“Our Darling Herbert”

The smallest marble obelisk in Pine Grove Cemetery in East Douglas, stands at just over a foot tall, with a peaked top and four sides, the westward face of which bares a simple 3 word inscription.

It gives no last name, no parents names and no birth and death dates– it simply reads “Our Darling Herbert”.

The little obelisk stands at the end of a row, closest to Catherine Balcome and her husband Charles Balcome.

It took some searching but on the census of 1855 we find the young family: Charles, Catherine and little Herbert, with a check mark in the column indicating that he was a child “under age 5”.

During the later part of the nineteenth century infant and child mortality rates were terrifyingly high. According to The Fatal Years: Child Mortality in Late Nineteenth Century America “Nearly two out of every ten children died before reaching their fifth birthday.” A staggering statistic that is reflected in the number of children’s graves we find in every historic cemetery across the nation, and Pine Grove is no exception.

Herbert’s parents Charles and Catherine would go on to have 4 other Children, Henry born in 1856, Pollie born in 1859, Ernest born in 1861 and Cora born in 1865, according to the Massachusetts Census of 1865, notably Herbert’s name is absent.

Catherine Ballou Balcome would pass away the following year, in May of 1866, at the age of 38. Her cause of death was listed as miscarriage. Her husband Charles F. Balcome, a veteran of the Civil War would join her and Herbert in eternal rest at Pine Grove in 1887 at the age of 61, his cause of death was listed as epilepsy.

The Balcome’s have nearly identical headstones, each a marble tablet atop a base. Both are grayed and covered in lichens. It should be noted that their headstones suffer from iron pin erosion. The iron pins, originally intended to add stability to this type of headstone, over the years have oxidized causing them to rust, and to deteriorate the stone from the inside out. Current preservation standards recommend that these type of iron pins be removed.