As you can see, Flora was the daughter of J. A. and I. Harris - but when I took that photo in 2004 the initials didn't register. I recently searched through my Harris folks for a J. A. Harris married to an I. “Somebody” and realized I had John A. Harris married to Isabella/Isabell/Isabel Littleton. Aha!
Sounded like a good match, but was I really on the right track? I needed more to back up my theory. I have a typed copy of John's obituary that lists his children, obtained from a distant cousin. Per that obituary, John and Isabella had 13 children, 12 of whom were still living when John died. Could the one who died be Flora?
John and Isabella lived in Marshall County, (West) Virginia when they were married and for the birth of their earliest children. The obituary says that the family moved to Illinois in 1865 after John's Civil War service. Flora's gravestone is pretty worn, but it looks to me like she died 29 April 1865 only 22 days old. So it seems plausible that she could have died shortly before the family moved. If I'm right about John and Isabella being her parents, then her burial in the John Harris (Sr.) family cemetery means that she was buried on her great-grandfather's farm. John A. was a son of Benjamin Harris, who was a son of John (Sr.).
Unfortunately, I've run into issues with my theory. I just added the 1870 and 1880 federal census enumeration for the John A. Harris family living in Fairbury, Livingston County, Illinois, to my West Virginia Heritage website. I'm running into likely name errors and incorrect genders that don't entirely match up with the children's names listed in John's obituary … this is leaving me with more than 13 children.
I've lost touch with the distant cousin I mentioned earlier, but I think it's time to see if I can track her down again!
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