERE. His mother Isabelle married the widower Jacob Fouts, but died in 1804 after producing a son. Jacob now had four Dougan daughters, 10-year-old Thomas, and his own children to rear. He and other Fouts men trekked their families up the Great Valley Road and then floated down the Ohio River, arriving in Clark County, Indiana Territory prior to 1810. Three of the Dougan sisters married Fouts men. Thomas Dougan was twenty-five and an established farmer when he married Sally Ann Roe.

List of Dougan children in Thomas Dougan's hand.

This Good Book came to life when opened, its words sparking Dougan souls and soothing Dougan minds during hard times. Their first child,William Dougan, was born in 1820. Eleanor was born in 1821, but died in 1828. Two months before Eleanor's death their fifth child, James Lowry was born, but died when he was fifteen in 1843. Thomas wrote down the births of nine children in the first column, each one slightly more compressed. When additional sons were born, Francis Marion and finally James Oliver in 1845, their names were entered in the 2nd column.

The page of deaths and dates

 After the last child's birth, it was Thomas' own death in 1853 at age fifty-eight that was next recorded. He'd made out his will two months before and its photostat on Ancestry.com shows his signature in the same hand as the earlier Bible entries. Sally Ann, who remained on the farm with the three youngest children, passed on in 1876. Youngest daughter Sarah Elizabeth Dougan, born in 1836, continued to faithfully enter the Dougan family deaths. 

Hers must have been a difficult life. She remained on the farm to help her mother and younger brothers Francis and James, finally marrying in 1878 when she was forty-two. She had no children and there was a divorce. Quite a scandal in those days. Sarah took back her proud Scots-Irish name and in the 1900 census she owned her own home in New Washington and had an 82-year-old woman boarder. She now recorded family deaths in pencil. Still, this Bible must have given her many hours of solace. Perhaps there were nieces and nephews of her Dougan sisters living in Clark County, and of the oldest son, William, who died in 1872, but the other male Dougans had earlier gone west. When her brother Francis died in 1898, he was living in Kansas. John died in 1901 in Illinois and Thomas in 1905 in Missouri. Sarah was Thomas and Sally Ann Dougan's last child living.

Items found between leaves of the Bible

When she died alone in 1917 at age 80 of a heart attack, the informant giving the information for the death certificate was Charles Homer Jones (b. 1877), a barber. Was he a descendant of one of her aunts or was he a neighbor, promised her property if he would just look after her? Whatever his connection, he took possession of the Dougan Family Bible, entered Sarah's death, and then entered his own family's names.

And between the pages was slipped a photograph of a set of twins in cowboy boots taken sometime in the 1920s or '30s.

Perhaps it was the devastating Ohio River Flood of 1937 that damaged the Bible. The last entry is for Charles Daniel Jones, born in 1941. And then the Bible goes silent, not to be opened again for many years. 

Jeffersonville, Clark County, on banks of Ohio River

The last entry, Charles Daniel Jones, died in 2013, not in Clark County, but in California, his children living elsewhere. He did marry in Jeffersonville, Clark County, in 1963. This in itself wouldn't be important, except it was in Jeffersonville a few years back that a hospital surgical tech named Patriece attended an estate auction and purchased a box of items that included a large and soiled old Bible. 

Patriece

Patriece possesses a moral compass. She believed that somewhere in America there was a person who was spiritually connected to the Dougan Family Bible, and she determined to track down that person. She contacted a Dougan she found on the Internet, but received no response. Some time later, she found my blog on Thomas Dougan, Sr. and contacted me.

Our family is not in a direct line from Thomas Dougan; our Dougan ancestors were his cousins, who moved to Indiana a few counties away and a couple of decades after he settled there. Patriece emailed me photos. Could I help? What to do? I emailed back that I would try to find a direct descendant on Ancestry.com. 
 

New Washington 1928 Graduation Program

While snow fell softly outside, I spent a cozy Sunday afternoon in my study searching out descendants of Thomas and Sally Ann Dougan. Oh, yes, plenty of direct descendants are out there, but I hoped for a direct male descendant.  I found Bruce Dougan who, having built a full tree on Ancestry.com, was obviously fascinated by his genealogy. 

It is a wonderful feeling to connect two people, one who wants to bestow an important gift and the other who is thrilled to receive it. Bruce, who lives in Oregon, emailed in response to my query, "This would be of greatest interest to my family and others. I would be honored to receive it. This Thomas Dougan is my 3rd great-grandfather and we have wondered where this bible is forever."

And so Patriece mailed the Dougan Family Bible to Bruce and here he is holding it. A lovely conclusion to my tale. We'll end with Willie Nelson's Song "Family Bible," sung by Johnny Cash. HERE