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My baseboards could use some attention if you're looking for a warm up exercise.
In today's episode of "what I found in the woods"
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My baseboards could use some attention if you're looking for a warm up exercise.
A few years before my mother died, she took me to an old burial plot in a grove of trees beside a creek and surrounded by soybean fields. She said she hadn't been there in about 75 years, but remembered her grandparents going out to tidy things up occasionally in the 1950s. I was dubious about driving more than a mile down a dirt track, but my mother's memory was good and when we got there it was clear somebody was coming around now and then to cut the grass.
I hoped to find a marker for my great-grandfather's first wife who had died in childbirth, but no luck. Instead, my mother called me over to look at a marker, saying she did not know that her Uncle Will and Aunt Gennie had any kids before her cousin Lesley. The double marker was for two children who had died during a smallpox epidemic in 1899. Off to the side of that marker was a piece of a flat stone sticking out of the ground. I dug around to reveal most of a marker for yet another of Will and Gennie's children who had died a few years earlier.
I hoped to find a marker for my great-grandfather's first wife who had died in childbirth, but no luck. Instead, my mother called me over to look at a marker, saying she did not know that her Uncle Will and Aunt Gennie had any kids before her cousin Lesley. The double marker was for two children who had died during a smallpox epidemic in 1899. Off to the side of that marker was a piece of a flat stone sticking out of the ground. I dug around to reveal most of a marker for yet another of Will and Gennie's children who had died a few years earlier.
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It is real reality check to walk though a large, old graveyard that is well cared for so it’s easy to read the old stones. Oakwood in Raleigh is an example.
Before the turn of the last century many family plots will have multiple graves of infants and small children who didn’t survive winter.
Before the turn of the last century many family plots will have multiple graves of infants and small children who didn’t survive winter.
Yea you don’t see that in the I remember when threads. I think my grandmother was the only one of 6 children to live past her teens. We’ve got it pretty good.
And from what I've seen, it didn't matter if they had money or not. Every family has their fair share of kids buried around that time.
A number of my poorer relatives were buried in a "free" community cemetery. The land was taken to build an Army Air Base during World War II. The graves were not relocated and nearly all of the simple markers were removed after being knocked down or broken when the land was mowed. The specific locations of nearly 1,300 gravesites were lost, but a monument was erected with the names of those buried in the old cemetery.
My younger sister, through very extensive research, may have found where Grammie's 3 younger sibs were buried.
I remember going through a box of photos and newspaper clippings from the time, to learn that the those who went before would likely have survived in our world. Sort of sad but, it is what it is.
I remember going through a box of photos and newspaper clippings from the time, to learn that the those who went before would likely have survived in our world. Sort of sad but, it is what it is.
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That is absolutely the fact. There are some expensive old stones at Oakwood with dead babies buried under them.
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My old MIL and I had a discussion about healthcare today and how so much money is spent, versus how she grew up poor in the depression.
She said, “Back then, when people got sick, they died.”
I have read that we don't really live longer than our ancestors. It's the improvements in infant mortality rate that positively effect our published life expectancy.
Seems reasonable after visiting a few graveyards.
Seems reasonable after visiting a few graveyards.
There is a pre-revolutionary war graveyard on my property . I am always checking to make sure all the stones are on the walls . One night Sweatie’s brother and a friend wanted to see the graveyard . I gave them a light they could barely see their toes with. I sneaked down to the graveyard and when they came out the old creaky gate I let them get a little way from the gate and threw a big stick in the air . When it hit the ground I went “ ooommmph “ . They took off like a streak . Looked like two cartoon characters where their heads were there but their bodies were gone . I got a big cussin over that .
Back in the Hollar I grew up in there was a small grave yard. Probably early 1800's or before. My twin uncles were about 15 they stole a tomb stone out of it one day. They took it back to their house and that night both had the same dream. Woke up the next morning before school and took it back before my grandfather woke up.
Yep, I've visited the graves of most of my ancestors going back to the first who arrived here in the mid 1700s. Aside from one, they all lived well into their 80s and 90s. Seems that if you could make it past 4-6 years old you had a much better shot at life.
My father's side of the family were farmers up in northern Pitt County (Stokes area). There was an old family graveyard dating back to the civil war in the front yard of the old home place where my great aunts and second cousins all still lived. Whenever one of my great aunts or 2nd cousins died, they just buried them right there in the front yard.
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Would be good to have a Michigander around.
My dad took me to his family's graves in a Pittsburgh cemetary. It had been so long since he'd been there that we had to ask where the graves were. The lady in the office looked it up and exclaimed ' so it's your family with all those poor babies that died!'. There was stone after stone for dead children, all before age two. We looked up cause of death which was 'consumption'. Fortunately they weren't his siblings but from the previous generation to his.