Inez Hicks

Inez Hicks was my grandfather's sister. (1925 - 1928) At some point, my grandfather got this picture of Inez from Great Granddaddy's House. Then, Aunt Linda had it for awhile til' she handed it down to me. It is the only picture of her that I know about. She died when she was only 2, so probably not long after this picture was taken.

We were always told that she died because she was playing with matches and caught herself on fire. I recently found a copy of her death certificate from the Virtual Vault on the Georgia Archives website. 

The death certificate says "accidental death" and it says she lived for a "few hours" afterwards. It also states that she is buried at the "West Hill Cemetery" but no one has her listed on Findagrave.com . I will have to contact someone who has actual records from the cemetery to see what they have. It is a giant cemetery in Dalton Georgia.

The second page is from Vital Statistics. It says that her "clothing caught on fire from an *** grate" . I can't tell what the word is. It looks like "son" "or "jon" or "fon" . I don't know what it is. But, it doesn't look like she was playing with matches.  UPDATE: a friend suggested it might say "open grate". Makes sense to me!

I don't know if it is true or not, but we were always told that Uncle Bob saw what happened and tried to help her, but was unable to. 

At the last family reunion, I got a copy of this picture of Willena Hicks, the only sister who survived to adulthood. It is similar to Inez's picture. The are both in oval frames that are in sort of a bubble glass. Willena was born in 1914 though, so she was already about 10 or 11 years old before Inez was born.  The quality of Willena's piture is better and she is wearing more expensive clothing than Inez. She also has shoes on, and Inez does not. It makes me wonder if Great Grandaddy and Great Grandmother had more money early on, or if they were just more strapped for cash in 1925 because they had more children. (4 surviving at that time)