Post-Mortem photography was very common back in the 19th century and while it may seem distasteful or creepy to us nowadays, it was quite normal in the 1800's. Photography was rare and often expensive. Back then the only photograph you owned would most likely have been your wedding portrait; so often, a post mortem was the only photograph of a loved one that a family may have had to remember them by, if they passed away.
I was intrigued by this particular photograph because of the name scrawled on the back:
I did some digging on Ancestry.com and discovered Nevada G Estes (born 1851), was married to John W Estes. In the 1880 Missouri census, they had a little baby, John Estes who was 7 1/2 months old at the time and is listed as being born October 1879.
Unfortunately there were no records for the 1890 census, as the records were destroyed in a fire.
From looking at other records, it appears Nevada had 7 children over her lifetime, but only 3 lived. Only James Henry is listed on findagrave.com, but I was finally able to link little baby John Estes to his mother's memorial page. His grave is unknown.
