Featured Great-great Aunts Hepzibah and Hortense...

No, really, I know they're my mother's great-aunts, but no idea which ones these are . My great-great-grandfather had 12 children with wife #1. She passed and he had 12 more by wife #2. 24 kids that survived. Half stayed in Canada and half migrated down to NH in the 1800s. The one on the left looks just like my mother at that age.

 

12 children with wife #1... 12 more by wife #2

Oh, those poor women!

Bev, this must mean you have A LOT of relatives!

 

well it helps , if we need to date the clothing or that funky chair.....
would it have killed em to smile....

 

No cable TV then.

 

No smiling allowed then. Photos were expensive and therefore serious.

 

I've read that the priests used to visit the homes and if the men were outside smoking or hanging with their buddies, the priests would encourage them to go back in and make whoopie so they'd have more little Catholics. Could be true. Besides, there were so many infant deaths in those days they had lots of kids so they could help out on the farm. We never had anything to do with most of the family because we moved way out into the country and didn't go to Manchester very often. I wouldn't know my cousins if I passed them on the street.

 

Nice photo -- appears to be in pretty good condition, too.

 

There are some documents in the New York Historical Society collection from whom ever was the Archbishop of NY to parish priests urging them to urge parishioners to have children because he was afraid that the donations to build St. Patrick's Cathedral would dry up without a new crop of "donors", as well as some proof that the church was undermining Jacob Reis in his quest to do away with the slum properties - because they were a major source of income for both the Roman Catholic and Episcopal churches in NY. I can vouch that the Episcopal See owns/owned large (multiple block) properties in NY that are/were covered with tenements. Neither church ever owned the buildings, just the properties on long term lease.

 

My great-great-grandfather had 12 children with wife #1. She passed and he had 12 more by wife #2. 24 kids that survived.

I am not sure if I have ever said that I come from a family of 9 children. I was the baby of the family. My Father called me the caboose since he worked on the railroad for around 28 years. We were of course raised Catholic, but I have come to believe that was my Father's idea. My Mother was never the church goer, but she definitely made sure all of our butts were there every Sunday. We also all went to parochial school till the 8th grade & I went to an all girls Catholic high school. There were several other families that were as large or larger so we never thought it was strange to be in this large of a family.

There was a very strange conversation that happened one day when we were all adults. My Mother announced very casually that if the birth control pill had been around that some of us might never been born. That really kind of hit home with my sister who was 4 years older than I was & myself. I never doubted that my Mother loved me but I am just a little bit younger than she was at the time & I can now understand the possible feelings behind the statement.

 

Hi,
Large families were a norm when I was growing up. One family had 14 kids to the first wife and 13 with the second wife. In my family normal was 6 or 7. A lot of families had 16 to 19 kids. The only reason was they lived on farms and needed all the hands for work. The neighbors always laughed at my father for only having three, called him "lazy".
greg

 

My Mom's Mom had 17, two didn't make it at some point.
They lived in Jersey City so no farm needs but jobs helped all of them even if out of work.
Good thing I moved away about dating time for with all those cousins...who knows.

 

Hi,
Unfortunately when it was time for me to consider marriage there were two females left, the town 'hore and my cousin and since they were the same person I had to leave.
greg

 

Hi,
Unfortunately when it was time for me to consider marriage there were two females left, the town 'hore and my cousin and since they were the same person I had to leave.
greg



We definitely were not a farm family. Always lived smack dab in the middle of the city. Since at the time there were only 2 methods available, obviously someone never learned about counting & according to my Mother my Father refused to even discuss the other.

 

My dad was an only child, and my mom and I are both one of two. I feel deprived.

 

Oh my....