She has a Bible once treasured by a Green Bay couple. She wants their descendants to have it (2024)

The Bible, once a valued possession of a prominent Green Bay couple, has been part of a Kristine Ray's life for decades.

Now she is in the midst of moving from an island off the northern coast of Seattle to Southern California and hopes to return the Bible to the people she thinks could appreciate it most, the descendants of the Bible's original owner.

The original owners, according to an engraved name on the Bible's cover, were Michael and Mary Sutton, a prominent Green Bay couple who moved to the city after they were married shortly after the Civil War. Both Suttons were born in Ireland and immigrated to the United States when they were children, according to the obituaries for Michael Sutton and Mary Sutton. They settled in Upstate New York and were married there.

Mary Sutton died at age 77 in 1926 at the Green Bay home of one of her sons. She moved to the Utica area of New York from "County Claire, Ireland" when she was 2 years old, according to her obituary in a Green Bay newspaper. There is no County Claire, so the story likely meant County Clare.

Her husband died when he about about 70 years old in January 1916. His obituary describes him as a "survivor of war and a pioneer of the city." Michael Sutton immigrated from "County Connaught" in Ireland to the Utica area when he was 12, according to his obituary (Connaught is not a county in that country, but rather a province). He was a Civil War veteran who was wounded in battle, having fought in engagements including Bull Run and Antietam, according to his obituary.

After the war, the couple moved to Wisconsin, where they lived in Shawano, Oconto and Green Bay. Michael Sutton was credited as one of the founders of St. Patrick's congregation in Green Bay.

Ray can't say for sure exactly how her family came to posses the Bible. She believes that her father, a small business owner, took possession of the Bible when he was a winning bidder in an auction for the contents of a disused storage unit in northwestern Indiana. She thinks she was 4 or 5 years old at the time.

The Bible always resonated with her, Ray said.

"There was never a time when I remember this Bible not being around," she said. "Even as a I child I would be looking at it, and it was so old. It was really cool."

Not only the book was cool. There were scads of papers, pictures and other mementoes from the late 1800s and early 1900s, obviously once treasured by the Suttons, stuffed into the book. These things include a lock of hair tied together with a ribbon, a grade school graduation certificate, confirmation notices and more.

Ray was older when the significance of the Bible began to dawn on her. It wasn't that it was just old, it was that it represented someone and a family who obviously once treasured it. "I thought, 'Wow, this is a historical document,'" she said.

Even later, Ray started delving into her own family's history, taking a deep dive into Ancestry.com, and finding documents from her own ancestors, such as shipping manifest which included her grandmother who was fleeing World War II in Europe. She found pictures of other ancestors, she said.

"It was just really special," Ray said. "I wasn't expecting that that stuff would feel so important to me."

That's when the idea that the Bible could be special to the descendants of Michael and Mary Sutton, who had eight children, one who died in the Spanish-American War. The children are listed in the obituary as William of Minneapolis, Harry of Detroit, Thomas of Oshkosh, John of Oshkosh, Mrs. C. Van Dyke, Mrs. J.P. Parmentier, Matthew and Henry F. Sutton, all of Green Bay. Mary Sutton also had 15 grandchildren and one great-grandchild when she died.

Ray said she reached out to a number of Suttons via email through Ancestry.com. But she never heard back from any of them, and once again, she set the Bible aside and to the back of her mind.

Now, as she prepared for her move from Washington state to California, the Bible once again became an issue. She wondered what she should do with it; should she take it on the move? "It's not something you can really throw away," she said.

Anyone who might have information about a descendant of Mary Sutton may email Ray at hisstree@outlook.com.

Keith Uhlig is a regional features reporter for USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin based in Wausau. Contact him at 715-845-0651 orkuhlig@gannett.com. Follow him at @UhligK on X, formerly Twitter, and Instagram or on Facebook.

This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Woman wants to return Bible to its rightful place in Wisconsin