No. 11 The Children that were lost

One of the sad realities of the late 1800's and early 1900's was child mortality. According to my grandfather Jacob and Elizabeth Oakes had fourteen children. He was the youngest and the last one to survive infancy. As mentioned in one of the first blog entries, we do not know the names of the children who died as infants. Today if you visit the Oakes Cemetery in Rocky Valley near Strawberry Plains, Tennessee, you will find many graves marked only by a rock. No headstones have been erected and there is no one left these days to tell us who is buried where. At least ten of these graves seem to be those of the infant children of Jacob and Elizabeth. We don't know what were the causes of these specific deaths, only that it was not uncommon for infants to die. In 1900 the US reported that 30% of all deaths were among children under five years of age. Today's statistics are markedly improved with about 1% of children under 5 years of age dying. Medical journals indicated that the three chief causes of infant and child mortality were pneumonia, tuberculosis and diarrhea. For one living today it is hard to imagine the unbearable pain of losing not just one child but ten children. Among some of the old photographs owned by the Emma Oakes Palmer were these two photos of what I believe could be two of the children of Jacob and Elizabeth Oakes. In a time when having your photograph taken was rare, some families chose to have a photograph made of the deceased infant or child before burial. It gave them something to remember the child by. These would have been my great aunts or uncles had they lived.