Locals Return Bible To California Couple After 45 Years
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Jennifer Peryam-jperyam@timesuniononline.com
Warsaw resident and history buff Marlin Gross purchased a box of dishes at an estate sale 45 years ago and found a surprise in the box. What he didn’t know was in there was an 1830 King James version of the Bible. He returned the Bible to Thomas Thomas Riley (great-great-great-grandson of Thomas Thomas), 64, and his wife Nancy Riley, 63, at Wyndham Garden Hotel, Warsaw, in June. Riley’s great-great-great-grandfather was the original owner of the Bible. Thomas Thomas owned the Bible and was born Dec. 17, 1792, in Maryland, and died Dec. 17, 1883, in Warsaw. He was buried at Oakridge Cemetery, Goshen. The Rileys visited Warsaw in June from Palo Alto, Calif. Gross, 67, purchased the Bible 45 years ago when he and his wife, Angela, went to an estate sale in Indiana. “There was a box of antique dishes I wanted so I bought the whole box and took it home and went through the box and discovered a King James Bible,” Gross said. He stored the Bible on a shelf in his garage for 45 years and every two to three years he would get it down. “I always wanted to find a family member who it would mean something to,” Gross said. On June 20, 2012, he got the Bible down from the garage and he opened it up and written on a page was the date June 20, 1880, that said “stand fast.” Gross took the Bible to the Kosciusko County Historical Society in 2012, and in January, after he got home, his telephone rang. He answered the phone and it was Mary Kester, Historical Society volunteer, who had got an email inquiry regarding the Bible. Kester also is a volunteer at Warsaw Community Public Library in the genealogy section. The e-mail was from Nancy Riley. Riley was ambassador of Morocco under the Bush administration. Riley received the Ambassador of the Year Award in 2009. Gross got in touch with Nancy and they agreed to meet in Warsaw to return the Bible to the Rileys. Riley sent Gross information on the Rileys’ family tree and a photo of the original owner of the Bible. “For 20 years Tom and I have been looking for the Bible,” Nancy said. “We took an interest in finding the Bible and did genealogy and called family and checked on the Internet and called historical societies in Indiana,” Thomas said. “We are very interested in family history and it was a very interesting relic of the time,” Nancy said. “I saw on ancestory.com someone had published pages from the Bible, and I showed my husband and I contacted Mary from the Kosciusko County Historical Society who gave us Marlin’s phone number in January,” Nancy said. “I practically slept on the Bible when we got it,” Thomas Thomas Riley joked. They plan to display the Bible under a photo of their ancestor in their home. “My life has been touched by Thomas Thomas. I have fallen in love with his story,” Gross said. The Rileys offered to pay Gross for the Bible, but he declined payment. They asked him what organization they could donate funds to and Gross recommended a local organization. They gave money to Destiny Rescue, a Syracuse-based organization that assists with getting young girls out of sexual slavery.
