Son of a Gate Maker

 

John Baker (left), Blanche McKee Baker (right) and their first three children

John Baker was born with humble roots. His father died at age 37 for reasons unknown to me and his family was split up. John at age 11, disappears from the records for awhile, presumably working as a servant of some sort until he became an adult, while his younger siblings were farmed out to other relatives to raise. When the records pick up on John's life, he is working as a gate maker and would continue that profession for the rest of his life, which turned out to not be terribly long lived. 

During his 61 years though, he had a total of 10 children from two different wives. I descend from his first wife Blanche, the one seen above and his first born son sitting on his lap in the picture above. Blanche bore him seven of those children before dying young, at age 37, of an infection that was a complication due to the birth of her last child. John would have three more children with his second wife. At least these were the facts I knew until yesterday.

One thing had troubled me through the years of research on this family. The children of John and Blanche came at pretty regular two year intervals, like just about every other family at the time. Towards the tail end of the children, the spacing starting approaching three years and then a period of six years went by before the seventh child appeared. Typically a gap of this size denotes a child that was stillborn or died very young, perhaps before establishing a record trail but none of the record sources I had access to every mentioned another child. 

Like newspapers however, more records are becoming available and doing a quick search for more records before wrapping up my research notes on John, I cam across a death record with his name attached dated 1912, right in the middle of that six year gap in children. It turned out to be the suspected missing child meaning Blanche actually bore him 8 children and in total John had 11 children, if only briefly. The missing child died four days after being born and according to the death certificate, died of inanition. For those like me who have never heard the term, it is a medical term essentially meaning exhaustion due to malnutrition. 

Although just a gate maker for wages, John at times in his life lived in a house with his wife and ten children who grew to adulthood so why did the seventh child die of malnutrition? One can only guess but after doing some internet research, I have a likely guess. According to the National Institute of Health, women with breast feeding issues (or rich and not wanting to breast feed at all) often substituted fortified cows milk to feed their infants in the early 1900's. This often led to issues with infant mortality due to spoiled milk in the summer heat or starvation if the child was born allergic to dairy. Non dairy substitutes weren't available to the public for another 15 years after this infant's death. 

I had no idea this child existed and what a shame to starve to death. It also leaves me now with another unanswered question, where was this child buried. His mom died three years later and is buried next to her parents. I've blogged about this before so won't go into details, but John paid for his housekeepers divorce from the father of her ex-husband so he could marry her which caused a scandal at the time. Legend has it John's former in-laws weren't too happy with this turn of events so when he died at 61, he was denied burial next to his first wife and instead buried in a spare plot available next to the first husband of John's youngest sister. Since the baby died before both of their deaths, he may be anywhere, including in an entirely different cemetery. The death certificate only lists the town in which he was buried.

Infant Baker, my great granduncle