Tombstone Tuesday - Eldridge Garrison Garrard

It's Tombstone Tuesday and that means we should post a picture of a tombstone but as you will see, I won't be posting one.

Tonight's subject is Eldridge Garrison Garrard.   He was born 3 Aug 1888 in Crawford Co., IL, and was the son of Robert Elbert Garrard and Louisa Adaline Eagleton.  Since Robert and Louisa are my grandma Beulah Ethel (Garrard) Browning's parents (and therefore my g-grandparents) this means Eldridge was my grandma's brother and my great-uncle.

I wish I had a tombstone picture to post for this little guy, but I don't.  He never had one.  It's a wonder anyone knows that he existed at all.

My grandma said that Eldridge was born with a cleft palate and that one cold January day in 1890, when he was almost two years old, Eldridge was toddling around in the house while his mother Louisa was doing her washing at the hearth.  He had climbed up on a chair, probably one that she had been sitting at doing her chores, and was bouncing on it in the way that babies do.  The chair tipped over and little Eldridge fell and hit his head on the edge of the stone fireplace.  Grandma said it took him a few days to die.

He died on the 18th of January, 1890, and was buried a few days after that in the Haskin Cemetery in Crawford Co., IL.  His gravesite is unmarked.

Grandma took me to the cemetery in 1995 and pointed to the patch of ground where Eldridge lies buried.  I have thought and thought about that today and have realized that I never took any photos of that area.  I am fairly certain I will remember where she pointed when I get back to the cemetery next summer.  At least I hope so.  My grandma is gone now.

My grandma would often tell me about her brother Eldridge. She never knew him -- he died ten years before she was born -- but I think she felt that she did and that he, like all her other siblings, was her brother.   Her parents certainly kept his memory alive and my grandma, in her turn, kept his memory alive that much longer by passing her memories down to me.

Sleep well, great uncle Eldridge.