By Patrick Baron
BLOOMINGTON – Piecing together an old artifact and tracking down its rightful owner may sound like the plot of a movie, but it’s a story that happened to a local Books to Benefit volunteer.
Dr. Mary Ryder was scanning through the pages of an 1880s German Bible for anything out of the ordinary when she found the fragments of a marriage certificate buried in the book. After piecing it together and translating the text, Ryder researched the names on the certificate until it brought her to the couple’s descendants living in Mackinaw.
PODCAST: Listen to Mary Ryder speak with WJBC’s Patrick Baron about the discovery and research surrounding the marriage certificate.
Ryder explained when she finally got in touch with the family, they couldn’t believe what she had found.
“When I called Jennifer to tell her what I had, she said to me when she called back ‘I’m all goosebumps, this is so exciting for us’, and it was for them and it was exciting for us as volunteers out there too,” said Ryder.
She called the marriage certificate an artifact of culture and artistic piece. Ryder brought the Bible and the marriage certificate back to the family, viewing them as the owners. She said the entire experience was exhilarating, given it’s not something that happens everyday.
“It was thrilling for them and it is kind of an emotional thing for us, because we are dedicated to preserving both the history of the book and anything associated with that kind of history, and here we find this certificate,” Ryder explained. “It’s amazing.”
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Ryder said the certificate’s illustrations depict Biblical events such as the Garden of Eden and Jesus turning water into wine.
Patrick Baron can be reached at [email protected].
