A CENTURY ago, a Bible birthday gift was diligently used to record the highs and lows of family life.

So when it was recently discovered by Dot Barber, she set about tracking down the family of Mary Beesley, the woman it had first belonged to.

Mrs Barber, 61, is keen to pass the Bible to its rightful owner after she found it while clearing her father’s house in Bletchley, near Milton Keynes.

She said: “The Bible was obviously a gift cherished by Mary Beesley for her to write important dates in her life in it.”

Mrs Barber’s father, former Launton resident Alfred Massey, 95, was told the book had been left at his great grandmother’s house in Bicester by a lodger.

Inside the Bible, there is a hand written message to Mary Beesley from her father, who gave her the book for her birthday in 1879.

Over the next few years it was used to record her marriage to Thomas Collins in 1891, and the birth of four children – Bertie Beesley, and Esther, Frank and Ellen Collins – between 1889 and 1894. It also records the death of four children between 1882 and 1893, aged between two months and six years.

They were Emily and Frank Beesley, who both died in 1882 aged six and three respectively, Bertie Beesley, who died aged four in 1893, and Frank Collins, who died in 1893 aged two months.

Mrs Barber, of Main Street, Charndon, near Bicester, is not sure of the link between her family and the Beesleys or Collins, but believes it may have been left with one of her relatives for a reason.

Now she is keen to return the book to descendants of the families recorded in it.

Mrs Barber, who works as a nurse, added: “I have always thought it would be really nice for the family of those people in the book to have the Bible.

“I think they could fill in some of their family history.”

bicester@oxfordmail.co.uk * Anyone who can help should call Mrs Barber on 07707 755167