The Dallas Morning News reports that the Bible traditionally used to swear in a new Texas Governor may or may not have actually belonged to Sam Houston.  The evidence for the authenticity of the Houston Bible seems sketchy at best.  The Bible which is in the possession of the Texas Supreme Court cannot be definitively traced to Houston.

“Here are the undisputed facts: The publishing date inside is 1816. The binding is original, but the book was re-cased and is now more flexible. Souvenir-seekers would tear out pages and pocket them, then sheepishly hand them back after being chased down. Houston’s connection to the book is fuzzier, and big clue is long gone: The bible’s flyleaf reads ‘Supreme Court of the Republic of Texas,’ but the bottom half is torn away. A Texas Supreme Court justice told colleagues in the 1940s that he saw Houston’s signature on the now-missing half of the page. That recollection satisfied amateur historians for a long time. When Bush was inaugurated in 1995, he called it ‘Sam Houston’s own bible, simple and worn.’

But the story doesn’t quite add up, according to court archivist Tiffany Shropshire. The torn flyleaf was long blamed on a janitor, who in the 1970s stole thousands of pages of old Supreme Court archives. But the janitor is off the hook — Shropshire found a 1941 newspaper article that described the torn flyleaf. She also questions whether Houston ever signed the bible. In 2012, she asked three Houston historians to inspect the handwriting on the remaining portion of the flyleaf. Each said it looked like Houston’s. Her skepticism deepened, though. None was a handwriting expert. And letters found in state archives show the penmanship closely resembles that of John Hemphill, the court’s first chief justice, she said.”