Elon and Catherine Carman had three children. My great-grandfather Joseph and his brother Jacob survived into adulthood. Their sister Caroline did not. Elon’s Declaration for Pension (1910) listed the three of them, with the word living after Joseph and Jacob and dead after Caroline. Census searches indicated that Caroline probably died sometime between 1870 and 1880, at a young age. She was born in 1869.
Recently, I discovered Caroline’s death certificate. She died in 1872. She was only 2 1/2 years old.
I am always struck by how common death in childhood used to be when I find these relatives of mine who didn’t make it to adulthood, and how fortunate we are that medicine has progressed so much that such deaths are now rare.
