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Sutton Family Bible
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History of Braxton County and Central West Virginia
by John Davison Sutton
Sutton, West Virginia, January, 1919

Page 424

This old book was brought from England to America by John Sutton
probably in 1785. It has been kept in private homes, mansions and
cabins, and for several years in a bank vault at Martinsburg and
private safe at Clarksburg and bank vault at Sutton until the
present. The Bible is now 296 years old and has been in the family
for 201 years. It contains a general family tree from Adam to
Christ and the songs and prayers of the church that the King forced
upon the church of Scotland which led to bloodshed and war.

This old Bible has survived the war of 1812, that of Mexico in 1S44
and the Civil war of the 60's. Its probable cost was greater than
that of a thousand ordinary family bibles of the present day. It
was said that it required the wages of an ordinary laborer for
thirteen years to purchase a single volume at the time of its
publication.

This book has passed through six generations, and as far as the
records show they all bore the name of John except one. The first
name recorded was John Sutton, 1717, he kept the book fifteen
years. It then went into the possession of another John Sutton, who
kept it twenty years. It then descended to an- other who kept it
fifty-eight years. Later it became the property of my great
grandfather, John, and his son, John D. Sutton, for thirty years.
It then went to my father, Felix Sutton, who kept it for forty-two
years, and about two years before his death in 1884, he gave it to
the present owner, and Ave have kept it thirty-five years. This
priceless old Bible has been in the family over two hundred years
and was ninety-five years old when the first record was made. How
long it had been in the family or how many generations it had
passed through before 1717, we have no knowledge, but we presume to
think it was bought by the family at the time of its publication,
and has been miraculously preserved through fire and flood all
these years. In the recent great flood in the Elk river valley,
March 13, 1918, we discovered the water running in the lower floor
of the bank building and fearing the destruction of the Bible we
went into the building through a window and rescued the Bible which
would soon have been submerged and destroyed.

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