A Gillette woman who had been trying for two years to track down the family of a 133-year-old Bible has finally succeeded.
Through the help of newspaper in Nebraska, the great-granddaughter of the man who originally owned the 13-pound ornate Bible was located and will soon have it for her own.
Brenda Elliott found the Bible at a garage sale more than two years ago and paid $5 for it. According to the Lincoln Journal Star, the Bible was dated 1887 and the name Carl August Sandberg was engraved in it.
Elliot told the newspaper that buying old Bibles and distributing them to people who needed them was a hobby of hers but this Bible was different, she said, as it was filled with old photos and newspaper clippings.
“I said, ‘I can’t own this. It doesn’t belong to me.’ There’s got to be somebody that this would mean something to,” Elliott she said.
“This belongs to a great-great-grandchild somewhere. It would have some sentimental value,” she said.
The newspaper did a story on Elliott’s search for the owner and someone from the small town of Waverly, Nebraska, knew the Sandbergs and reached out to Rhonda Sandberg who had moved from Nebraska to Southern California in the 1950s.
Ms. Sandberg, who had a career in show business and appeared in the movie ‘Scarface’ and on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, talked to Elliott on the phone Monday and reportedly is looking forward to receiving the Bible.
“I am so tickled. I just feel so good; it needs to go to that home,” Elliott told the newspaper.
