How do you begin to get a kid interested in their family history? Well, it’s no easy task. I was one of the lucky ones in the fact that I got into it by having a burning question needing to be asked. Other kids — they aren’t that lucky. Most kids don’t show an interest whatsoever in knowing where they come from, let alone who they come from. A lot of kids aren’t even fortunate enough to know a parent, let alone a Grandparent, or more-so a Great-Grandparent. I’ve found a good amount of success in talking a lot about your family history and stories from the past. Growing up, I was always interested in what Grandpa had to say about his childhood, about his parents and Grandparents, and this was long before I had the burning question of “Nana, did you know any of your Great-Grandparents?”
I grew up listening to my Mom talking about her Great-Grandmother Thompson and her Great-Grandfather LaRue. I think of some of these stories on the daily still and it’s almost been twenty years since I first started hearing them. I talk about my own Great-Grandmother almost daily and she’s been gone for eighteen years now. It doesn’t seem like it’s been that long, almost feels like it’s impossible that it’s been that long but… it has been. Soon enough, it’ll be twenty years, and then forty, and so on. Eventually, I might be one of the only ones to remember my Nana S. And just that thought alone makes me want to research as much as I can on my family history. Some of the names of ancestors I find… I might be the first person who’s thought of them in generations. Especially the young children that passed away that were older or younger siblings to one of my ancestors.
Like my Great-Grandmother’s older sister, for example. Vannie Louise Thompson was born November 24th, 1911, and died on November 19th, 1915, short of her fourth birthday. If it wasn’t for a simple tombstone for Vannie in the Gibson Family Cemetery out in Corydon, which is one of my favorite places in the world, then poor little Vannie may have never been remembered by anyone ever again. Her parents are gone now, and her siblings are long gone. There’s nobody alive that remembers Vannie except for those of us who do family history. There are no pictures of her. All that we know of Vannie is what is on her death certificate that was filled out by her Uncle, Sam Thompson. He listed Vannie’s birth year as about 1910 — she was really born in 1911.
The date of death was November 19th, 1915. The death occurred in the Smith Mills precinct of the county and that makes sense as that’s where the family had lived for quite sometime. Little Vannie died of membranous croup that lasted for two days before she succumbed to the illness. Her parents were listed as Johnnie Thompson and Jan Ella Nally (actually Janella). She was buried on the very same day she died… probably in hopes that the quick burial would stop the croup from spreading to the other children.
In the Gibson Cemetery is a small tombstone for Vannie that only states — VANNIE. DAU OF JOHN & JANELLA THOMPSON. 1911-1915.
Vannie’s life was summed up in the space of a dash between 1911 and 1915. It makes me wonder what type of a child was Vannie? Did she have any hobbies at almost four years old? Was she looking forward to her fourth birthday on November 24th? Did she have any favorite toys? Did she have a favorite sibling? At that point she had three brothers and two sisters. What was her relationship like with them? What color hair did she have? What color eyes? Death certificates don’t divulge as much information as I wish they would. There aren’t cemetery records, either, with this type of information, not for a death occurring so long ago and especially not for a small family cemetery out in the rural part of the county. If it wasn’t for family historians like myself, Vannie would have been long forgotten years ago. But thanks to websites like Ancestry and Find-a-Grave, hopefully the memory of Vannie will live on. Albeit I never met her, she will never be forgotten.
What’s even worse are the infants that never even stood a fighting chance. My Grandpa Jady had two siblings that died at birth — an older sister and a younger brother. The first child of Dick and Lorene Blanford was a stillborn baby in December of 1931. Nobody had known more than that, really, until I ordered off for what is called a stillbirth certificate. My whole life, I grew up hearing Grandpa talk about his eldest sibling having been stillborn and they buried the baby in a shoe box in the Smith Mills Cemetery underneath a large tree. I’ve been to Smith Mills Cemetery numerous times and I have my suspicions which tree he’s talking about, but we’ll never know for sure. I feel like there should be some sort of tombstones or plaque marking her final resting place but, there probably never will be unless I take the initiative to put it there.
Anyway — when I ordered off for the stillbirth certificate, I learned a lot more about Baby Blanford. She was born and deceased on December 14th, 1931. The certificate states that the mother was about six months along — so the baby was without a doubt premature and died because of this. We’re unsure as to what caused the early birth, it could have just been something as simple as it was her first pregnancy. Perhaps her body just didn’t cooperate with the pregnancy. Most importantly, we learned it was a baby girl. Not much more information was provided. No burial location, but we had already acquired that from family stories. Grandpa said his mother really hated talking about the pregnancies she lost. Especially the first baby girl.
In 1950, Lorene became pregnant again. By this time, this would have been her tenth pregnancy. On June 16th, 1950, Lorene gave birth to a stillborn baby boy and he was promptly buried at the back of the Saint Louis Catholic Cemetery here in Henderson. Upon the death of Lorene and Dick in 1991 and 1995 respectively, the baby boy was exhumed from the back of the cemetery and moved to the front to be re-interred by his parents. I wish they could have done that with the baby girl they lost in 1931 but, I’m sure they had their reasons as to why they couldn’t. I believe the baby born in 1950 was a full-term birth but, the funny thing is, none of us can find a death or stillbirth certificate for him. There isn’t even a birth index listing for him. It’s like he never existed at all and was a figment of someone’s imagination but — all of the siblings (older than the deceased baby boy) remember their Mom being pregnant.
The infant boy has a simple tombstone that reads — INFANT SON OF R.J. & LORENE BLANFORD. JUNE 16 1950.
The life of the stillborn baby boy is summed up in just those few words. But I’m sure his impact was much greater than that. But without family historians like myself, he would be long forgotten about by now as a lot of Grandpa’s siblings have passed, including him.
No comments:
Post a Comment