Inez Clarke/Briggs
20 September 1873 – 1 August 1880
The story of this gravesite is pretty fascinating, and deep-dive research has already been done on it by Chicago historians and genealogists.
Someone has helpfully appended the entire write-up to Inez’s findagrave.com record, and I recommend it as a very good and interesting read.
In summary, and in spite of this elaborate headstone marker, this little girl’s family apparently either lost track of her or did not want to claim her later on. Either she was not spoken about and surviving relatives didn’t know about her or the people who did care to have this marker placed died before any inquires were made and without telling other people about it. Complicating things further, an apparent transcription error in the cemetery records themselves means that there is actually no record that Inez Clarke or Inez Briggs was ever even buried in the cemetery.
However the evidence supports that she is buried here, and that her name was Inez Briggs, and that her mother was Mary McClure Briggs Clarke.
Tragic histories and ghost stories have attached themselves to her legend, all of them entirely unsubstantiated or sourceable, but at some point, someone cared to have this statue made, and it is gorgeous, minutely detailed, and a real highlight of any visit to Graceland.
It is a bit off the beaten path, and I had a bit of an adventure tracking it down with several people giving me conflicting directions, but it was worth the hunt.
RIP Little Inez