Old family books

​Are you researching family history? Using DNA for identifying historical origins and making connections to newly discovered relatives? Walking through graveyards and scouring public records? That’s all well and good, but here’s another way: old books.
Old books on shelves or in long unopened boxes? Family Bibles or simply books of other kinds that give you insight into what your ancestors read and perhaps how they thought about life?
I am on an adventure with old family books. I found my grandfather’s well-worn book about the “devil” in high society and the “fashionable” path to sin and damnation. A clear warning that, I think, guided his approach to life and guidance to his ten children. Maybe I’m just asking questions?
I found books on phrenology, owned by a doctor who practiced in the shadow of the civil war, and enlisted the aid of a practicing phrenologist to give his brother a phrenological reading in 1886, documented for posterity.
I found my mother’s first edition, first printing of Atlas Shrugged. What!? My mother and Ayn Rand?
Check out my YouTube video of that and more.