RootsChat.Com
General => The Common Room => The Lighter Side => Topic started by: BettyofKent on Thursday 08 February 07 16:58 GMT (UK)
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This week I received the death certificate of a one day old baby (a premature birth) The baby's father, my great-great uncle was only twenty when he died.
Is it daft to grieve for something that happened a long time ago, to people I have never met & whose names I didn't even know until recently?
Betty
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I have found two sisters of my father never knew about, and an aunt and uncle he was not aware of - all dead within a week of birth.
I was saddened by the discoveries.
meles
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I think it's perfectly normal to be moved. These were real people who lived often in a harsh world and they have a family connection. I think we also relate what happened to them to what it may have been like for us and our familiels if we had lived then. When I think how I can sob at an entirely fictional movie it's inevitable that I will be saddened by these kinds of losses.
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I couldn't agree more, I feel exactly the same way about some of my ancestors deaths.
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Recently I found the death of my g,g,grandmother`s son by her second marriage.
I have been looking for him for ages as he disappears from the Census,suddenly his death appears on FreeBMD. Sent off for the certificate .Crushed between buffers aged 18. I could have wept on her behalf.What a dreadful shock for her . OK it happened over a hundred years ago but yes,it affects me too.
Carrie Ann.
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i completely agree - i saw three stone in my village graveyard - in the shape of teddybears - they were for children all under 10 and they all died within 3 month of each other....strange but true - that made me extremely sad esp as there was a picture of them on the stone...i stood there at this strangers grave and tears welled. Such a waste of a life.
i think doing family research makes you a much more well rounded person in that you appreciate life more - you value it and you make the most of every day...well its certainly had that effect on me. I look at my ancestors - esp the ones just teo three generations back and try to imagine how there spoke and what things they liked etc and that makes me sad alone - just cos i didnt know them and i wish id have had the chance....it makes me want to record stuff about my family's life so that at least the chain of 'out of sight out of mind' when your ancestors die is broken.
i dont think its silly at all - its just appreciating where you come from really
Alison
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Makes you wonder how well of us lot are,
Taken from the records of Kinlet,Shropshire,
01 Mar 1812 John Evans, aged 14, Wash-house lodge, labr. in hall garden. This is the 3d. person who has died out of the same family in 6 mths. They are now all gone.
Sadly entries like these seem to be all to common in the old days,
Pete.
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betty i agree with everyone else.Although you have never met these people they are still have a connection to you as you research their lives.I was so upset when i started reasearching my paternal grandfather,I found his birth cert very easily but had a shock when it said mother deceased!His mother died 4 days after giving birth to him and he was farmed out to relatives until he was 7yrs old.
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Hi madammagician & welcome.
I knew my grandmother died just after giving birth, but I wasn't sure of the details. To look at the certificate & see that she died age 36 of heart failure & exhaustion a week after giving birth to my uncle made me cry.
My dad was four years old & he saw her die, he never forgot it.
Their father found foster parents to care for the two boys while he worked. They were a lovely couple & it was at their grandson's wedding where I met the man I married.
My dad was about 10 when his father remarried, the stepmother was a (word I'm not allowed to use) but that's another story.
Betty
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Betty, I remember when I found a first cousin twice removed and his family. The first three children all died within a month of birth. The fourth child lived to be 3 years old and then she died. They had two more children - a son and a daughter. The son went off to fight in WW1 and of course, you can guess what happened. Just one daughter left - she married and I have not tracked down any more details for her yet.
I sat in front of the records and thought of those poor parents - and unashamedly had tears rolling down my face.
.....dee
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Those poor parents dee, to suffer that & then lose their son in the war.
The children probably could have been saved if born in more recent times. The premature baby (in my first message) survived for a day, this was in 1881, now would most likely live. I hope you find the one surviving child from your cousin's family.
Betty
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Might have a go at that today and see if I can find any more, Betty. If not, I shall seek the help of Rootschatters. :D
.....dee
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I was sad when I found that the 7 children of my Grandfather's brother lost both parents and were sent to Canada (British Home Children)
Why didn't the family take care of these little ones? There were many relatives in Birmingham at the time.
But then, when I discovered, from the Middlemore Home records and the 1901 Canadian census, that little Ruth Rebecca was working as a domestic servant at 9 years of age in Nova Scotia, I couldn't sleep!
I know it is so sad for the little children that died.....but I sometimes think it is just as sad for the little children who lived.
India
Still searching for the families of the British Home Children.
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Well .... I wept ..... when I read the WW1 War Diaries of my Granddad's battalion and I read of all the terrible conditions the men endured - the trenches ... the rats ... hardly any food ....... men dying all around them .... being wounded ..... scared out of their minds .... acting brave .... looking after each other .....
then I thought of how - when they came home - they had to go "back to normal " ...... ( whatever that is !! ) :P - and find jobs ..... earn a living and look after families etc etc ......... my heart went out to him !! and all the stories I'd heard of him being an old so and so and drinking more than he should .......... no wonder !!
It really opened my eyes to how lucky we all are - to be here - because of what those "ordinary ... salt of the earth men " did for us !!
God love 'em all ........ they were all heroes !
Annie
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My grandmother died aged 27 of toxaemia after giving birth to my mother and her twin brother. It was 1943 and my grandfather was away fighting in the war. The saddest thing about this is that the doctors knew she had this and wanted her to go into hospital to have the babies but her mother wouldn't allow it saying she had to give birth at home. It was accepted that had she gone to hospital she would have lived. The babies were tiny and no one thought they would survive but luckily for me and my cousins they did.
Here's a photograph of her looking rather beautiful I think.
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I'm sure we all empathise with all these stories. Each time I receive a death certificate, I wonder why on earth I ordered it; they always upset me. The worst one for me was my maternal Grandfather's. He and my Grandmother were divorced soon after the birth of my Mum's younger sister and, as was the way in those days, all contact with his girls ceased. All I knew when I started my research, was his name. When I received his death certificate, it was to confirm that I was four years old when he died, and he'd never moved away. We were about five miles away from this man I never met and my Mother had not seen him in all those years. What a shame.
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Jules,
Your grandmother was a very beautiful woman.
So sad that she died so young.
Indi
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So many sad stories
I often wondered why my Grandmother died young so out of curiosite I sent for her Death cert.
She died in 1932 age 39 of Valvular Heart disease whilst in advanced pregnancy leaving behind 4 children my father being the eldest at 14yrs.
I feel really sad when I get a death cert but still keep sending for them
Mo
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To change the subject slightly, i get sad when reading old newspapers in Australia... so many people from the UK had puts advertisements in them looking for 'missing' people - family members that had literally disappeared and were missed. Telling them that they would pay for passage to return home... it would have been so sad leaving your family and not knowing what had/was happening to them :'(
yolanda
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I too can relate to this! I've been researching my ggrandmother's family - the ones in England seem to have left no descendants. Her brother was a C of E priest, a delightful man from what I have learned about him (especially from his obituary), and I had thought him childless. A kind Rootschatter cycled over to the village where he was Vicar for some years and found a tiny grave. Probably the only child of this couple - a baby boy that died at 3 months old. As I had found the grave of the priest and his wife, uncared for, in a cemetery in Oxford, I really cried for them. And for my gggrandmother - I do hope she saw the baby before he died, as she would never have seen her five grandchildren born in Australia.
MarieC
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What a beautiful lady Welsh Jules.
You must be so proud of her.
Carrie
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while on holiday a found a tiny grave one of a few that had a headstone,a 7 month old baby that died in the 1920's
i sent off for a cert and found out the baby had water on the brain and died of convulsions, the fathers name was on the death cert and i had linked him in my tree,turns out he was dead 2 years later,after a bit of poking about i found out the very sad news that he had hung himself on the anniversary of what would have been his tiny sons second birthday, the baby was an only child :'(
in the same family i have also found that a brother of this man lost his first born son at a few weeks old and then later learnt that he also lost twins one at 3 months and the other at 9 months :'(
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I think I have told this story in another thread, but my sadness story is thus. Trying to find my Gt grandfather, I found whom I thought was his father, my 2xgt grandfather. I sent off for his death cert and found he died in the workhouse of diarrhea exhaustion. A sad death in itself I thought - not particularly nice in unsanitary cramped conditions and having fallen in his means. I then further researched and found the chap whom I thought was gt grandfather - died at the age of 6 months. To further this, his mother - the wife of the workhouse guy died a month after her son. There was no feeling of relief on the discovery that these were not my rellies but one of all the more sadness that they died with maybe no one remembering them. Silly, but I still say a little prayer for them.
Sallysmum
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Not silly Sally`s Mum, not if you believe in the power of prayer and the communion of saints,they will know you pray for them.
Can`t do much for them now but CAN do that!
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My grandfather had a brother whose given names were Maynard Helser. We didn't know where his unusual middle name had come from until I started researching that branch of the family and learned that my great-grandmother's aunt, Mary Cook, had married a man named Rev. Joseph Henry Helser.
The 1900 & 1910 census (U.S.) state that Mary Helser had 1 child born and 0 children living.
This past summer, I was planning a visit to Maine, where some of these families had lived. The town clerk sent me an index to the tombstones of a small cemetery. It included Maynard J. Helser, born 16 January 1892 and died 30 June 1893.
My great-granny would have been 10 years old when her baby cousin died. She must have really loved him.
I felt sad when I saw his tombstone this summer and imagined how his family must have grieved for him. I was glad to add him to my tree, so he can be remembered.
Regards,
Josephine
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I must be the softest of all of you. I read through the local obituaries every week and have done so for years. I read the poems and verses and if someone has lots of entries I find myself crying for the family. Many a time my husband has come in from work and said in an exasperated way 'Well did you know them?' and when I say 'no', he asks why I am getting so upset about it. I don't know why maybe it is because I feel for those who have lost a loved one. My daughter has now started doing the same thing. She will ring up and say 'Ah! mum did you read that in the obits about the little baby' then we have a little chuckle at ourselves for being so sensitive.
Seems so silly really, but I like to think we are in contact with human feelings and not getting cynical and just accepting the deaths of unknown people. In the 1800's so many people died tragically that I think it became a way of life for some and they became hardened to the reality, like doctors do. In my family tree there were so many children that died it makes you wonder how their mums carried on and went on to have more children that died too. It is so sad.
Pennine
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I used to work with a woman who was originally from India (her family was upper caste or however you say it). She said it used to be the custom not to name a baby until s/he was a certain number of months old (I can't remember how many) because of the high rate of infant mortality. If the baby survived to that age, they had a celebration and named him/her.
Regards,
Josephine