Sad separation.
Staff who worked on St. Helena Island often lived there and brought up families. They died there too and the island has several small cemeteries including the larger ones for prisoners who go numbered but unnamed.
When children died (and remember during the whole period of its role as a penal settlement, children were under the age of 21), they were buried on the island in a special cemetery for children. Sadly, their parents were laid to rest on the mainland.
Of course today, Eleanor (Nellie) who departed this earth in May 1899 would have been regarded as an adult.
Sadly too, quite a number of headstones and also stone crosses from the separate prisoner cemetery have been stolen over the years and used for different purposes, even to make coffee tables apparently.
St. Helena Island Penal Settlement
Sad separation.
Staff who worked on St. Helena Island often lived there and brought up families. They died there too and the island has several small cemeteries including the larger ones for prisoners who go numbered but unnamed.
When children died (and remember during the whole period of its role as a penal settlement, children were under the age of 21), they were buried on the island in a special cemetery for children. Sadly, their parents were laid to rest on the mainland.
Of course today, Eleanor (Nellie) who departed this earth in May 1899 would have been regarded as an adult.
Sadly too, quite a number of headstones and also stone crosses from the separate prisoner cemetery have been stolen over the years and used for different purposes, even to make coffee tables apparently.
St. Helena Island Penal Settlement