Melville – Huntington Supervisor Frank P. Petrone officially unveiled the latest addition at the Walt Whitman Birthplace State Historic Site November 14: a Whitman family bible that poet Walt Whitman gave to his sister, Mary Elizabeth Van Nostrand as a Christmas gift in 1878.
After remarks by Dr. William Walter, president of the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association Board of Trustees, and a brief video showing Walt Whitman Birthplace executive director Cynthia Shor accepting the donation of the bible from Natalie Swartfager Person in Sarasota, Florida, Supervisor Petrone pulled back the covering on the stand holding the bible and officially accepted the donation on behalf of the Association and the Town.
In the bible, Whitman inscribed all the immediate family’s births, deaths and marriages up to the date of the gift. Inside, he pasted a white slip of paper and wrote, “Mary Elizabeth Van Nostrand from her brother, Walt Whitman, Christmas 1878-79.” Directly below that slip, he pasted a smaller slip with five lines of poetry from “Beyond,” a popular mourning poem by Mrs. J.E. Akers.
The donor is the widow of Walter Whitman Swertfager, Whitman’s great-great-grandnephew. While she was unable to attend the ceremony, her daughter Sharon Swertfager Wilson and two granddaughters, Nicole and Stephanie Wilson, did attend, as did several Whitman descendants who live on Long Island.