Capt. Thomas Bible. The ancestor, Christian Bible, of German descent, was born in Rockingham County, Va. He immigrated to Tennessee, was a pioneer of Greene County, and settled in Little Chucky Valley. His son, John Bible, the grandfather of our subject, was born in Virginia, in 1776, and came to Tennessee with his father, and was a second lieutenant, in Capt. Jones’ Company, in the war of 1812; and he was highly esteemed until his death. Christian Bible, Jr., (the father of our subject, and the son of John), was born on Little Chucky, March 13, 1804; he grew up in the country, is a successful farmer, and aged eighty- three years. In 1826 he married Mary, a daughter of Christian Bowers, a native of Virginia. She was born in 1805, and died in 1869; was a member of the Lutheran Church, was a faithful wife, and a devoted mother. Of the six children, our subject is the youngest, and was born on Little Chucky, April 26, 1840. He was reared a farmer, among rural advantages. From boyhood lie was a bitter opponent to slavery, and State rights, devoted to the union of States, the flag and our free institutions. At the age of twenty-two years he scouted through the Confederate lines to Kentucky, and on December 1, 1862, joined Company C, Eighth Tennessee Infantry, United States Army; he was mustered as second sergeant, May la, 1863; appointed and commissioned captain, December 3, 1863, by Andrew Johnson, military governor, of’ Tennessee, and served in that capacity until the close of the war, and was present and took part in the following noted battles: Siege of Knoxville, Tenn., Buzzard Roost Mountain, Resaca (May 14, 1864), Burnt Hickory, Kenesaw Mountain, and at the taking of Atlanta, Ga., at Columbia, Franklin (November 30, 1864), Nashville, Tenn. (December 15 and 16, 1864), and at the surrender of Gen. Joseph Johnston, at Greensboro, N. C., April 26, 1865. He. was mustered out June 80, 1865. He served as deputy sheriff, in Greene County, in 1867-68, and was elected from said county, to a seat in the Forty-third General Assembly of Tennessee, in 1882, and served, with satisfaction. In 1884 he declined re-election, and has been devoted to farming ever since, on the old homestead, on Little Chucky, Greene County. On October 26, 1876, he married Martha J., a daughter of Jonathan H. Easterly, of Greene County. She was born April 22, 1841, and is a member of the Lutheran Church. Their children are Edwin A., born May 18, 1878, and Zulu Z., born December 26, 1879.
