My mom always told me that her mom had some babies that didn't live. She even took me to the cemetery in New Hope, FL where there are some baby graves buried next to my great grand parents and they are unmarked but sectioned off.
I knew that there were at least 2 boys. My mom has 5 sisters but never had a living brother.
I typically use Ancestry for most of my research but recently took a look at FamilySearch.org and there I found out a couple of things
1) One of the baby boy's my grandmother had was born in 1933 and died 26 Nov 1933 and his name was Charles E. Mims. I don't know exactly when he was born or how long he lived but my mom did tell me that her mother said one of them lived about 10 days so I am thinking this must have been Charles. My mom told me that she recalls my grandmother telling her his name was "Ervin" so I assume that is what the "E" stood for.
My grandmother told my mom that when he was a few days old, he became yellow (we are guessing he probably was jaundiced). My grandfather had to walk over 5 miles to go to the doctor (no phones, no cars) and by the time they made it back to the house, the baby had died. Remember, back in 1933, there wasn't much treatment for things like this...plus, he may have had something more severe, like a non-functioning liver.
I know I had jaundice as a baby and was treated for it but that was 30 years after Charles was born.
2) Another boy was born a year earlier on 30 Oct 1932 and died 31 Oct 1932. I know this because I found his death certificate.
Now, I am not sure why, but seeing this death certificate made me cry. I mean really cry! This baby boy, who could have grown up to be my uncle died and didn't even live a whole day. He didn't even have a name. Then a year later, my grandmother lost another son. I don't know if either of them were premature, but I can't imagine carrying a baby for months and then losing them as soon as they came into the world.
I know it happens and sadly, isn't uncommon. But knowing that my grandparents had 2 children die within about a year, it is just heartbreaking.
I wonder what they would have been like, I bet they looked like my grandpa. It makes me sad that the first baby boy didn't even have a name. I'd like to give him one, I think he name might have been John, named after both my grandfather's father and my grandmother's brother.
Before the 2 boys were born and died, my grandmother had a still born baby girl. Later on, in the late 1940s, she had a miscarriage. Soon afterwards, she became very, very ill and her brother, John, took her to the hospital in Opp, AL. There, they discovered, she actually had been pregnant with twins...she miscarried both but one was still attached. She nearly died. She was in the hospital for a few weeks.
My mom told me that she must have had another still born child or miscarriage but she doesn't know when it was. My grandfather always said they had 12 children....6 that lived and 6 that didn't.
How awful and sad, I can't imagine how hard that had to have been on my grandmother! She had it so hard. My mom's oldest sister said, she had to plow the fields with mules and she was sometimes 8-9 months pregnant at the time and she'd work so hard she had blood in her shoes.
Apparently, after Charles died, a nurse told my grandmother that she had a "dead liver" and that if she got pregnant again, she needed to take some kind of medicine. My mom doesn't have the details really on this - exactly what was wrong with my grandmother's liver or what medicine she took, but my grandma said it worked because she had 6 babies that lived after that.
I knew my grandma was a strong woman, but by golly, how did she manage to live through all this? I can't imagine how hard that was for her.
.jpg)
.jpg)
