Tennessee Puts Database of Family Bibles Online

The Tennessee state public library is putting a database of family bibles online.

Bibles once served as the place where families recorded milestones such as weddings, births, and deaths.

The state of Tennessee didn't even require birth certificates until 1908. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security still accepts a family bible's list of births as one proof of citizenship for those with no birth certificate.

"On the U.S. frontier, the family bible might be the only book in existence for 100 miles," State Librarian Chuck Sherrill said.

"Those early bibles did not have lined pages inside where you could record births, deaths, and weddings the way modern Bibles do. Families inserted pages or wrote on the fly leaves of their Bibles," he added.

"When families recorded the important events in their lives in the sacred book, it gave them a sense of permanence," he said. "These were books that were meant to be handed down through the generations."

The database will feature 1,500 bibles, including one from 1538 and a book dating to 1753.