The Good Book

+ The Good Book
For more than four decades, The Glenridge on Palmer Ranch resident Natalie Pearson has had a piece of history in her home — American poet Walt Whitman’s Bible. Pearson and her late husband, Walter Whitman Swertfager, inherited the Bible from Swertfager’s mother, who was a descendent of Whitman.

Whitman gave the Bible to his sister, Mary Elizabeth, as a gift in 1878.

On Friday, Pearson donated the Bible to the Walt Whitman Birthplace State Historic Site in New York.

Historian Margaret Guardi and Cynthia Shor, executive director of the museum, flew down to meet Pearson and retrieve the Bible that had been kept safe for generations.

“I’m totally at peace with where it went,” says Pearson.