Sepia Saturday challenges bloggers to share family history through old photographs.
This week’s Sepia Saturday photo shows a family rescuing what remained of their household belongings following a fire. Interviews with survivors of housefires always say the same thing: “We lost everything, but at least we’re alive. We can rebuild.” I hope that if such tragedy comes my way, I can be that positive. Several distant relatives experienced the horror of devastating fires.
For several years I have searched without success for the story of a fire that took the lives of two little children, Vernon and Daisey Clift.
George and Sallie Jollett Clift
Vernon and Daisey
Vernon and Daisey were the first children born to George and Sallie Jollett Clift, my great-grandmother’s sister. Whether the house caught on fire or the children were playing near an open fire is not known. However, their little tombstones tell a bit of the story.
Some years later, a similar tragedy struck the Jollett family again. Macile Sullivan, granddaughter of my great-grandmother’s brother Burton Lewis Jollett, was just a little over a year old when she got too close to an open flame. Her clothes caught fire and she suffered extensive burns. Was it from a fireplace in the house? Was there a burn pile outside where her parents John and Fleta Sullivan burned trash and brush? Apparently, her death did not make the newspaper either.
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| On the back of the death certificate. I don't understand the request for eye drops. |
In 1959 a son-in-law of my great-grandmother’s sister Leanna Jollett Knight died from pneumonia brought on due to 2nd and 3rd degree burns. Ben Shifflett had tried to put out a brush fire when his clothes caught fire.
Ben and Bertha Knight
Shifflett
This was a real downer, wasn’t it! Let’s hope my friends at Sepia Saturday will have amusing stories of moving households and people with mattresses on their head.
Wendy
© 2021, Wendy Mathias. All rights reserved.
