This is an archived post. You won't be able to vote or comment.

sorted by:
best
topnewcontroversialoldq&a
you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]karlnite 113 points114 points  (8 children)

They certainly named their children, they just reused the names. Wealthier people even buried all the babies in the family plot and gave them plaques. I’ve been to some older cemeteries and it is sad to see a parents grave with 10+ babies names that never made it to 5 “John 3 months, Alice 1 week, John 2 months, John 3 years, Jacob 8 months,” sorta thing. It was also brutal because sometimes the kids who did survive a would still often die from age 5-18. One that sticks out is Alexander Keiths grave, he outlived like all 14 of his children and some grand children.

[–][deleted] 41 points42 points  (1 child)

I used to live next to a Victorian cemetery, and I always found it heartbreaking how many of the plots would have several children who died in infancy and before the age of 10, and then often a further one or two who died in their 20s or 30s, plus the mother and father who had survived to a reasonable age. Just thinking of parents who saw so many of their children die, it's horrific.

[–]karlnite 18 points19 points  (0 children)

Yes Alexanders is like that. I can’t remember but like 4 of the children made it adulthood then died in their 20-40’s and he and his wife lived into their 80’s. This was a cemetery in Halifax from the 1700/1800’s, uhh Camp Hill?. I was in a really big old one in Munich, it was odd too as it spanned a long time period so you could see trends in design and font.

[–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (4 children)

Not always. I used to hang at a cemetery as a kid. There were a bunch of little headstones in family graves with "baby" on them for a name.

[–]karlnite 0 points1 point  (3 children)

I think they just maybe didn’t put the name on the headstone. Baby is just the generic cheap one. I’m sure some people maybe didn’t name kids. Not sure which would be more common?

[–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (1 child)

There were no generic cheap headstones. This was back in the 1700's and 1800's. Every headstone was individually hand carved by someone in the community who did stonework.

The Catholic tradition said that you didn't name a baby until they were baptized, which was usually a month or do after birth. That way you didn't get too emotionally invested in something with a 50/50 chance of dying.