Description of the David Howard Bible.

Condition: Both front and back covers are detached from the body, but clearly belong to the rest of the book. Pages are fragile, but not crumbling.

The inside of the front cover is illustrated by hand in black, red, and green ink. The general design is a large white circle, which pretty much fills the lower two thirds of the page, with the figure of a man looking over the top. The straight line background and the figure are in black ink. Within the circle, the words “The Property of Mr.” are in red, and “David Howard” in green, and at the bottom “1795" in red. Beneath the circle are the word “Writen by J”, and the rest is not intelligible to me although it looks something like “IamHH”.

There are some few pages missing–possibly only one or two. The first page contains the Evening Prayer and starts “With his own right hand, and with his holy book: hath he gotten himself the victory.” The beginning of the book contains a variety of sections prior to the beginning of the Old Testament (e.g. The Collects, The Order for the Visitation of the Sick, His Majesty’s Declaration, and Articles of Religion, among others). The pages are not numbered sequentially, although some of the sections do number their pages internally to that section.

After these prefacing sections there is a title page which reads:

The Holy Bible, Containing the Old and New Testaments: Newly Translated out of the Original Tongues, And with the former Translations Diligently Compared and Revised. By His Majesty’s Special Command, Appointed to be read in Churches. Oxford: Printed by Thomas Baskett, Printer to the University. MDCCLX.

Next follows the dedication to King James; and then Genesis.

Due to the fragile condition of the bible, I have not looked at each and every page. However, I have found four pages containing records.

(A) On the last page of the Book of Prophets (this is written in very legible cursive with a brown ink, apparently at one sitting, except for two insertions in a different hand in black ink which I have bracketed):

June 7th 1764 Married David Howard and Priscilla [Knowlton] his Wife
[Children]
Louis Howard born Monday 6th of May 1765
Martha born Thursday 19th of March 1767
Dorcas born Sunday 12th of Feby 1769
Joanna born Thursday 20th of Dec 1770
Priscilla born Saturday 8th of May 1772
Huldah born Monday 12th of April 1774
Polly born Sunday 7th of April 1776
Polly died June 5th 1777
Polly 2nd born 21st of March Saturday 1778
David born Tuesday 4th of July 1780
Marsha born Thursday 15th of September 1785
Louis died April 12 1813

(B) On the back of this page, on what would otherwise have been a blank page facing the beginning of the Apocrypha, the following is written very nicely (perhaps professionally) in block letters resembling type (I will not bother reproducing the formatting here, but the dates are all lined up in a column on the right, as the names are on the left. Also, I cannot adequately reproduce the superscripting used in the month names, so I will use standard abbreviations.):

Children belonging to Jno. Hayward
of
(Wood) Ashford
Dorcas born Aug 2nd, 1735
Hannah born Jan 10th, 1736/7
Jonathan born Dec 24th, 1738
Anne born Dec 7th, 1740
David born Apr 28th, 1743
Eunice born Oct 2nd, 1745
Huldah born Dec 31st, 1747
Amasa born Oct 20th, 1749
Betty born Sep 22nd, 1753
Jonathan born May 6th, 1755
Stephen born Feb 3rd, 1757
Eunice born Sep 13th, 1758
Jonathan died Apr 14th, 1754
??? died Apr ??, 1754

The last line is not entirely legible due to fraying, but the name could be Hannah or Eunice.

(C) On the last page of the Apocrypha, in a good cursive script, in black ink (and very much like the black ink hand mentioned in (A) above):

Marsha (or Marcia) Howard, daughter of David & Priscilla (Knowlton) Howard, married Marcus Taft / Son of Daniel and Rhoda (Ellis) Taft, formerly of Mendon, Mass.

Marcia Taft died Dec. 15, 1860, aged 75.
Marcus Taft died Mar. 30, 1863, aged 78.

Children of Marcus & Marcia Taft.
[the next three lines are in brown ink and a hand much like the brown ink hand in (A) above]
Mary Taft born August 3rd, 1812
Sophia Taft born March 12th, 1816
Mary died May 20th, 1836

[now back to the black ink]
Mary married Warner Howard, son of Nathan and grandson of Jonathan and Lydia Howard.
Sophia married Alphonso R. Janes of Providence, R.I., formerly of Eastford, Conn.

(D) Immediately following the preceding, is the title page for the New Testament, on the back of which is the following (I am identifying two hands here, but they could be the same):

John Hayward of Ashford
died November ye 9th AS 1782
in the 74th year of his Age
Being 73 years nine months and
five days old.

[new hand, different ink]
Priscilla Howard wife of David Howard died
April 5, 1813 in the 69th year of her age
David Howard died Sept 20th 1822 in the
80th year of his age

[gap before separate entry-hand looks like that of first entry on this page]
Stephen Hayward Died July ye 28th
1787 in ye 31 year of His age

[entry in second hand]
Louis Child daughter of David Howard died
April 12th 1813 in the 48th year of her age