George and Nina Crawford of Hedgesville lost their only child when he was 18
This was the Crawford House in Hedgesville. It was painted white when George (1883-1960) and Nina (1885-1970) Crawford lived there.
George Crawford's family had been in what is now Berkeley County since at least the 1850s, many of them in Allensville, where George grew up. His ancestry included Houck, Brown and Blamer.
Nina's maiden name was Gletner. Her roots in the county also went way back, to at least the 1830s. Her ancestry included Harrison, Zeigler and Payne.
George and Nina married in June 1904 when he was 20 and she was 18. Their son George Jr. was born ten months later.
George Sr., a tall, slender man with dark hair and eyes, worked as a car inspector and repairman for the B&O Railroad at Cumbo.
George Jr. their only child, died in the summer of 1923 at age 18, weeks after graduating from high school. He had contracted a bacterial stomach bug that led to fatal kidney failure. The widespread availability and use of antibiotics in the early 1920s were not the norm.
His mother, Nina, experienced much loss in her life. Back when she was 21, her 17-year-old brother John had died of Hodgkins disease. When she was 26, she lost another of her brothers, 24-year-old Elmer, who was killed at B&O Railroad.
A few decades later, when she was in her 50s, her sister Lillie Rockwell died of a heart problem at age 55, leaving behind a 19-year-old son Pete who ended up dying at age 37 during surgery for lung cancer.
A few years after Nina's sister Lillie died, another sister, Viola Barnhart died of uterine cancer at age 57.
George died in 1960 at age 77. Nina died ten years later at age 84.