The headstone of JJ and Ophelia Eakins in Pioneer Park cemetery. John J. and Ophelia (nee Crutchfield) Eakins were pregnant 8 times – yet only 1 child survived to adulthood. That child would go on to bury his wife at an early age plus one of their 3 children. Ophelia, on the other hand, lived a very long life. She endured 8 pregnancies before modern medicine, buried 7 of her 8 children, her husband, her daughter-in-law and one of her grandchildren before she passed.
Infant mortality at the turn of the last century was incredibly high. Things that children died from: dysentery, diarrhea, scarlet fever, diphtheria, pneumonia, typhoid, tuberculosis. (Several of Ophelia’s deceased children’s names can be seen in the second photograph.)
