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Post by daniela on Jul 8, 2014 9:04:36 GMT -5
It's so crazy to me how so many families had mothers and young children die so often. It's like a mother had 10 children with the hopes that at least 6 or 7 would survive. Imagine all the heartbreak all these families, including our own ancestors had? I wonder how much a death of a child affected a family?
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Post by clyde on Jul 8, 2014 13:34:28 GMT -5
My mom grew up in the 30s and 40s next to a family with 8 or 10 kids, can't remember which. The mom died and the dad packed all those kids up and took them to an orphanage. He never went back. Married another woman and had another family. I was a young teen when she told me that. I still wonder what became of those kids. From the 1850's to about 1929, there were "Orphan Trains" in this country. Poor mostly city families from the East Coast turned their children over to the Children's Aid Society. The kids were put on trains and taken west where the trains stopped at various farming and other rural communities. The kids were "trotted out", and sort of auctioned off to families willing to take them. If they weren't chosen at one stop, they got back on the train to try to get "adopted" at the next stop. Unfortunately, many of them went into worse situations than they had come from. Approximately 100,000 children were relocated in this way. An interesting fictional account of this is Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline. PBS has also shown a special on the Orphan Trains. Of course people did not have the choices in family size that exist today.
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Post by ForeverWaltons on Jul 8, 2014 14:15:32 GMT -5
My paternal grandmother's sister was born in 1901, she was born in 1903 and their brother in 1905. Their mother died in childbirth (along with the baby) in 1907. Their mother was three months shy of being 25 years old. Their dad only wanted his son, so my grandmother and her sister were raised by their aunt and uncle. Their dad ended up remarrying and having 5 or 7 more children with her.
One of my teachers in school was adopted (she's in her mid 60's now). She told me the reason she was put up for adoption was because she was the seventh child born to the family and they could not afford another mouth to feed. She has always talked so highly and lovingly of her adoptive parents and she has never had any desire whatsoever to find her birth family. She has been a dear friend of mine since I was eleven years old. She taught me in 6th & 8th grade plus she was my BETA sponsor all through high school. She did the singing at my wedding and she also taught my two oldest children before she retired. We still stay in touch with one another.
Mr. Forever and I are former foster parents. We had in our care a brother and sister whose mother voluntarily put them into foster care because she could not afford to provide for them.
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Post by goodnight on Jul 8, 2014 14:49:36 GMT -5
I used to know this lady, she's passed on now. During the Depression, she had to work, because her husband was a drunk. She let her sister take care of her children for her. Then the sister tries to have the courts take her children away from her.
To anyone that has watched the Canadian series Wind at My Back. The situation in that series sounds like many of these stories. The father dies a bee sting reaction after he and his wife had lost their hardware business. They were in the process of asking his well to do mother for help when he died. The grandmother takes the 2 older children, both boys, away from their mother. She had never approved of the marriage. She then attempts to adopt the little girl, a toddler, out to other relatives. The mother then has to try and find work so she can get her kids back, she gets a job, but then gets very ill with pneumonia and loses it. She eventually marries her boy's teacher who has been very kind to her and the kids so her family can be reunited.
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Post by sdw on Jul 8, 2014 17:40:14 GMT -5
I have read Orphan Train,it was good,I have also saw the movie which was a long time ago,it was very good. Papaw Watkins first wife died in 1920 or 1921 of influenza,that year they had an outbreak of it.They had 3 boys.Papaw kept the 2 oldest boys and the youngest boy went to live with Papaws half sister,and when she died,he went to live with Papaws brother and his wife.The two oldest stayed some with my great grandmother.Also on both sides of my family the spouses died and they remarried.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 9, 2014 13:21:26 GMT -5
My grandmother on my mother's side lost 3 children giving birth in total. or they died shortly after they were born, Two of them died in the early 1930s and she was advised by the doctor not to have any more babies but she tried again and she (and the baby) died during the birth of the child. That was back in 1939. I do not recall what diseases the other 2 babies had. I know my grandmother (who was born in 1895) had 6 sisters and a couple of brothers.
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