Saturday, March 05, 2005

Short Lives

9 comments:

Blog ho said...

That is a cool pic. It's odd how the second name is so defined and the others so aged.

Robin Alexa said...

Thanks Ho :)

Laura said...

I have found several headstones like this in our area, too. With multiple children from one family who die very young. It makes me think they probably had a genetic problem and never knew it. Can you imagine the hope and then the heartbreak?? Man...
~L.

Jeff Phillips said...

This is actually very interesting. We can derive a series of sad events from the dates on the headstone. Check this out:

Herman, the husband, and Helen, the wife, were basically the same age.

Consider this series of events:

1. Herman and Hellen are married, and in their 30s. Their son, George, suddenly dies at less than 2 years old.

2. Herman, the father, dies 7 months after his son dies, leaving Helen with two infants-- Herbert (three years old) and Herman Jr. (one month old).

3. She's now lost a son and a husband within a year's time. Then her newborn son, Herman Jr. dies two months later, at the age of three months.

Helen has one child left: Herbert.

4. Herbert dies eleven years later at 14 years of age in 1866.

Helen is alone for 57 years after that. She dies alone at 91. We can assume she never remarried because she is buried with her husband.

Now, in Canada in 1855, when most of this family died, there was an out of control mortality rate due to poor sanitation issues. Here is an article from the 1866 Montreal Gazette that reports on it. It's not 100% relevant, but you can see that around the time of these deaths, there was a serious known problem.

http://www.mat.ulaval.ca/pages/genest/msa/gazette_March30_1861.pdf

- Jeff Phillips

Robin Alexa said...

It really is quite a story.

Heather said...

i am glad that i am not the only morbid person who takes photos of tombstones.

i love them.

i hope that some day, hundreds of years after i am dead, some one documents my stone. and wonders who i was and what i did. it's such a story indeed.

here is my fave pic:

http://flickr.com/photos/explosivelaughter/5358455/

i took it because the one stone for "lydia" (in the foreground), she was only 26 yrs old. so sad.

little kid stones, especially lots from the same family choke me up. i cry in graveyards.

nova scotia is FULL of the oldest grave stones. they are great to look at. there is this one graveyard right downtown, with 1,000 stones. and apparently there are 10,000 bodies buried there. INSANE!

(ending my rant...NOW!)

Robin Alexa said...

LOL. But Heather I love your rants!

mcgibfried said...

i just stay the hell away from grave yards all together...

Roonie said...

I find a certain intrigue within graveyards and tombstones, too. And I find that intrigue very morbid. And then I shiver. But I can't help being interested.