Wow...so sad to lose that many children.......and her pregnancies spanned 20 years.

I can't imagine. Did Ellsworth live to be 29? That looks like a 1901 death? Still, so young.

Female bodies are designed to be pregnant throughout their childbearing years. Some women were able to handle that; some died from complications, or just plain wore out -- depleted by the pregnancies or the 'mothering'! Today some of our hormonal ills are related to NOT being pregnant most of our young lives. (I certainly prefer having the choice!)

Modern sanitation and antibiotics have kept many more people alive. Infectious diseases wiped out whole families, and I would think that many children lived only until they lost the resistances retained from their mothers.

My G-grandfather was a doctor in Colorado. He and his wife had six live births. They lost three children at about age two. They raised three more and lost their two young men before age 22 -- leaving only my grandmother, who had seven children and lost one. (While it can be good to have a doctor in the family, he also must have carried disease home with him. Ironically, the large brick house he built in Idaho Springs was a funeral home when we visited the area thirty years ago.)

That's shocking. I wonder if there was a genetic issue there, which they would not have known understood then. Must have been a great sadness for them.

Susan, I see this sort of thing often in the old cemeteries. It was not uncommon for a family to lose more than half their children. Makes me grateful for vaccines, etc.

Sleeperblues, it looks like Ellsworth was born in 1881, but it was actually 1961. He lived to be 40!

Chisue, I never heard that about hormonal issues tied to lack of pregnancies. I know women who have breastfed their babies--especially three or more--have a lower incidence of breast cancer.

The point you bring up about doctors carrying diseases home reminds me of the book I'm reading now. The nonfiction A Midwife's Tale is based on the diary of a midwife written in the late 1700s. Weeks go by when she does nothing but tend to sick families--not just laboring women, but seriously ill adults and children, many of whom died. I find myself amazed that she herself never gets sick . . . although I suppose that happens at the end of the book.

I wonder if the stone has been redone. It looks to be a newer one to me....but I could be wrong.

Yes, I don't think the stone was erected when they died. It must have been done later. But I know the parents were buried there, and probably the children as well.

In Palermo Sicily I was at this Capuchin cemetery. I was in awe that so many of the headstones showed pictures of their loved ones. And...it was crowded. I was on a tour, so I could spend only 10 minutes there; but it could have been hours and hours.

My father's parents/grandparents, etc., came to the USA from Italy, and settled in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania has very strict privacy laws, and it's nearly impossible to get genealogy information from 3,000 miles away. A couple of years ago, the Governor of Pennsylvania signed a bill into law that allows death certificates from more than 50 years after the date of death, and birth certificates from more than 105 years from the date of birth to now be considered public information.

You can now see (on a Pennsylvania web site, not Ancestry), indexes of the available records. BUT, you either have to already know the year of birth/death, or you have to look at each year to find what you want. Then, you have to send a form and a check to PA and wait to receive a copy of the certificate.

I was thrilled when a few months ago Ancestry.com added a database that includes the images of death certificates for the years 1906-1924 (more years to be added).

Because transcribers can be notoriously bad at deciphering names, and because the people filling out the certificates didn't necessarily write names correctly, it can be a challenge to find the right certificates. I can't tell you how many certificates I've seen that have the place of birth (either of the decedent or the decedent's parents) written as Itily (when it should be Italy).

Anyway, because of this issue, you can't just search for an exact name. So, one day a week or so ago I was looking for a particular name in my family history and was scanning down a long list of death certificates when I noticed four that showed the same date of death, and the same parents' names. I looked at the certificates and sat here and cried a bit. Four children all died on the same day from an oil lamp explosion -- while at a school. I cannot imagine what the parents went through.

How horrifying, Lindsey. When was that? Life seemed so much more fragile in the past, although today we have other causes of death. And we still have wars.

That seems like a lot of people to be occupying one grave site(?)
Lindsey, I always search for family using spelling variations.....14 ways so far. My grandparents lost the first three children out of 13.

It looks like a new stone to me (well, no more than 40 years old or so) and I am thinking maybe descendent of the family purchased this stone, replacing lots of other, original stones. Or maybe some of the children didn't even HAVE stones when they were buried, and this is a way of acknowledging that all the children actually were born and died.

I wonder how many children this couple had that outlived their parents.

My father was the sixth or seventh baby born to his mother and the first to live past the age of 3. He was followed by 2 sisters. So my grandmother gave birth to 9 or 10 and only three lived to adulthood.

My dad's mother had 10 children; only five lived past the age of 2-3.

Heartbreaking. Can't imagine having to bury even 1 child. It must have been hard to get attached to them in those days, knowing many of them might not make it .

Alisande,

I can't remember the name of the family or the date of the children's deaths. But, I wrote it down somewhere -- I just have to find my note.

When the 1900 Census was taken (in this case on 11 June 1900), the following was entered for the Hiram T. Hudson family:

Hiram T., born Feb 1840 in Pennsylvania, age 60, married for 39 years. Both parents were born in New York.

Angeline, born Oct 1843 in Pennsylvania, age 56, married for 39 years. Mother of 12 children, 3 of which were still living. Both parents were born in Connecticut.

Ellsworth, born June 1861 in Pennsylvania, age 38, single.

Charles, born Feb 1879 in Pennsylvania, age 21, single.

Clarence, born June 1883 in Pennsylvania, age 16, single.

(On the actual Census page, Ellsworth's name is written as Elsworth.)
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Jim,

Yes, it is common in Italy for a photo of the deceased to be attached to the headstone. Also, many Italians who were born in Italy but died in the United States have a photo attached to their headstone.

I actually really like that tradition. Sometimes it's the only photo their decendants ever get to see of them.

When my MIL was ten years old, her mother and seven sisters and brothers all died in one week from the Spanish flu. She and her father were the only survivors. She remembers the horse drawn wagons taking the bodies away. This was in Italy.

I think it is possible that this is the only stone that has ever been erected for these children.

I went to a forgotten cemetery that my fil told me to look at several years ago. At first I couldn't find it, but there holes all over the ground and various piles of rocks laying around. Fil told me that those were the graves. The holes were where the casket had fallen in and the rocks were for how many years old the person was. There was only one headstone in the cemetery. It had been added at a later date.

The cemetery where some of my family is buried has several graves that are only marked by big rocks. My 13 month old aunt is buried in this cemetery. My grandparents couldn't afford a nice headstone when she died back in the 1940's. For several years there was only a tin marker. My grandmother asked if there was anything I wanted when she died. I requested that my aunt be given a headstone. That was purchased and erected only a few years ago.

During a visit to a church in Goudhurst, Kent, my DH and I saw a memorial. The church was begun about 1100 AD. The memorial was to several generations of one family, the most recent being a 16th C couple who were depicted with their children. All were piously kneeling, the couple facing one another. Twelve sons knelt behind their father; four daughters behind their mother.

Even considering that this was a prosperous family (food, servants), and that girls were married very young, people didn't normally live all that long then. (Make hay while the sun shines?)

One of my favorite books, "Down The Commons", follows the life of a woman living in a small village in England in the Middle Ages. (It could have been Goudhurst.) In it, the woman is surprised to experience a most unusual feeling after market on a summer day. She traces the source of this feeling and realizes the rare circumstance. She is not wet, cold, hungry or thirsty. She isn't pregnant, nursing or menstruating. She is quietly alone. She is...happy!

Thanks for looking that up, Lindsay. Ah, the poor woman lost all her daughters. And Ellsworth died the year following the census. I hope Charles and Clarence had good long lives.

I once knew a much older woman who raised seven sons but lost her only daughter at 18 months. She said to me, "If I can survive that, I can survive anything."

When we hear about the tragedies posted in this thread, not to mention things like the experiences of some people during WWII and other wars, we have to marvel at the resilience of the human spirit.

Actually, Alisande, you photographed Charles' headstone and posted it to his memorial page on Find A Grave. The person who created the memorial page put his birthdate as February 2, 1990, when his headstone is clearly engraved as 1879. He died 14 May 1937 at the age of 58. Still young. Also on the headstone is Charles' wife, Dessie A. (Mannick) Hudson. Dessie was born on 10 November 1880 and died 25 April 1957.

They were married on 27 June 1900 in Honesdale, Wayne County, PA. Charles is listed on the marriage license as being 21 (which is correct), and Dessie is listed as being 19 (also correct).

I couldn't find any evidence of any children born to Charles and Dessie, but that doesn't mean that there weren't any.

Clarence Niles Hudson was born 12 June 1883, and died 16 February 1928, a couple of months shy of his 45th birthday. (Too young!) He married Blanche Jane Swingle (born 02 January 1885) on 20 January 1905. Blanche died 15 November 1949.

Clarence and Blanche had a son, Bruce Edward Hudson, born 22 December 1905, died 17 July 1984.

Lindsey, it was just this week that I photographed Charles' headstone, but I didn't make the connection. When I posted it to the memorial, I contacted the person managing it, informing her of the erroneous date. I haven't heard back. It was one of several emails I sent her this week.

I'm glad to see that Angeline and Hiram didn't outlive two of their children, at least.