Bible returned (from USA) to family (in Scotland) after 151 years

[Tanuki]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-40828179


".....It was eventually handed to Donald Mackechnie, 66, at his home in Glasgow.

The Bible had originally belonged to the great-grandfather of Mr Mackechnie's grandmother.

Mr Whitehead, who was gifted the pocket-sized book in 2001 by an amateur Bible collector from Cleveland, Ohio, had rediscovered it when moving home in May.

Noting that the Bible bore the name Alexander MacDonald of Inverness with the date 1 January, 1866, he decided to track down the descendants of Mr MacDonald, who was born in 1825 and worked as a ship master, wine merchant and grocer.
......

Mr Mackechnie, clerk to the board at St Columba Gaelic Church of Scotland in Glasgow, said: "There was a knock on the door one day and this chap was standing there.

"I almost fell on the floor when he explained what he was giving me. I could not believe it, it was such a shock and a surprise.

"The whole family are delighted and over the moon to receive his previously unheard of family heirloom.

"It does not even enter your head that this kind of thing could ever happen - it is quite amazing."

Mr Mackechnie, a retired mechanical design draftsman, said the story of the Bible's return to Scotland is "fascinating and shows there are still kind people in the world".

[stopbush]

1. Imagine how much of that book has come to be regarded as fiction

over the past 150 years.

[Tanuki]

2. Imagine what it meant to the family to have something

that belonged to an ancestor so long ago. I would love to have something like that.