I was disposing of some of my mother's belongings since her death in 2002. One item I discovered was a family Bible embossed with the name 'Thomas Nuckols'. The only date in the Bible is the copyright date of 1872. It measures 12" x 10" x 4" and weighs about 10 lbs. Although it is a family Bible, no events are recorded and I find nothing written in it. There is a single tintype of a young man, possibly the mysterious Thomas Nuckols, in the photo album pages.
There are lots of big photos at the bottom of this page.
I know of no Nuckols in our family, but suspect this Bible belonged to an in-law who left it to a female member of our family. Our family are mostly from Tennessee with some members in Florida. We are Walkers, Gardners, Tiptons, Whiteheads, Myers, Jenkins and Dunns mostly.
I decided to use the WWW to locate someone who might have a particular reason to want to own this Bible. I offered it for sale for $150 including postage and sold it to a buyer in California in January 2008. This is at the high end of valuations for family Bibles, but this one is quite presentable, unlike many I've seen. The covers look quite good. The paper was inexpensive so it's far from pristine inside (splotchy), but it is acceptable and sound. Also it has the unique characteristic of not having been written in.
I have photographed the exterior and typical pages within. This Bible, in addition to having the texts of the Testaments, has an encyclopedia of the Bible with 2500 illustrations, many being full-page plates (many in color), a Dr. Smith's dictionary of the Bible, Concordance, histories of each Book, etc. There are so many articles and explanatory sections that it is impossible to say how many pages there are in the Bible - perhaps 1500. The Bible text alone is 848 pages. This is an encyclopedia of the Bible.
Thanks for looking,Ralph Walker
