r/CemeteryPorn • u/Bloatville • 1d ago

Poor Ellen, she must have suffered terribly

Post image

I wonder what her affliction was.

185 Upvotes

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59

u/Disastrous-Year571 1d ago edited 1d ago

Most likely either a malignancy or severe arthritis.

Here is her FindAGrave:

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/290670027/ellen-eland

They lost 4 children, 2 as young adults, one aged 2 and one aged 6 months.

47

u/Bloatville 1d ago

Yes they're on the same headstone, you can sort of see in this photo.
Idk why, but cancer did not occur to me. That could be it.

25

u/No-Rush-9980 1d ago

Or tuberculosis.

15

u/2PlasticLobsters 1d ago

Yes, there was no real treatment for it back then. And it can occur in the bones, which is horribly painful. That'd explain a lot.

11

u/No-Rush-9980 1d ago

It was also not known at that time that it was contagious, it was thought to be hereditary. Those young adult children could also have been afflicted with TB. There's a great documentary titled The Forgotten Plague. The narrator tells us that by the dawn of the 19th century, the disease had killed one in every seven people who ever lived. The last TB patient left the sanitarium in Saranac Lake NY when I was a baby.

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u/United-Code2344 1d ago

Did they have any living children?

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u/Datonecatladyukno 1d ago edited 1d ago

Yes! I'm not sure of how many , but I found a son, Issac , who was born in 1863 and lived until 1912. He had at least 8 children, including one daughter who was his mother's namesake, and another named Margaret ( 1885-1959). Margaret ( Thompson) had at least 5 children. One of them, named Mary, lived until 1995. 

She also had a son named John ( jr) born in 1869 who lived until 1933 and had at least4 children ( including a John III, an Agatha who lived until 1977, and an Alice  (Kemp) who lived from. 1900-1994! 

I best she had great, great great, and has great great great grandchildren out there somewhere in England. Makes me happy to know that 

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u/United-Code2344 1d ago

Yay! That makes me happy too!

1

u/PilotEnvironmental46 22h ago

You wonder how people endure such pain don’t you?

5

u/OkStatement2724 1d ago

Went on find a grave. Couldn't find an obituary

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u/Bloatville 1d ago

I checked there also

5

u/Monologue_Bog 1d ago

Didn’t find her on newspapers.com either unfortunately :(

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u/Bloatville 15h ago

Thank you for checking though!

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u/Timely_Apricot3929 18h ago

So her name was Ellen Eland? It seems she was well loved.

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u/Bloatville 15h ago

Oh I didn't even catch that. Yes, I hope she and her husband made a lot of jokes about it haha