I don't mean to discourage you, Penny, but in our family the Family Bible was
known to be inaccurate. This had to do with the generation of people who were
working when Social Security was created. They actually went back to the
Family Bible and altered the dates of birth of all the children in the family
so that they would be able to work longer under Social Security and thereby
earn more benefits. They felt they needed to change the Family Bible in case
someone came to check up on them. In fact, my great-uncle (a lawyer) destroyed
the birth record pages from that Bible the night he died (in the 1960s) so
federal agents would never find the altered records! Of course, the problem
this creates is that after that time any govt records (military, census, etc.)
normally used for genealogy research are also in error. When I've shared this
story on other lists, I've found it was not unusual for that generation to
alter their birth dates on govt. documents.
Baptismal records kept by the church turned out to be more accurate.