Chess Cemetery, Greene County, PA

 Mother and daughter rest side by side.  Little Susanna Grim--the smaller stone--died at just five years of age back in the spring of 1859.  Her mother, Elizabeth Grim, died in 1873, I think at the age of 36, though the year on her stone is very hard to read.  At first, my paternal heart wept for little Susanna...all these years after her death.
  

 But then I began to piece together an eerie mystery surrounding Susanna's death.  She's not the only Grim child who died before reaching his or her sixth birthday.  In fact, Isaac and Elizabeth Grim lost at least three children between 1859 and 1865.  My soul ached for them.

 Of the ones buried here, Susanna died first, but the inscription on her headstone would suggest that other children in the family had already died, for it says: "Our sweet little children have gone to mansions above yonder sky to gaze on the beautiful throne of Him who is seated on high."  

 Priscilla Grim died at four years of age in 1860.  Her stone, too, is decorated with a dove holding an olive branch in its beak.

 And then, there's little William Grim, who also died as a four-year-old in 1865.  I know that it was very common in centuries past for children to die before reaching their tenth birthday.  Whooping cough, and pneumonia, and dysentery were all common killers of children.  And I don't mean to malign Isaac and Elizabeth Grim, their parents, God rest their souls.  The pain of losing three or more children is unthinkable. 

And yet, we don't know if these children died of illnesses or cracked heads.  We modern folks are conditioned to ask whether children who die might have been abused or neglected.  Of course, it is probably "telling" that all three died during cold weather influenza season: Susanna in April, Priscilla in May, and William in February.  The three of them also have beautiful headstones, each inscribed with a poem, though only one of those is legible.  The children's stones have weathered the years better than their mother's.  Such headstones were surely expensive; their fine workmanship and durability would argue that the kids were greatly loved, not neglected.

Their mother's grave is just beside them, though nearly illegible with age.  The constantly bereaved mother died young and perhaps with no surviving children.  Did she die a lonely, embittered widow, having lost all her little ones before they reached their tenth year, or did she have surviving children?  Did Elizabeth go mad, perhaps take her own life?  Why are a mother and her three children the only Grims in this far-flung cemetery; had she and her children returned to live with her birth family; was her maiden name Chess, or possibly Parson?  Poor Elizabeth Grim.  She got pregnant with Susanna when she was only 18 and lost the girl when she (the mother) was 22.  Isaac, the children's father, isn't buried in this cemetery.  Perhaps he fell on some battlefield down South?  Or maybe, after his wife and children all died, he moved out West to flee his sorrow, remarried, and had children with another woman?  There is no one left who remembers their story, no one who can speak their woes.  You won't find them on FaceBook, or LinkedIn, or even Ancestry.com.  What was little Priscilla's first word?  Did they call William "Willy," and did he hide his carrots in his pockets so he wouldn't have to eat them?  And little Susanna, did she cling to her rag-doll when the fever racked her small frame?  All of it is past knowing.