kristen s. wilkins

Lambs is a collection of gravestone photographs taken around the country (but most are in Montana, Indiana, and New York). Lamb grave stones were placed on children's graves, most popularly in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Many would have died from the numerous pandemics of those times, such as: flus, typhoid, smallpox, tuberculosis, and cholera. These stones (which cost the equivalent of $250-$500 in today's terms) are monuments to those parents' loses, the stones themselves beginning to wear away with time, and these photographs are my attempt to freeze these memories in place.




There, in the Shepherd’s bosom,

White as the drifted snow,

Is the little lamb that we missed one morn,

From the household flock below.


- William Walsham How, 1872


I In the Burying Place may see

Graves shorter there than I:

From Death’s Arrest no Age is free,
Young Children too may die;
My God, may such an awful Sight,
Awakening be to me!
Oh! that by early Grace I might
For Death prepared be.


Another.


NOW I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my Soul to keep
If I should die before I ‘wake,
I pray the Lord my Soul to take.


Again.


The New England Primer, pg 23, 1750

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