My Most Prolific Female Ancestor
Thursday November 22, 2007
John Newmark posted Can you top this? this past weekend on his Transylvania Dutch blog, challenging anyone to produce an ancestor who fathered more than 22 children. Then Chris Dunham responded in the comments that "heck, 22 is easy for a guy. My 5th-great-grandmother Sally (Morrill) Coolidge had 20 children and then lived to be at least 103 years old." I can't top that, but my Lydia Ann Everett and Dempsey Freeman Owens come close, producing 19 known children together in about 28 years. There was one set of twins, but that's still an average of one child every 1 1/2 years! Dempsey & Lydia's oldest child was my great-grandfather, who in turn fathered 15 children with two wives. Looking back to earlier generations of the family, the Owens ancestors didn't produce quite that many offspring, but with an average of about 10 children per generation I have had quite a number of descendants to keep me busy with the research! Nothing new, however, for those of us with a plethora of North and South Carolina farming ancestors.
Comments
I can easily top that — my 3gg father, Benjamin Thomas Trotter Mitchell, had 49 biological children by his seven wives (two wives died early in their marriage.) His first child was born when he was 20 years old, and his last child was born 43 years later, shortly before his death at age 64.
At several periods, four of the five surviving wives were pregnant at the same time.
Yes, he was a Mormon polygamist in the Utah Territory during the 1800’s.
I am reseraching a gentleman from Clark County, KY who was having slave children at the same time his second wife was having children. The KY birth records told it all.