Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Wednesday's Child - Cecil Marvin Roscoe


Cecil Marvin Roscoe, youngest son of William and Lena, died when he was 5 years old. This poem is engraved on his tombstone in the Oak Grove Cemetery in DeWitt, Nebraska:

A loved one from us has gone
A voice we love is stilled
A place is vacant in our home
Which never can be filled

His name is not right in his obituary and the months and days of age differ from his tombstone.  From the DeWitt Times-News, DeWitt, Nebraska, Thursday, March 22, 1906 
"OBITUARY  Died March 19, 1906 at the home of the parents in Clatonia, W.H. Roscoe, Son of William and Lena Roscoe, after a sickness of two weeks, age 5 years, 6 months, 13 days. Cause of death, pneumonia.
On Wednesday (March 21), after a short service at the house, conducted by Rev. Williams, Congregational pastor of DeWitt, the body accompanied by friends and relatives was lovingly laid to rest in the DeWitt cemetery."
Back in August, in my post "Stone Binge" I told about how I had recently gone back to the Oak Grove Cemetery in DeWitt and did not find the Roscoe family tombstones that I had taken photos of years earlier.  My bad.  After contacting the very helpful cemetery caretaker there, I am embarrassed to say that I was wrong - the stones are all still there! Even better than that, she told me that there was one unmarked grave in the family plot. I have an idea who that is but she didn't have the name to confirm it.  

William and Lena had a son Charles who was living with them in 1910 at age 19.  After that I had no idea what happened to him.  He was never mentioned as a survivor in the obituaries of his parents or any of his siblings.  For years I searched for this Charles in census records and couldn't find him.  With access to the Beatrice Daily Sun online I just happened to find out what happened to Charles.  Normally, it's a fun thing to find someone when you've been looking for them for a long time.  In this case, it was sad. Charles killed himself drinking poison in 1914.  He was buried in Oak Grove Cemetery, apparently never given a gravestone. 

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