Page 14 - The CRAIG family

It appears that the baby born on March 28th was a girl and she did get smallpox even though she was vaccinated immediately after birth. The article states her age as 3 months, but it is 3 weeks.
Jeffersonville Daily Evening News Tuesday, April 24, 1883
Note: I looked up the definition of Confluent Small Pox and it is when all the pustules meld together and form like one big pustulate sore. When it gets that bad, it was nearly always fatal. It’s unlikely that the baby lived.
Other than a blurb in The Jeffersonville Evening News dated January 18, 1899, stating “Miss Melvina Craig is out after a serious illness of grip”. (Grippe was the word for Influenza), there is no record of Melvina, her son Charlie or the child born in 1883 until the 1910 census when Melvina was 74 years old, living with Charlie, his wife and their 5 children in Charlestown. Samuel was married and living in Watson/Utica with his wife and children and close to his brother Colmore and his family. Other than the newspaper article about the birth and the mention of the baby having confluent smallpox, I have not been able to find anything else on the daughter born in 1883.
There were many Craig’s of Prather that died of smallpox. On April 12, 1883, Belle Craig, aged 10 from Prather, was taken to Eruption Hospital on April 11th and died April 12th.
Melvina died September 3, 1917, at the age of 81. The cause of her death was Chronic Bright’s Disease. She is buried close to her son Charlie in Union Cemetery in Charlestown, Indiana
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