Don’t Let Size Fool You
by Georgina Scally, M.A.G.I.
I come from a family of hoarders…and I mean hoarders! Both sides, non-stop
professional hoarders…going back generations. While this might sound just the
ticket for a genealogist, it brings with it lots of baggage (excuse the pun). So, by the
time both parents departed this earth over 20 years ago, the only member of the
family left living close by (me) inherited the family addiction – box by endless box….
While ‘lots’ were drawn for the larger items – those deemed of value, size, or worth
fighting over, the result, at least for me, was that I now never had nothing to do as
the option to sort the ‘stuff’ was always there. In the two decades since, I’ve looked
though everything once. Also, in the two decades since, I morphed into a genealogist
– how useful! During one of these forays, I fell upon a tiny, leather-bound, gilt-
edged book, 2.5 x 3cm (about 1 inch) in size. Inside (it probably hadn’t been opened
for a hundred years or more) was a treasure trove….not so much the contents of the
book itself but the owner’s scribblings within.
The title page of the tiny book noted it was the 6 th ed. of ’Small Rain Upon The
Tender Herb’ published by the Religious Tract Society, 56 Paternoster Row, London
– no date. A google search revealed the Religious Tract Society to be a British
evangelical interdenominational Protestant organization founded in London in 1799.
Its original aim was to produce and distribute religious tracts for the prime purpose of
converting the working classes of Great Britain to evangelical Christianity. The idea
caught on as forty years after its first publication (c. 1834) tracts had been published
in over a hundred languages for use in mission fields all over the world (apparently
39 editions of the book are known to have been printed).
The book’s contents consist of short Bible extracts for every day of the year. While
the Bible extracts themselves did not exactly get my blood rushing, the inscription on
the flyleaf and the scribblings within on various dates throughout the year certainly
piqued my interest; C. B. Stevens in remembrance of M.P.B. Stev. 1839. Magnifying
glass in hand, thirty-five names slowly revealed themselves, each one paired with an
extract on a given date. Ten of the thirty-five names revealed were Stevens’, the
others a combination of 5 different surnames. At this point I did not yet know that
my maternal great-great-grandmother born in Cornwall in 1827 (later to marry a
MacDonnell from Mayo) was a Stevens with the same initials as the owner of the
book……So now, the genealogist in the house must go to work and build on the
starting blocks revealed in this unsuspecting, overlooked (and quite valuable!) tiniest
of books.
