"Tula's First Child's Casket"

“Tula’s first child’s casket,”  was penciled on the back of the faded and well worn picture.  Dirty brown smudges on the once white border, made me wonder how many others had held this picture and felt Tula's loss.  Had they also wondered just as I did,  just who was Tula’s first child?

Photo Taken by Kurtis Shawcroft
Used by permission

When I initially came across this picture and before I had really become acquainted with Tula,  I felt a sadness just knowing that she had lost a child.  But the feeling deepened once I researched Tula and realized that the sweet little tow headed Ola shown in the pictures shared in an earlier post was in fact, Tula’s first child.  It was Ola who laid within this child sized casket piled deep with beautiful flowers, Tula’s final gift to her sweet little girl.  Once again Tula faced heartbreak as she buried yet one more family member.  Ola was laid to rest in the Alamosa, Colorado Municipal Cemetery on the 25th of November 1902, next to her father Charles, just four years after his death.

According to an anonymous contributor on Findagrave, Ola died of spinal meningitis in Salida, Colorado on 23 November.  Although living in Salida at the time, Tula took Ola “home” to be buried in Alamosa.  By the age of 29, Tula had buried her mother, her father, her husband and her child and I can’t imagine the depth of her grief.  

The picture of Ola's casket was among the scant few pictures in my grandmother's suitcase and so I realized that Tula must have sent this picture to her sister, my great grandmother, Sarah Faucett Ganus, who then lived many miles away in Oklahoma.  Once again, Tula reached out to her sister and I wondered,  did Sarah write her back?  How I wish I had the letters those two may have exchanged.   

And with this finding, yet another question surfaced.  Why was Tula and Ola living in Salida rather than in Alamosa where they were living when Charles died?  I will share more of their story in my next post.    

Copyright © Michelle G. Taggart 2014