Featured Mourning pendant text

Charity Shop buy, had to pay up a little bit for this but still a bargain at less than $20 equivalent. 1 inch diameter. If it is gold it’s very thin and the black pitch type material is coming through in what was the pin attachment area, so once a brooch but the bale ring at the top seems original too and the smaller ring below is very worn, I don’t know if this was something usual to have both pin and bale?
I just don’t know what the text next to 1835 means, looks like AG or OG 19. Could it be the age of G Couch when they died on Oct 6th? Also I don’t understand letters OB before Oct 6th, is it Obituary? Any thoughts please? Thanks. The gold is the same colour both sides, the photos aren’t correct.

 

J. Couch died (ob) Oct. 6 1835 aged (ae) 19

Looks like it had been a brooch & was made over into a pendant. Not uncommon to have pieces that were made from the start to be either, but this is not that & is not just someone putting a jump ring through what was the attachment point for a guard chain.

 

Ouch! Only 19.

Debora

 

Thanks. Initially I thought the 19 was missing a couple of numbers, as 1835-19- -? Giving a date of birth in 1835 and death in 19.. as they do on graves sometimes. Never had any dated mourning pieces just a piece of onyx with a split seed pearl.

 

This was a standard formula. And you are right, 'obituary' comes from 'obit'.

 

My great grandfather was one of something like 22 children. Only four survived early childhood. 19 was relatively old.

 

My heart breaks for the agony the mothers (and fathers) of the children went through. We have a headstone in our local churchyard of a man and his two little children that I stop and look at every time I walk past. The kids put daisys on it in the summer.

 

On a more cheerful (or maybe not) note.....is the tightly woven dark fabric.....hair?

 

The fabric is just that: hair is the blonde curl.

And those siblings died from diseases we now vaccinate for.

 

Don't get me started on that!
We don't know how lucky we and our children are to be able to vaccinate but some people just don't get that.

 

Another thing we in the 'developed' world must have many fewer of is building fires (pace Grenfell). One of my dad's older sisters was killed in a fire when she was 18-19. Little farm house that would have been heated by a stove.

 

My grandfather was the second oldest of 21. He was the only one to come to the United States. There were 2 sets of twins. Apparently, all but one set of twins; survived to adulthood. One set of twins died at 6 ... some illness. Can you imagine being pregnant over 19 years? Longer in your case...
Leslie