I have often commented on how the graves of children - and especially infants - are arguably the saddest to encounter. A life cut so short and the grief of new or nearly parents is tragic.
But I think I need to amend that sentiment.
As tragic as the death of any child is, finding a child's grave that has clearly been lost, overlooked, and neglected, and which you cannot even link to a family, is more tragic still. I encountered just this case recently.
We had set out to visit some nearby family cemeteries (no relations - just an excuse to tramp about in a cemetery). These were pretty much in residential areas and each had only a handful of memorials in it.
Whaley Cemetery turned out to be in a small neighborhood, sitting in a small plot adjacent to a home, and on the 'corner' of a cul-de-sac entry. With three recorded memorials, taking a couple of minutes to GPS tag each was a moral imperative.
But there were more than three graves. Several are totally unmarked save perhaps a field stone. But two were not. One was only a footstone with initials which I logged anyway.
Then there was Lora's small headstone. 13 months 2 weeks old. Tragic. But even more touching is that there is no obvious connection between Joel Whaley (the progenitor in this cemetery) and a Wood family. Who were this child's parents? How did she come to be here? And more maddening, why was her grave overlooked or ignored when this cemetery was created in Find A Grave? The entire cemetery isn't much larger than a two car garage. And her headstone is mere feet from the large Whaley stone. How and why was she ignored?
Addendum: I spent some time trying to suss out who this child's parents might be based on Census records. Sadly I cannot place a Wood family anywhere near the Whaley family in either the 1870 or the 1880 Census. And there is nothing about little Lora in any on-line reference.
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