What was the saddest death in your Tree ?

[OzKat]

I don't know why I continue to let myself read this thread. I read it in my lunch break and end up getting so depressed I can't concentrate on my work in the afternoon.
Kath 

[JDGen]

One particular family stand out for the number of infant deaths - this is my 3xg aunt who had:
Henry, born 1835, died 1835
Edward born 1837, died 1841
Frances Alice born 1846 died 1846
John born 1847, died 1847
Mary born 1849, died 1849
Thomas Henry born 1854, died 1854

And my ggrandmother who's inquest report I recently found in the paper.  She was found by my grandmother who had been looking for her, and the inquest said that if they'd found her earlier she would probably have lived.  Cause of death was suffocation, she was only 42 and left 7 children, the eldest only 20.

Jean

[MarieC]

And more from me -

My gggrandmother, en route by ship to Australia to join her husband, had two very small daughters die of diphtheria.  They were buried on an island before the ship continued its journey.  She would never have revisited their graves, I think.  She was a formidable old woman, eventually, but when she died 60 years later, in her 99th year, some soil was found wrapped in a piece of cloth - soil from her babies' grave.  She had kept it with her, and probably grieved secretly, all those years!

MarieC

[CU]

Oh Marie, thats so sad.

[Guy Etchells]

Not sad practical, she realised that there was little or no chance of re-visiting the grave site and therefore took a memento with her. She possible showed it to her husband on reaching Australia to show the children had been buried in a grave rather than at sea.

There again there could be another explanation for the soil, it could (unless there was some explanation) have been soil from home in England that she was taking to enable her husband to connect with his homeland again.
Cheers
Guy

[MarieC]

There was an explanation with the bit of soil.  It was as I have said.  And she did not discard it after showing it to her husband - she kept it through major upheavals and moves, including her husband's death many years before her own.  It was not practical, Guy - it was emotional, sentimental if you will.

I think it is clear that she kept it as a memento of her lost children, and grieved in private for them.  This is the "other side" of a formidable, largely Victorian era lady.

MarieC

[Cal241]

Marie
What a brave lady your gg grandmother was, that was an awful thing for her to have to bear.
I think normally locks of hair were taken but I assume with diptheria being so contagious she may not have been able to have such a momento of her daughters.
I can imagine that soil kept her going through the years as she would not have, as we do now, too many possessions that belonged to her children

Cal

[kitchener]

Mine was putting in my father's death date.  Yes he had died, but somehow to see all his vital dates written out, so final, it really made me realise how much I miss him, and how closed that chapter of the book is.  However, I see his facial expressions in my children, and their antics, so I know he lives on.  Sad nonetheless.

[Cal241]

Yep know how you feel there Kitch!
My father died when I was 5 (he was 44) and it was only in the last few years that I managed to get to  the book of names on the date of his death. Brings it all home somewhat.. I remember very little except he was left handed so anything he did was the reverse of what mum did. Silly things like sitting the wrong way around in the bath !! 

Cal