Obsession?

[Authordocs]

I've come across a very tragic family in my ancestry, and the sadness of their situation is beginning to play on my mind almost to the point of obsession. I wonder if any other forum members have found the same thing happening to them?

Mike

[Ladkyis]

I had that happen when researching my husband's family and we discvovered that his great grandmother had buried her 16month old daughter in September 1898 and baptised her new son in November. I can still feel the sadness that swept over me as I thought about what it must have been like to be either very pregnant or just have given birth when your only other child dies. It stayed with me for months and even now ten years later it still brings tears when I think of it.
Ann

[Pam Downes]

It is very easy for us in this day and age to become somewhat detached from the struggle that ancestors had just to survive from day to day. Then you read something about their life in general, or find out something about a particular ancestor/family which just strikes a chord in you.
As a mother I was saddened to see the baptisms and deaths of 4 Samuels to the same parents in the early 1800s. I haven't traced that family further forward as they are not my direct line but I think it was 5th time lucky as I can remember a Samuel on the 1851 census.
Nearer home, one of my favourite but most poignant family photos is of my gran and 4 of her children. Judging by the size of the youngest child I suspect that it was taken not long before she died - 2 days before her second birthday. Her father was in the Navy, fighting in WW1, so Olive had not been christened as gran was waiting till her husband got home. Subsequently Olive was not allowed to be buried in the churchyard. There is no trace of her burial in the cemetery.
I no longer live in my home town but each year on the anniversary of my mum and gran's deaths (they died the same day, but 26 years apart) I go to the cemetery with flowers for the 3 of them, plus an older brother of Olive and my mum who died when he was 3 months old, and again whose grave I can't find.
I have to accept that there is nothing I can do to alter what happened nearly 90 years ago but taking the flowers does give me some sort of 'closure'.

Pam Downes

[Diane Grant-Salmon]

My Grandfather had a brother called John William FAWCETT who was born in 1875 in Heckmondwike, Yorkshire. The story told by his Parents to all the family, was that when John was twelve years old, he died as a result of having 'fits'.

When I started researching the family ten years ago, I was absolutely horrified and terribly upset, to find out that John died 10 October 1923 in Storthes Hall Lunatic Asylum, Huddersfield aged 48.

Someone in the family must have known this secret, as John's Parents died in 1911 and 1915 and John was buried in the same grave as his Father ..... but my Mum and her sisters were told he had died as a young lad.

[AnnB]

One of the saddest accounts I have read involving a member of my own family, was the report in a local paper of my 80 year old GGG Grandmother's removal to the workhouse in May 1878, when her son and daughter in law could no longer cope with her. She died a few hours after arriving. Her daughter in law's account to the coroner said "I and my husband brought the deceased into the House [Workhouse] last Thursday, in a horse and cart. It was not a spring cart, but one which is used for hay and straw. I got it from Mr Elliott, my husband's master. We put plenty of straw into the cart, a dust bed tie, which was as good as any feather bed, and a feather pillow for her head, and we wrapped her up very carefully with plenty of shawls, sheets, counterpanes and other things. She seemed to be as well as at any time she had lived with us......It was a splendid day. We started out about 1 o'clock and got to the Workhouse about four. We took her in our arms and carried her upstairs into the sick ward and she was put to bed. I put a sixpence into her hand and wished her goodbye, and she shook hands with me. She did not complain, and did not seem to be sinking when I left." She died a few hours later, the coroner's verdict being death from "extreme old age".

Best wishes
Ann

[sue adams]

I found my ggggrandmother had died aged 34 on 10 May 1828, the same day as her 7th child was born and I assumed she had died in childbirth. I have since found that her own mother had died on 29 March 1828 aged 66, and her 6th child died on 13 April 1828 aged 19 months. I am now wondering if other factors were involved in her death, perhaps an epidemic in the family at the same time? Her husband remarried 2 years later, but he must have been quite distraught at losing his wife, mother-in-law and small daughter within six weeks, and being left with five children under eight years, including a newborn son.

An additional sadness in the family was that their first child had died in 1819 aged 7 months.

[tony vines]

Reading this thread I was struck by the posting by AnnB in October about the fatal effects of taking people out of what appears to be a desparate environment. When I was an 18 year old trainee surveyor in the 1960s I was seconded for a few months to the Leicester City Building Surveyors' Dept. The wise and kind oldsters of that dept had taken under their wing an old lady living by herself in a terraced house opposite Leicester Jail.

I was taken along on one of their daily unauthorised visits to check that she was still alive and to fetch basic bread and milk from the local shops. It was probably one of the great formative experiences of my life to enter her home. She lived on sandwiches and milk and what she didn't eat or drink she left in the kitchen for months on end. The mildew was climbing the walls and I've never seen rising damp so high with great fungi sprouting from the walls.

The lady stayed in bed most of the day and was incontinent. Imagine the combination of sights and smells which she regarded as normal. On the day I arrived it was to learn that her son-in-law had stolen her life's savings from under her mattress after distracting her. My mentors decided that enough was enough and asked social services to take her to the local old people's home. We later learned that she had had to be bathed 5 times to get her clothes off her and she died 5 days later. She was fit as a fiddle for all we could tell when we saw her in her house. So much for good intentions!

I'll bet that there still a lot of that kind of grinding poverty around even today some 40 years later.

[Authordocs]

Thanks for your replies. It's reassuring to hear I'm not alone in taking some of our ancestor's misery to heart.
My case concerns my GGrandmother (Keturah) and her sister (Mahala). Grand names for the daughters of yet more Ag. Labs!. These sisters were orphaned (1863) at the ages of 7 and 11 respectively, and their only living relatives were their 74 year old grandmother and an uncle. After they were orphaned they lived with their grandmother for a couple months.... the parish alloted them 2/- and two loaves of bread weekly.
To cut a long story short, grandmother couldn't cope so the uncle hastily arranged for Keturah to be taken to the Muller orphanage in Bristol, and Mahala was sent to live with a family some 40 miles away. Keturah was ultimately brought up under very meagre, and strictly religious conditions, but was at the same time fed and educated. Mahala, on the other hand was next recorded in the Union Workhouse at the age of 15 where she gave birth to a (bastard) daughter, whom she named Keturah after her sister! Unfortunately the child survived only a few weeks then died in the workhouse.

The next record of Mahala was as a witness to Keturah's wedding to my GGrandfather (1886)... so I can only assume these two children remained very close despite their enforced separation -- one can only imagine their childhood misery.

However, what really brought a lump to my throat was the fact that a couple weeks ago I was clearing out my attic, and I came across an old box containing bits and pieces remaining when my father died 12 years ago, and there amongst the artifacts I found Keturah's prayer book, dated 1867. I was very moved at the thought that here I was holding what was probably the most treasured of Keturah's few possessions. Now I'm far from being a religious man, but sometimes..... !


Mike.

PS The Muller Homes were marvellous in retrieving so much detail from their archives.

[Pam Downes]

Thanks for your replies. It's reassuring to hear I'm not alone in taking some of our ancestor's misery to heart.

However, what really brought a lump to my throat was the fact that a couple weeks ago I was clearing out my attic, and I came across an old box containing bits and pieces remaining when my father died 12 years ago, and there amongst the artifacts I found Keturah's prayer book, dated 1867. I was very moved at the thought that here I was holding what was probably the most treasured of Keturah's few possessions. Now I'm far from being a religious man, but sometimes..... !
Mike.

It is the possessions that make people 'real' to us - which is probably why we have so many conflicting emotions when we clear out houses after elderly relatives have died. On the one hand we know that chipped plate is no good to man nor beast but to throw it away is to almost throw away that relative as we remember that the plate was part of the ritual of Sunday tea when we went to visit them.

Just treasure the prayer book and eventually you will find comfort in knowing that it must have given Keturah comfort on many days in her life.

Pam Downes

[Peggy]

[we know that chipped plate is no good to man nor beast but to throw it away is to almost throw away that relative]

Pam, it is good to know that I'm not the only one who feels that way! I'm trying to deal with lots of chipped plates and other items, some of which have been in the family for over 100 years. I can't keep it all; I plan to move to a smaller place. But throwing away an item that a relative cherished for decades, even when it is no use to man nor beast, seems a betrayal. Worse, I know of no one who will be at all interested in this stuff when I die. The sample chipped plate I keep will end in the rubbish, along with the lock of hair from the baby who died in the 19th century. Depressing thought.

Peggy