Week 9: Gone Too Soon
For 2023, I’m writing responses to the 52 Ancestors in 52 Days prompts provided by Amy Johnson Crow on her ”Generations Café” website and Facebook page.
This is my “favorite” grave marker (only genealogists have favorite grave markers) at Williamsburg’s historic Bruton Parish Church. Ann Burgess is not famous, although many famous people are buried in this cemetery. But her story touches me. I’ve built a narrative around this grave marker. Ann was the wife of a pastor (Henry Burges) who served a church in Isle of Wight County, across the James River from Williamsburg. She was raised in Williamsburg and came home to be with her mother as she gave birth. Things went badly; Ann and her infant child died and are buried in this location this type of grave marker is called an “altar tomb” beside the front door of the church.
Ten minutes of internet research helped me flesh out her story. Her maiden name was Ann Geddy – from a famous Williamsburg family. Ann’s father was James Geddy, a gunsmith and metal worker who came to Williamsburg from Scotland in the 1730s. His son, James Geddy, Jr., continued the family business and expanded it to include a silversmith and jewelry business. The James Geddy House across Palace Green from Burton Parish is one of the extant original buildings in Williamsburg and is open to visitors.
Ann’s husband Henry John Burgess was also a significant figure in the early history of colonial Virginia. Prior to the Revolution, Henry represented Isle of Wight County as a member of the committee of safety. Henry was an active supporter of the Revolution, and he was captured by the British at Suffolk after the town was burned by the British in 1779. Legend has it that he was saved only by the interventions of Martha Dandridge Custis, a widow whom Washington had married in 1759. The Custis property was only a block away from the Geddy House. Henry married two more times; he had two children with his third wife. This family left a legacy – there are at least 19 people with the “Geddy” surname living in Williamsburg today, and there are hundreds of people with the “Burgess” surname in and around Isle of Wight County. My 17th-century Burgess ancestor (my 8th great-grandmother Elizabeth Burgess) is descended from the same Burgess immigrant ancestor as Henry John Burgess. They were 2nd cousins so far as I can tell.
So it is not surprising that the graves of Ann Geddy Burgess and her (unnamed) infant daughter are featured so prominently in the churchyard. Her family and her husband’s family were important in the City of Williamsburg, and her death must have dealt a crushing blow to her widowed mother. She died in the late 1780s at the age of 77.
Ann Geddy Burgess represents millions of women over the centuries – women who die in childbirth or as a result of complications from childbirth.
One such woman is my 3rd great-grandmother Elizabeth Bilyeu (1808-1834). She was born in Tennessee, but her earliest immigrant ancestor Peter Billiou (1620-1708) arrived in New Amsterdam in 1661.
The Billiou family (they finally settled on the spelling “Bilyeu” and moved from New York through New Jersey, Maryland, and Kentucky before settling in Tennessee in the 1820s. The Bilyeus did not travel alone – other migrants from New Amsterdam, including the Workman family, moved to the same places at the same time as the Bilyeus. The family members occasionally intermarried, but in my direct line, the family lines only came together when Elizabeth married James Workman in Tennessee in 1826.
At first, their lives proceeded unremarkably in their frontier community. They soon had two children (the first child was my 2nd great-grandfather James Abraham Workman), but tragedy overtook this family when Elizabeth died after the 1833 birth to their third child, a boy named Samuel. Elizabeth was dead by 1834. The records of Overton County Tennessee are sparse and rudimentary for this time, and I can’t find any record of her death. But it was likely due to complications from childbirth.
James needed a wife – and he soon found one, in the person of Elizabeth’s sister Lydia. Lydia served as a mother to the three children, although she and James didn’t have any children together. She died in 1844, and James promptly married again – this time to Eliza Rayburn, who was about a year younger than James’s oldest son (my 2nd great-grandfather). Eliza had her first child with James in 1844 and went on to have eight more children over the next 20 years. The experience did not kill her – she died at the age of 54, 15 years after the birth of her last child.
James lived to the age of 78. He outlived his second wife by seven years.
Meanwhile, my 2nd great-grandfather James Abraham Workman (James’s oldest son), married and began to have children. He married his first wife, Jemima Kitchens, in 1848 and they started their family. Jemima bore six children in 10 years; she died (at the age of 28) less than a year after the birth of her sixth child.
The randy old goat wasn’t through with women yet. He quickly married – this time to a 13-year-old named Adeline Buck – and they had 10 children over the next 20 years. Adeline died (at the ripe old age of 26) less than a year after the birth of her 10th child.
James Abraham Workman lived to the age of 60. He outlived his third wife by four years.
I can give you another example of this from my family tree. My third great-grandfather Johannes Georg Ilgenfritz (1750-1831) outlived two of his three wives. His first wife, Margaret Mumment, died 10 years after the birth of her last child – but she had had six children in ten years (no twins), and that has to explain something. She was 40 when she died.
Then Johannes remarried – to Keturah Clark, who was 20 years younger than him. She died at the age of 42 as a result of complications from the birth of her 11th child in 17 years – including two sets of twins.
But wait, there’s more! Johannes married a third time – to Permilia “Milly” Jarvis, who was 46 years younger than him. She was the age of his oldest grandchild. Milly had five children in 10 years – no twins – but Johannes died (at the age of 81), leaving five children under the age of 12. Milly outlived him by 29 years. So far as I can tell, Johannes wore out two wives (killing one of them directly). His third wife was saved only because Johannes died after fathering 22 children over the course of 39 years. My 2nd great-grandfather, Solomon Ellefritz, was his 21st child. He was six when his 81-year-old father died.
They were all gone too soon – Elizabeth, Jemima, Adeline, Keturah – just four out of the millions of women across history who died as a result of childbirth. The saga of the American frontier is replete with stories like this – women beyond the reach of adequate medical care, bearing more children than their bodies can handle, who die and leave grief-stricken and broken families. Then there’s a quick remarriage.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Whew. I was a little surprised at my response.
Having attended an infant funeral today, this is particularly sad to me. I feel so fortunate not to have died in child birth and so grateful that my children have survived infancy. Sigh. It's just the day. "...In giving birth to an infant daughter who rests in her arms." That always gets me.