A feeling of sadness

[yolandar]

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

[MarieC]

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

[Carrie Ann]

What a beautiful lady Welsh Jules.
You must be so proud of her.

Carrie

[redspookhunter]

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 

[sallysmum]

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

[Carrie Ann]

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!

[Josephine]

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

[pennine]

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

[Josephine]

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