Thomas E. Latimer - Latimer Family Bible

Latimer Family Bible

Nearly 70 years after his death, Latimer's name was once again briefly in the Minneapolis press. In 2004 a woman from Arkansas had in her possession an ornate, leather-bound Bible that once belonged to Latimer (her husband had found the Bible ten years earlier in a pile of discarded books in a San Diego alley). The woman, Teri Norton-Feaser, spent some time trying to track down a relative who would want the Bible, saying she had "called every Latimer in the Minneapolis phone book and e-mailed everybody I could" but had not located anyone directly related to Thomas. Former St. Paul mayor George Latimer was among the Latimers contacted. He had researched his genealogy and was sure that " and I are not from the same line, but I suppose we could be 15th cousins."

After the Minneapolis Star Tribune ran a story about the Latimer family Bible, two women contacted the paper to claim it: Dorothy Unger Hesli, 85, who was 15 years old when her mother Mildred Unger married Thomas, and Eloise White Saslaw, 83, who was a distant relative - perhaps a great niece of Latimer. Because she had actually known Latimer and was quite fond of him, Hesli was ultimately given the Bible. Hesli noted that she thought she could remember the Bible from her teenage years living with her sister, mother, and Latimer in Minneapolis, however she had no idea how it ended up in a pile of old books in California.