When I was growing up my family was all about the reuse of everything. We had the obvious (hand me down clothes) but also hand me down bikes and cars and furniture and pots and pans (my mother still uses pots from my great grandmother and I have my grandmother's colander). One thing that was absolutely forbidden however was used mattresses. My grandmother insisted that every mattress we ever use was purchased brand new from the store and sealed in plastic. No exceptions. This is why.

Evelyn was my grandmother's cousin, on her mother's side. (Her mother was my great grandmother's younger half sister, Marie.) Sometime in the 1930s, when Evelyn was married and the mother of three, her husband came across a mattress and other furniture items on the street in the Bronx. The occupants of an apartment were moving out and could not afford to take all of their things with them (not that uncommon). He brought the bed and mattress home and set it up for their son. Evelyn and the little boy (whose name we believe was Allen) laid down on the bed for a nap. And then they got sick - very very sick. And then they died, both of them, from typhus. Her husband, devastated and guilt-ridden, took his two surviving daughters and returned to South America, where he was from. And that was the last anyone knew of Evelyn's family. We never heard another word from them.

It is about the saddest story ever.

I do not know where Evelyn and her little boy were buried, and unlike my great grandfather's family, this side was not Catholic and thus I don't think I will find them in St. Raymond's Cemetery where all those relatives are. Searching the census databases, I hope I can find her married name, and then track down the death certificates. Evelyn was only a very distant relation and thus her life and death do not matter in the grand scheme of my family history research, but seeing this picture always makes me sad. It is an original photo my grandmother gave me - on the back is written "Evelyn and her son, Marie, Carol and grandmother - all are gone now but Carol". I don't know who wrote that (not my grandmother for sure) but it's a sorrowful note in the record of a family. Once these people were happy and then they were gone - and it was almost like they had never lived at all.

More on Evelyn if/when I find her final resting place.

[Post pics: Top picture, back row, Marie Gonzalez, her mother Maria Pressl - my great great grandmother - and her sister, Carol Redmond. Front row is Evelyn - Marie Gonzalez's daughter - and little Allen circa 1935. Bottom picture has Evelyn on the left in the back. My grandparents are kneeling in the front row, with arms around each other. Pic taken at Rockaway Beach 1935.]