Bible belonged to co-owner of Yates Mill

Now the only remaining question is how it got to a Norwood textile mill

RALEIGH -- Fred Skates knows that most family Bibles contain a treasure trove of ancestral stories with all manner of hand-scrawled genealogical tidbits about births, marriages and deaths.

So when the South Carolina resident found a fancy, leather-bound Bible inside an abandoned North Carolina textile mill several years ago, he began a search for the family whose vital records were in its pages.

"My sister, she gets on the Internet and tries to do this family-tree and genealogy stuff," Skates said. "She didn't know exactly where to look."

The 1870 Bible -- 18 inches long, 10 inches wide and 4 inches thick -- had some clues to its original owners. The names "Mr. and Mrs. P. Yates" were carved onto the cover in gold-leaf lettering. Family photos on old-fashioned thin glass plates were tucked into album pockets in the back.

"We couldn't find anything, so we just sort of gave up and put the Bible up," Skates said.

On Saturday -- after a bit of historic sleuthing by Linda Wells, a historian from Georgia whom Skates met this summer -- the Bible was returned to surviving kin of the Mr. and Mrs. P. Yates on the cover.

P. Yates, it turns out, was Phares Yates, one of the owners of the historic Yates Mill, nearly five miles south of downtown Raleigh.

Wells, who is working on a museum project in Pacolet, S.C., became interested in the mystery after talking with Skates.

On a hunch, she contacted Rebeccah Cope, manager of the Historic Yates Mill County Park.

"I thought 'Well, maybe. Don't get my hopes up,'" Cope told the Yates family Saturday.

Wells and Cope bandied about other names in the Bible. Births, marriages and deaths of Greens, Pennys and Ballentines also were chronicled.

The likelihood that P. Yates was Phares Yates became even greater.

So Cope called in some of the surviving Yates family members to help. On Saturday, more than a dozen gathered in a classroom at the mill education center to talk about the find.

"To me, it's like the generations are speaking to us, telling us we need to make sure we stay together as a family," said Anna Marr of Fayetteville. "It's just very important to us."

Yates Mill -- which offers a step back in time for people who want to see the traditional ways corn was ground into meal -- dates back nearly two centuries. From Colonial times through the early 1900s, the water-powered gristmill was an economic and social center for Wake County residents.

Robert E. Lee Yates, a math professor at N.C. State College, took over the mill in 1902, when his father, Phares Yates, died and left him his real estate.

The family Bible that was returned to the mill on Saturday might give the surviving family more information about those who came before them.

But a mystery remains.

No one can figure out why the Bible ended up in a file cabinet in an abandoned cotton mill in Norwood.

"We're still trying to put this whole puzzle together as well," Cope said.

There was some evidence, Cope said, that Yates Mill was considering expanding into textiles and some of the family might have gone to Norwood in the western Piedmont.

Skates plans to do what he can to try to solve the remaining mystery.

As someone who often goes into old textile mills and salvages machines and other equipment for resale overseas, Skates has discovered other interesting memorabilia from years gone by.

If he can find a list of people who used to work in the shop where the Yates Bible was, he thinks he might be able to help the family connect some dots.

"I'm still interested in this," Skates said. "I might be able to help."