Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Tombstone Tuesday: Between Censuses

I have a *thing* for children who lived short existences between federal censuses. The U.S. census is taken every 10 years. Many children were born and died between the time a census was taken. They don't show up as being part of a family on those records.

Whenever I visit a cemetery to track my own ancestors, I always do a quick check of the whole lot for "children between censuses," as I call them. Then I take pictures as a way to record their existence. It's weird, I know, but I just don't want anyone to be forgotten.

Today's child between censuses is Myrtle Chadwell. She is buried in Kelley-Rogers Cemetery in Cameron, Louisiana.


Note the Mardi Gras beads. I don't know if someone put them there, lost them there or they just settled there after Hurricane Ike.
Hopefully a blog visitor down the road sees this photo and can fit Myrtle into his or her family tree. She belongs to someone, somewhere. Just don't look for her in a federal census.

5 comments:

  1. I always check for those little ones, too!

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  2. I do that too, but it always makes me so sad. Before I had my daughter, I couldn't even stand to look at them. Now I feel that it's somebody's (my) obligation to remember these little ones.

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  3. What a wonderful thing to do. Recently we were in a cemetery in McMinn County, Tn and my son said you have to come over here and see all these graves of little children.It was sad most of the names could no longer be read.

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  4. Another one here. I used to just look at their graves, but now I want to record them, too. I have seen glass beads on a number of recent graves in the Northern Virginia area and have a picture of some on my Graveyard Rabbit blog; I still don't know what the significance is, though.

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  5. What a great idea! I might do the same since I'm within walking distance of a great old cemetery.

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