Dead Children of the Past

I discovered today that the tiny rural cemetery next to the house I grew up in is listed on a county historical site, its 27 graves recorded by the now-deceased volunteer town historian, who was married to my high school math teacher.

Of those 27 graves (some of which have shared markers), 12 identify the resting places of children under the age of 12, plus one 16-year-old. So that's just about half of the people buried.*

One of the gravestones, for a child who died at 11 months old, has a picture of a lamb at the top, and at the bottom the words "Our little pet."

One family had four children born between 1857 and 1865 buried there. The oldest lived to be 6. As I remember it, their graves share a single, small marble obelisk.

There is also one 19-year-old man who died in 1864 — possibly in the Civil War. There are definitely some Civil War veterans' graves in the cemetery, since those used to be marked with flags by someone on Memorial Day.

There are other graves in an older part of the cemetery that had big pieces of slate for markers, which bear no engraving. No one knows who is buried there. Large stands of common lilacs had grown up around them by the time I was a child. The shrubs were cut down at some point, but they later regrew. I think they are still there now.

The newest grave in the cemetery is from 1907, a widow of one of the men buried earlier. The cemetery was closed to new graves after that.

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* There is a typo in the death year recorded for one of the graves: it says 1951 but I believe it should be 1851, since no one can live to be 116 and I don't remember there being a grave with a date that late. 

An 1851 death year for this person would add one more 16-year-old to the list of teenagers in the cemetery, and make it 14 minors out of 27 graves. Welcome to Robert F. Kennedy's preferred future.