A Woman Found A Grave Labeled 'Unwanted Baby Girl' & Tracked Down The Mother To 'Right The Injustice' — Then Found Out Her Mom Had Been Through So Much
Everything was not as it seemed.
Sunti / Shutterstock When a woman named Katie came across a grave that read “Unwanted Baby Girl X”, she couldn’t help but wonder who had given the little one such an offensive moniker and how in the world a mother could not want her own child. But after sharing the story, she received the biggest life lessons she could ever have imagined.
In the video captioned “Meet Unwanted Baby Girl X. I am hoping that that name will be buried soon and replaced with a beautiful tombstone. This is my absolute mission this year. Please let me know if you have any information that can assist me on this journey,” Katie shared what she had come across and asked for help from the public with her mission to uncover the little girl’s tragic story.
Katie had been scouring TikTok for pictures of unusual gravesites when she stumbled across the death certificate from Kentucky.
It indicated no exact place of birth but disclosed that the baby was left on a front porch immediately after birth in Henderson County and found by the owner of the home.
The owner of the home, a woman named Mary, took the baby to the hospital and the newborn held on for eight days before succumbing to acute gastroenteritis. The unidentified baby was buried at Fernwood Cemetery where she remains today, still unclaimed.
The revelation led Katie to embark on a journey for justice on behalf of the child, determined to make someone pay for abandoning her, allowing harm to befall her, and leaving her alone and unnamed in the graveyard.
After looking up her legal options, she found that she could ‘adopt’ the unclaimed child and give her a name.
Katie wasn’t sure of what she would name the anonymous girl. It could be her name, or someone else’s, but she knew for sure that she couldn’t leave her gravesite in the state it was in.
“I could not stand for her name to say ‘unwanted’”, the TikToker said as the ended the first video. She was determined to find a lawyer who could assist, despite the roadblocks she had already encountered when trying to get legal help.
After a few weeks, the post she had made paid off. She got the names of lawyers and even spoke to residents of the small town. Shockingly, she found people who knew the mother and were around the same age.
She used sites like Ancestry.com, People Finder, and Find A Grave to dig for information on the girl’s identity. She found a wealth of information but made it clear that she intended to “preserve mom’s dignity and protect mom.”
Her assumptions about the ‘unwanted’ child’s mother were wrong.
Katie had assumed the baby was left behind by a mom who never wanted the child or that the story was akin to Romeo & Juliet’s — a forbidden love story. But both of those assumptions couldn’t have been further from the truth.
It turned out that the baby’s mother was a child who had been violated by a person who should have protected her, according to Katie. The infant had been born prematurely, and the mother did what any scared child would and left her in a place she thought would be safe before running far, far away — though there are questions as to whether her departure was voluntary.
In a stunning turn of events, a local church paid for the baby’s grave and etched the words of rejection into her headstone. They wanted to teach women in the town a lesson about having babies out of wedlock and making bad sexual decisions, though it seems that the young girl had no autonomy over her own body.
And apparently the young mother had once returned and had experienced the nightmare of seeing how her child had been labeled, no doubt re-experiencing the shame of her childhood.
After all she had learned, Katie was more determined than ever to give the baby a proper name.
She believed the mother would want her child’s headstone corrected and that she had acted out of embarrassment and fear of legal repercussions for abandoning the child. “But I feel so connected to mom over these last few weeks. I have delved so deeply into her life, and I truly feel that... how could there not be closure by resolving this?” she asked.
Katie dedicated that particular video to the mom who had been failed by the adults in her life and left to deal with the fallout on her own.
She acknowledged that she didn’t have wise words to offer, but that she wanted the mother to know that she was forgiven and that everyone understood her plight and the pressure she was under at the time, saying, “I think you were a baby and I think you did the best you could. From one mom to another, I want to try to make this right for you.”
Support and name suggestions poured in from far and wide.
In another update, Katie shared that she was awaiting a call back from an attorney. People had reached out to ask about donations, but she asked them to hold off for the time being.
But many offered names they thought would stand out, with the most popular being “Mary” for the woman who rescued the baby. Some wondered if her relatives could be tracked via DNA.
But the most “eye-opening” comment came from another TikToker who suggested that the infant was never “unwanted.” The mother likely wanted her but was unable to keep her and left her in a safe place as many had done in the 1950s, around the time the child was born.
Girls who got pregnant were routinely sent away and pregnancies were kept under wraps. The fact of the matter is that she could have thrown her away but didn’t — and that speaks to the difficult decision she’d had to make at such a young age. The final outcome in the situation remains to be seen.
As a woman who became a mother at just 15 years old, I'm grateful for my parents who made sure I didn’t fail in life. They loved me and supported me, in spite of the choices that I had made. They did what parents are supposed to do — protect their child.
It hurts my heart that this young lady was not afforded the same privilege I was, and was not only betrayed in the worst way possible but forced to mourn the death of her child while she, herself, was still one.
NyRee Ausler is a writer from Seattle, Washington. She covers lifestyle, relationship, and human-interest stories that readers can relate to and that bring social issues to the forefront for discussion.