Jennie E., wife of J. C. Cullins, born October 7, 1845, died September 21, 1876.  Smith Grove Cemetery, Warren County, Kentucky.

Just looking at this stone struck me as exceptionally sad – I’ve never seen a more poignant carving on a gravestone.  The top of the stone portrays a gravestone with a willow tree above, the husband resting his hand on the stone, holding his daughter’s hand – and two little boys on the other side of this stone.

Jennie, Eliza Jane Smith Cullins, was born October 7, 1845, and died September 21, 1876 – just thirty-one years of age at her death.  Jennie married Joseph C. Cullins, January 2, 1866, in Warren County, Kentucky.  Jennie was the daughter of Henry D. Smith and Elizabeth Ann Ray.  Ten years after her death her father was buried next to her, in Smith Grove Cemetery.

Four years later, in their first census together, there is still just the two of them – Joseph was 32, born in Georgia, and Jennie was 24, born in Kentucky.  Later that year a daughter, Georgia, was born.  In 1873 Henry Smith Cullins joined the family, named for his maternal grandfather.  And two years later another son, Joseph C., named for his father.

I do not know the cause of Jennie’s death.  Life was precarious at best in those times.  But her gravestone gives a shining example of how much she was loved.  The people at the top of the stone are her family – loving husband, daughter and sons!  The verse at the bottom is very difficult to read but it starts – ‘Darling Jennie, I will try to make your happy home’ and on the third line, ‘trusting it may be again so that’.

I lost a dear friend Sunday, two years younger, and this brings those emotions back.  She is out of pain and in heaven with her Lord.  But I will always miss her!