Suffer the Little Children
Amos Hill, loss, and the early deaths of children
The Hill grave in Hope Cemetery, Corning New York (courtesy of Find a Grave)
I am the parent of a fourteen-year-old daughter, a freshman in high school. I remember the day she was born, how I first held her as she cried out, her eyes pinched shut. I remember that when I bent close, putting my finger in her grip, and said her name, she quieted, turned her head, opened her eyes and gazed at me. It took my breath away.
All the years of carrying her, playing with her, reading to her, taking her to school and picking her up again, eating in restaurants on Fridays when I didn’t feel like cooking, all of these memories cling to me. Now, older, we’ll watch anime on the couch, maybe play video games together. She’s thrilled to have me try Legend of Zelda on her Switch. All these moments: I wouldn’t trade them for anything, not any other imagined life.
My daughter is so indissoluble from my self, and my identity as a father, I couldn’t comprehend losing her. I don’t think I could bear it at all. Any parent knows this, I would think. What must it be like to lose a child that one has grown so attached to?
I have many ancestors who endured these deaths, whether of their infants, or their toddlers, or their teenagers. I’ve discovered these tiny graves along the way.
In the last few weeks, I’ve posted about two of my ancestors, my third great-grandparents Richard Lord Hill and Julia Havens Hill. This is one of the first couples in my line to settle in Corning, New York, where I was born (the second, in fact; Julia’s parents would have been the first). Julia was herself born there in 1840, and Richard came into town later, around 1854. Corning was a village that had been founded less than two decades before. I get giddy thinking of how the two of them must have met—it was a small town, after all.
Last year, in the late summer, I drove to Corning and rented an AirBnB on Bridge Street, on the north side of the Chemung River. I drove to Hope Cemetery, on the South Corning Road, to see the gravestone, an obelisk, that marked Richard Hill’s grave and, presumably, Julia. She’s there, from what the cemetery records indicate, but her name does not appear on the stone. Why I don’t know; Richard died in 1902, and Julia in 1930, and maybe the time span has something to do with it.
A name that does appear on the stone, however, is Amos.
The Hill’s had, from what I can tell, six children, of which Amos was the youngest. The stone reads, Amos W., born on October 24, 1873. He fell asleep, it says, on March 15, 1887. He was thirteen years old.
On Amos’s Find a Grave page is a clip from the Corning Journal, which reads, “Amos Hill, aged thirteen years, son of Richard L. Hill, died of diphtheria, on Tuesday evening, after eight days' illness. He had been in New York, the week previous to the attack, on a visit to his father, and was at school on the Monday after. He was a bright scholar, studious and ambitious, giving promise of a useful and honored career. He possessed unusual musical talent. As a son and brother he was greatly beloved, and his death is an unspeakable bereavement to his parents and the family. They have the profound sympathy of many friends in their great sorrow. The school companions of the diseased will ever lament the death of Amos Hill. The funeral was at the residence this forenoon. Rev. Mr. Converse read the Episcopal service, and the burial was at Hope Cemetery.”
Those eight days must have been excruciating for all involved. Diphtheria, in our country, has all but been eradicated through vaccination efforts. It is a bacterial infection that is treatable by medication. At best, it may be mild, though it can cause breathing problems, and heart and nerve damage. In children, though, it can be fatal.
I often wander cemeteries and, in certain time periods, children’s graves predominate. At the turn of the twentieth century, for example, there are whole swaths of children in graveyards—possibly due to influenza outbreaks. But we forget that in the past, childbirth was precarious enough, and oftentimes infants died within days. So too with younger children. And beyond that, there are accidents, drownings, unforeseen illnesses.
In all of my investigations into my ancestors, I find the loss of children. Amos is especially striking; he was thirteen, a lot of years for parents to grow attached, to the point of assuming that nothing would ever go wrong. No wonder his parents felt “unspeakable bereavement” and “great sorrow.” The “promise” that this child must have had for his parents went beyond scholarship, or musical talent, or ambition.
I am struck by the fact that the son was visiting his father, Richard, in New York—at the time Richard was an insurance adjuster in the City, and I had assumed that his family would be with him, but Amos wasn’t. Was he in some sort of boarding school in Corning? Where was his mother, Julia? Was she also back in Corning?
The funeral was held in the Hill’s house. Imagine.
So one of my enduring questions is, To what extent has their grief been passed on?
And what is it like to lose a child? A sibling? It turns out, I knew people who did.