Geer Cemetery-Olivia Wills

"Looking at Olivia Wills’ headstone in Geer Cemetery, it appears that she lost several children before her own early death.

A closer look indicates a different story.
Olivia Wills was born Oliva Tilley. In 1920, she married Edmund Wills. It was her second marriage.

Her 1927 death certificate states that she was twenty-nine years old, indicating she was born in 1898 contradicting the date on the headstone.

Her concrete cast headstone was ordered from the Aiken Stone Company in South Carolina around November 1928, a little over a year after Olivia’s death.

In addition to her father and step-mother, Olivia was survived by seven siblings, including her younger brother Eugene.

Her mother's name was Annie.
It appears that Olivia’s family took the opportunity to provide a headstone while also memorializing other family members.

One of them being today’s honoree, Eugene D. Eugene whose short life began on 10 July 1918. According to the headstone, he was three months old when he died in September.

Deciphering Eugene’s relationship to Olivia forces us to confront the very high child mortality rates in the early 1900s as well as a family’s love and efforts to mourn their dead. Eugene D. was likely the son of Olivia’s brother Eugene (Senior) and his wife Maria Smith.

A death certificate for the child, Eugene D. Tilly, Jr., states his death was 4 Oct 1921, differing by over two years the date on the headstone ordered in 1928, seven years after his death.

Our best guess is that in the intervening years, and without access to written records, the family did not remember the exact dates.

The first name following Olivia is Marion (5 June 1907 - 10 Mar 1909). Marion was most likely the child of Duncan Tilley and Alis Rogers, Duncan’s second wife (In 1891, Duncan married Annie F Jones. She died prior to 1905).

Oliva would have been eleven years old at the time of Marion’s birth, most likely too young to be her mother. Duncan and Alis married in 1906.

Duncan and Alis P were twins, born on 28 March 1914 and bearing the first names of their parents, Duncan and Alis. Duncan died on 6 July of that year, followed by Alis on 25 Dec , which must have been a terrible Christmas for the young, already bereaved family.

The final name on the headstone is Olivia’s daughter, Annie O. (8 Sept 1919 - 10 Oct 1919). Olivia was 21 years old at the time of Annie’s birth.

She had married Shepard Barber on 26 Sept 1917. On 6 Oct 1918, their one month old baby girl, listed as Olivia Barber, died in Durham and was buried in Geer Cemetery. She was the daughter of Olivia and Sheppard Barber.

Most likely, four of the five children named on Olivia’s headstone were not her offspring, but rather her nephew and half-siblings. Olivia’s headstone shows the resourcefulness of a family that had endured terrible losses and wanted to leave a permanent record of all of their loved ones, even the many whose time among the living was devastatingly short.

It speaks to the importance of kinship and how it united parents, children, and siblings in mourning. At Geer Cemetery, Olivia and each of her family members–whether they lived a full life or died as a baby is “gone but not forgotten.”

Source and photograph/narrative credit: Friends of Geer Cemetery - Durham, NC FB page