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I visited the cemetary and saw it. I also have personal reasons for digging into it. My great grandmother lived there during the time. Later, for some reason no one I've talked to can explain, she spent nearly 50 years in the utah state mental hospital and died there. None of my family who remains alive knows why. My grand father and my great grand father had a falling out at some point and my grand father left southern utah. He is dead and all his siblings are now dead. None of my remaining aunts or uncles have any information about this period. No one can explain: why my grand father left, why my great grandmother spent half a century in a near vegatative state, or why my grand father and his siblings wouldn't talk about their time in Escalante before they all died. The Utah State Mental hospital doesn't have any records of my great grand mother. I'm not sure if my family is even related to the row of dead babies, but it is one possible tie to my family's history that I'm trying to track down. Also, it's just creepy and interesting to research on it's own merit regardless if my ancestors knew anything about it.

That raises more questions then it answers. The area was settled in the 1880s. If the deaths were from settlers or migrants, the deaths would have been proportional or averaged each year. There wouldn’t be a sudden load of dead babies and then an equally sudden drop off in cases in 1903.

Typical polygamous families were 3-5 wives. Even if all 5 were pregnant at the same time, very unlikely, it would not explain why suddenly all 5 spontaneously aborted or where the other 4 dead babies simultaneously also died. Also, most infant deaths, even when unnamed, have some tie to the family, ie “infant daughter of so-and-so 1905” etc. In fact, there are examples of that type of grave marker from the same cemetery in the same time period, so such practice was not uncommon- which makes the 9 even weirder. They have no tie to anyone, which alone wouldn’t be a big deal, but for 9 random mothers and families to choose to completely dissociate from 9 babies all at the same time and same town, that is weird. The more scrutiny you apply to this case, the weirder it gets.

Also, there’s no record of an epidemic or pandemic killing at such a high rate in southern Utah in 1902- especially an epidemic that appears out of no where kills most of the kids who were likely to have been born for the entire town in the year, have no mothers or families claim any of the children, and just as randomly the epidemic disappear- all with not a single mention in the state or regional newspapers of the time.