Genealogy Chat

Just found this and feel quite sad. My gm had 4 children - my father, auntie, uncle and 'the one who died'. Thats all she would ever say - 'the one who died'. Today on Ancestry I found him, born 1923 and died less than a year later. He would have been my uncle. I feel really quite upset. Lisa

Hi Lisa, It's strange how moving it when you find out something like this. I found that my Auntie who is still living was named after her fathers sister who died in childbirth. No one knew of this sister, not even her, till I started searching out Family Tree, Linda

Hi Lisa I have a similar thing in my tree on my Mother's side. Mum knew she had a brother born in 1926 and that he'd died when very young. I found his birth and death registered in the same quarter of the same year. That would make him 12 weeks old at the most when he died. Joy

I had a similar thing when I first started looking into my family history about ten years ago. More recently, I solved the mystery of a memorial card that my Dad has; it turned out to be for my great grandfather's (married) sister who died aged 26 or so. I don't quite know what made me do it, but I had a quick look on FreeBMD to see if there were any births registered (her married surname is uncommon), and found one... but also a death against the same name. I found her husband in the 1901 census, he was only aged 31 and was already a widower and had lost his only child. :-( Go back further still, and life really was different, with children's names being 'recycled' to younger siblings if the older one died. Most of us will never really have any knowledge of our ancestors as people, no matter how thoroughly we do our research. But stuff like this does somehow give us a connection. I think the best way to look at it (if it gets you down), is that what has happened has long since past, but that by rediscovering it we're in some way honouring the memory of those who've been before us. That's my take on it, anyway... Andrew

It really is so sad when people lost little children, often several of them. Even though it was much more common in 'the olden days' than it is now, the parents must have felt the same sense off loss that we would now. The same applies to all the young women who died in childbirth. How tragic for a young man to lose his wife and be left with small children to bring up on his own.

Hi everyone Maybe in 1923 you weren't supposed to mourn a young child too much, particularly in a working class family, it is almost as if her way of coping was to deny his very existence. However, the next son was given the same name, perhaps as a memorial Lisa

This will sound callous, but I think that if you go back to the 1800s, many people wouldn't have been affected in quite the same way as we would by the loss of a child. Obviously that's quite a sweeping generalisation, but when you see a new child appearing almost every year, and a good chance that a number of them won't see adulthood, the relationship must be different to what we would have now, where four children would be considered a fairly big family. And in the early part of the century, and for longer in poorer families, children would've been expected to earn their keep from a young age. Childhood is, I think, quite a modern notion.

My darling dad was the youngest of 14 children but only 8 survived to adulthood. He often talked about 'Young Fred', the brother just above him. I looked it up and young Fred died when he was only 3, dad would have been only 2 but still remembered him.

Hi, had something similar to this the other day - since WDYTYA, my boss has become quite interested, so last Sat morning while it was quiet in the office we had a look to see what we could find. Sure enough there were the refs for her parents, births and marriages, her grandmother and grandfather and their marriage. Found g/m and g/f on 1901 census, with g/m older sibling - so had a look for the ggrandparents marriage - usual 2-3 year trawl before oldest child's birth - nothing. Checked previous census and sure enough there are ggmother and ggfather married and living with her parents - seemed strange that there was then almost an eight year gap to the first child, so as they hadn't moved out of the same street, did a trawl for their surname and children born during the intervening years and found three children, one died at birth, one died aged 2, and one died aged 1 - as it's a very unusual surname and they are the only couple of childbearing age in the family at that time, seems they probably all belong to them (we will order the certs to find out) - really rather sad - we just sat here and looked at it in disbelief that a couple could be unlucky enough to lose three children in a row. Looby

That really is terrible...

Lisa, you've reminded me of my Nan talking about her little sister (well, one of them), I think her name was Elsie; anyway, as my Nan told the story, when she was poorly, I can't remember what with, the Doctor insisted that putting her crib by an open window and letting her get the 'benefit' of the wintry fresh air would sort her out. As far as my Nan was concerned, it was that which actually killed her. I've done next to no research into her side of the family, but one day...

It's terrible the things that could happen...... One rellie had a sick baby and the Dr said Fresh Air, even though it's cold.....so pram went outside in the winter sunshine..............the snow on the roof was melting and an avalanch of snow slid off the roof, straight into the pram, suffocating the child......... Merry

My father's mother had a daughter who died a month old. My father had died when I found this out but his brother who is still alive never knew about his sister and she was never mentioned. Just come across some papers from another relation and also found the babies baptism card in the papers and her memorial card. Very sad. Irene

Karen what a horrible way to die I wonder why he starved?? and Merry how awful that must have been, to go to the pram and find the baby dead doesnt bear thinking about does it ???. I too have lots of incidences of babies dying either at birth or soon after, when I first started this and found myself really upset and crying, I thought I was mad, but now I sort of understand why it just makes you feel so helpless, I often wish I could have been some help silly really isnt it ???

Have recently recieved two birth certs for a borhter and sister and also their deaths certs. John lived for 3 wks, and his sister Hannah lived for 10mths. Also nan's two brothers died young. One was stillborn, and the other was 7mths. Think the one that affected me the most was my aunts child who lived for one day... was old enough to be aware of that one when it happened :-(

My Father often mentioned a sister who died, but would give no details, and would not talk about it at length-I got the impression he blamed himself-anyway I actually found his sister and she died aged 8 of Tubercular meningitus-and it stated Father present at death, how awful is that.