All four of my sisters are extremely intelligent women. I don’t dwell on it much here but all of them are tremendously accomplished and simply remarkable human beings.
As you may remember researching my family history is one of my hobbies. Through the brilliance of my second-oldest sister I was introduced to a site for searching the Catholic cemeteries of St. Louis, Missouri online. If you’re interested in prowling around yourself, the site is here. With just a little poking around and cross-referencing the results of my searches with other information I had I was able to make some intriguing new discoveries about a branch of the family that had previously stymied me, the McCoys, my maternal grandfather’s mother’s family.
I’ll save reporting that for later. Below is a listing of the plot in Calvary Cemetery of the Hayes family, the family of my maternal grandfather’s sister Gertrude (click for a larger image).
Sarah Blanchard up there at the top is my maternal grandfather’s mother. Her maiden name was McCoy. Mary Gertrude is my grandfather’s sister and she was married to Louis J. Hayes. I have some stories about them that I’ll share with you another time.
Louis and Gertrude Hayes had four daughters who lived to adulthood. They were, basically, middle class people. But look at all of the babies that never made it through their first year! And the boy that died at 13. And how hard that must have been on Gertrude as well.
That was long before all of the antibiotics and immunizations that we have today. Life was hard and you were lucky if you lived through your infancy.
BTW if any of you have a grandmother whose maiden name was Hayes and who was born in St. Louis, I’m still trying to track down the descendants of that side of the family.
Yeah, life is certainly tough on babies. Without antibiotics I might not have either of my children here now.
As an aside, it’s interesting how naming babies has changed with decreases in infant mortality. Babies in times past would often not be named for several months or a year in case they died. Today, people sometimes have names picked out as soon as their pregnant.
My family and I were able to track my paternal line back to the 1770’s in South Carolina. It was quite shocking to find out they were slaveowners there and in Mississippi until they moved to Texas after the Civil War. We’re still trying to find out how and when they came over from Scotland.
It’s sad to see so many infants that died. That St. Louis Catholic archdiocese cemetery website is really great to explore. I am hoping to visit a couple of cemeteries with Mom when I’m down to visit her. Maybe I can take some pictures of graves so that Mom can see them, since I don’t think she’ll be able to walk to the grave sites. -S