[If you should choose to adopt this prompt to contribute stories of folks who have gone out of their way to lend genealogy-related assistance to others, I would greatly appreciate a mention to Filiopietism Prism whenever you do so. Thank you! And please do use the same photograph below to illustrate the prompt and show it is adopted from this blog. ;-) ]
A woman by the name of Kit Szanto was given a Bible by her aunt. She has no idea how the Bible came to be in her family. The Bible was not in the best of shape (having been rebound more than once), but it did have writing in it that dated back to the 1620s. Kit thought it was old and interesting and maybe someone would want it, so she donated it to the Friends of Gabriola Library, which is located on Gabriola Island in the Strait of Georgia, British Columbia, Canada.
A volunteer for the Friends of Gabriola Library, Kristen Miller, found the Bible in a box of books donated to the organization and she took it it to be appraised. She was told it was not really worth much even though it was going on 400 years old. Kristen brought the book back and over time she thumbed through it and found that the name Richard Pentecost kept recurring and one written entry stated, "Richard Pentecost his book 1742."
You can guess what happened next . . . Kristen visited a genealogy site on line and after some effort found a man named Ron Pentecost. Ron turned out to be the great, great, great grandson of the man who wrote, "Richard Pentecost his book 1742."
Ron Pentecost lived in Toowoomba, Australia. He dabbled in genealogy and subscribed to a genealogy website, but he had not visited the site in about a year when in April 2012 he decided on a whim to check in. He found a message posted by Kristen Miller who lived in Canada.
It turns out the Ron Pentecost was going to be visiting Vancouver where his son was living and the Friends of Gabriola Library decided to give the Bible to Mr. Pentecost. In September 2012 Ron Pentecost was presented with his long-lost family Bible during a special ceremony at Gabriola's new library. A real Good Samaritan moment that you can read more about here.
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Photograph of the The Good Samaritan sculpture by Francois-Leon Sicard (1862 - 1934). The sculpture is located in the Tuileries Gardens in Paris, France. The photograph is by Marie-Lan Nguyen and has been placed in the public domain by her. See, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Good_Samaritan_Sicard_Tuileries.jpg
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Copyright 2013, John D. Tew
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