Little Nadine rests in Oakwood Cemetery in Lanett, Alabama, but instead of a traditional headstone, she has a dollhouse-shaped masoleum. She was four years old when she asked her parents for a playhouse, and sadly, she did not live to see it built. Today, she rests beneath her playhouse. It’s filled with toys and a tomb for her bed.
Location
1462 1st St, Lanett, AL 36863
Oakwood Cemetery is right by the Alabama/Georgia border. It’s 2 hours from Athens, 1.5 hours from Atlanta, and a little under an hour from Columbus, GA.
In 1933, Nadine Earles asked her parents for a playhouse but tragically died from diphtheria a week shy of Christmas on December 18th. To honor her wish, her parents built a small brick playhouse around her grave. It is the perfect little house, complete with a veranda, awnings, and even a mailbox. Inside, you’ll see dolls, doll furniture, teddy bears, and her headstone which serves as the bed. For years after her death, her parents tended her grave, bringing her new toys and even throwing her a birthday party in the cemetery. Her mother and father are now buried right near her, outside the dollhouse.
The stone reads:
‘Our Darling Little Girl
Sweetest In The World
April 3, 1929
December 18, 1933
Little Nadine Earles
In Heaven We Hope To Meet
Me Want It Now’
Today, the city maintains the dollhouse and family plot. Visitors can see toys new and old in and around the playhouse. The house has flowers in the summer and a Christmas wreath for the holidays.
Dollhouse Graves
Dollhouse graves became something of a funerary trend from the late 1800s to the early 1900s. Today, only a few dollhouse graves remain, and Little Nadine’s is one of the most well-preserved. The only others I know of are Kerry Gail Blackburn in Sautee Nacoochee, Georgia; Dorothy Marie Harvey in Medina, Tennessee; Lova Cline in Arlington, Indiana; and Vivian May Allison in Connersville, Indiana.
A dollhouse grave is a touching but strange and haunting tribute… as well as a personal and creative gift from the grieving parents. Little Nadine’s playhouse is eye-catching in a relatively flat cemetery, and I like to think she’d appreciate having a stream of visitors.
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