I looked at the frequency of different terms of kinship in the Calvary Cemetery this week, tracking when and how often different terms were used. Below are the total occurrences of each term, followed by a graph track when the 6 most common terms were used:

Mother- 18
Father-16
Daughter- 6
Son- 4
Husband- 4
Wife- 3
Sister- 3
Grandmother-2
Grandfather-1
Granddaughter-1
Aunt-1

It’s interesting to see spikes in the term “Father” yet observe that “Mother” is still used more often. The spikes are between 1945-1949 and 1955-1959. Seeing that almost half of the occurrences of the term “Father” occur in these specific times, it may indicate that either more fathers were being interred, or it was more popular to emphasize this kinship at those times, whereas mother is a more constant term being associated with the deceased.

It was particularly interesting to see how few extended male family members had those relationship named on their tombstones– specifically, there was one occurrence of the term “aunt” but not one “uncle,” and there was one “granddaughter” but no “grandson.”

I wonder what this means in regards to how we see women in our lives, and women in our family history. Is there really that much more emphasis on how they’re related to the living, or does this sample skew society’s view of women?