Gene-Angels do exist! I know, I now have two!

It's very interesting sometimes how things happen when you work on your family history. Things that you never expect. A few days ago I received an email from a woman named Amy Keller. I've never met and don't know a thing about her except that Amy has a heart of gold. Amy is truly a gene-angel.

Amy was browsing the shopgoodwill.com website and noticed an old Parks family bible up for auction. The description included photos of some of the pages which showed handwritten Parks family notes in the bible. One of the earliest dates was 1778. She did some research online looking for a possible connection to someone doing research on the Parks family. She found my email address on ancestry.com and contacted me to alert me that the bible was being auctioned.

After looking at the listing and realizing it was indeed our Parks family, I contacted my cousin Joan and we talked about it. She quickly joined in the auction for a chance to get that bible back in our family. After a couple of nerve wrecking days of competing with other bidders, I am so excited to say Joan won the auction!

I can only imagine what this old bible has been through and the fact that it survives today is quite amazing to me. The Parks family was from early Virginia and removed to North Carolina. Many of the Parks men served in the Revolutionary War in regiments from North Carolina. In 1815, they came with other families to Indiana and became a prominent family Monroe County. No doubt this bible made the trip with them.

How I came to know cousin Joan is a wonderful story too because of a sweet caring gene-angel. Fourteen years ago I went to my mailbox and discovered I had received a letter from someone named Helen Ackerman from Monroe County, Indiana. Just a small handwritten note and a photo copy was enclosed. The note said Helen had been looking at the 1844 Bloomington newspapers on microfilm and an estate administration notice a caught her eye. She recalled reading my recent query about the Parks and Riddle families so made a copy of the estate notice. She sent it to me in hopes it would help with my research. I am forever grateful to her for her thoughtfulness and kindness.

From that notice, I discovered another son, previously unknown to me, had been born to my ggg-grandparents. And from further research and queries, I found my cousin Joan who is a direct descendant of that son.

Joan and I have never met. She lives on one side of the county and I on the other. But over the last 14 years via email and instant message, we have become good friends and work together on tracing the Riddle-Parks family tree. We share our discoveries, talk theories and strategies to break brick walls, commiserate about the frustrations of failures, and celebrate when we make breakthroughs.

So thanks to Amy Keller, a wonderful caring person, the Parks bible has been rescued and will now come home to family who will cherish it. Tonight cousin Joan and I can't stop smiling and are doing the happy dance!