The Family Bible of Thomas Elisha & Susan Starr Basinger, Or, In Which I Find a Baby

I’ve been trying to write this post for days.

I can’t seem to get it straight in my mind how to start, or not to start, or do I write two posts, but two posts might muddy the discovery, and one post might muddy the discovery, and what about a spoiler alert?

So I’ll stop trying to write this in a logical, chronological fashion, and I’ll just start in the middle.

Almost three years ago I photographed the Starr family plot in Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah, Georgia. It will perhaps be helpful to you if you click on the link, and scroll down and view the photo of a child’s – a BABY’S – grave. This tiny little grave is outlined behind the memorial for Elisabeth Basinger. At the time, Sugar and I didn’t know who Elisabeth Basinger was, either, and then he re-read his great-grandfather’s “Reminiscences”, and learned that Elizabeth Basinger, the child, was the second child born to his great-grandparents William Starr Basinger and Margaret Roane Garnett Basinger. I wondered if the little outlined grave belonged to Elizabeth Basinger, the child.

Fast forward to two weeks ago when I photographed the Thomas Elisha & Jane Susan Starr Basinger Family Bible. The photos were not clear when enlarged, so last week I rephotographed everything. There’s a section which listed the servants’s births and deaths, and I was very interested to see if I could find who the servants were. Perhaps I could find them on a census, even though they didn’t have last names.

So I started at the beginning, Sound of Music style. I photographed every single little section of handwritten notations of marriages, births, and deaths, and also the newspaper articles regarding the death and burial of William Starr Basinger. I loaded the photos onto the computer, and edited and watermarked them, and started posting some of them to http://www.findagrave.com.

I came to one little section that said “__________ Infant Son of Thomas & Jane S. born in Savannah May 13th, 1832”.

Then another section: “__________ Infant Son of Thomas & Jane S. died in Savannah May 16th, 1832 – aged 4 days”.

I thought to myself that I wish I knew where this child was buried so that I could create a memorial on http://www.findagrave.com, when it hit me. Of course I know where this child is buried, exactly where.

Without a marker in a tiny little grave in the Starr family plot in Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah, Georgia.

Sleep well, baby angel without a name.

Tags: Basinger, Georgia, Old Letters, Old Pictures, Savannah