Question of the Week: What's the largest family you've found in your tree? [closed]

Question

Families come in all shapes and sizes. What's the largest family you've found in your tree?

P.S. Answer here and/or here and on Facebook. If you reshare the image on social media with your answer, it might get your family talking!

Comments

It always amazes me how few children survived into adulthood and had children of their own.  My G-G-grandmother, Rosetta Alida van Diest, had eleven documented children and only three survived.

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Most I can reliably document is 9 children of GG Grandparents https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Lawrie-727 and https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/McIntosh-4443.  

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Adding all of my great-aunts' and uncles' spouses last week, I realized that my Aunt Fern (a family jokester) was one of fourteen. (I admit, so far I've only listed 12 and added 2 profiles.) Four of her brothers were in fighting units during WWII. One died in the Pacific, and one was seriously injured in the last few months of fighting in Germany.

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I was able to see the Moses Wilson Family Book and my mothers grandfather contributed to Moses family more than any of the others. He had 100 grandchildren and close to 500 great grandchildren. He had Incredible children that not only had a lot of children and grand children and great grandchildren but also they moved by wagon to MO, Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky.

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I'm not sure about the answer to this.  I think my Great Great Grandmother, Martha Ellen Gray, who married William Elmer Blue, had something like fifteen brothers and sisters.  I do descend from two families of Parkers that were twelve each.  great Great Grandfather Peter James Parker MD was tenth of twelve children, and his Father, Reverend Peter Parker was, I believe sixth of another twelve children.  I was happy to find that some distant cousin had already put that mid nineteenth century generation of Parkers on Wikitree.

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The SNOYMAN family have 10 brothers and a sister.

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My mother's grandfather had 11 children but they had 67 grandchildren and his great grandchildren went over three hundred. On an average they had 4 children. A couple had many more and a couple had two.  His name is George Wilson from Overton Tennessee. He had at least three nephews named after him. He is known to have out produced all of his 17 siblings that his father -Moses Wilson and his wife Celia Hay had. That is hard to believe!  So because of George, Moses Wilson had the most children, the most grandchildren and the most great-grandchildren and great great grandchildren. Celia Hays is the sister to those Hays officers that fought in the civil war and wife of Moses Wilson. She is the grandmother of them all. So the Hays memorial could be to her and her lifetime work! :)

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i have found saints and sinners. one distant cousin was married at age 15 to her 45 year old step uncle.one uncle whi was a doctor was sent to prison for killing a newborn baby. the case transcripts were quite graphic, several aunts and uncles married their sister / brother in law after both were widowed.

Answer 1

My 3rd great grand aunt Barbara Rustay Cragle and her husband Daniel had 16 known children between 1837-1867. What is remarkable for that time is that 14 of the children lived to adulthood.

Answer 2

My GGG Grandfather [[Riggs-3231| Warren Harpin Riggs]] had 22 children. 12 with his first wife and 10 with his second wife. 8 of them died very young, leaving 14 who lived to adulthood.

Answer 3

The largest family in my [direct] tree is: MINE!

My parents had 15 children, of which I am the 12th. I have 9 children of my own, the most of my siblings, all of whom survive except one.

But just yesterday I met a man who was one of the second largest family from the same parents of any living person I have ever met: he was the 7th of 17; his twin was the 8th

The winner, though, is that a few years ago I met a woman who told me she was 24th of 25, with no twins. She had only one daughter, but the average size of her siblings's families was 14, so her daughter had 252 going on 255 first cousins.  Not even in genealogical sources have I seen a family as large as that, certainly not from one mother and father, and that was true for her.

Answer 4

My 4x great-grandparents Samuel Knighton and Sarah Lowe had fifteen children, fourteen of which survived to adulthood, and all but one of those fourteen had children of their own. Their eldest child Susannah also had fifteen children!

Answer 5

My 4th-great grandfather, Patrick "Paddy" Carr.  https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Carr-10353

As close as I can verify, 2 wives, 24 children.

Answer 6

The largest family I know of for sure is that of David Greencorn, who hasn't been added yet but is my 2nd-great-grandfather. He had nine children. But I have royal connections through Sarah Cooper and Kezia Fitch, and monarchs often had many children, so there is probably a much bigger family than that of David.

Answer 7

My 2nd Great-Grandparents, Benjamin Skeldon (Skeldon-4) &  Harriet Perry (Perry-3013) of Staffordshire, England had 13 children, plus one unborn, when they were both killed on the 24 August 1858 in what is known as the "Round Oak Train Wreck" on the Oxford, Worcester & Wolverhampton R.R. .  Their eldest son was also killed along with the unborn child.  One son did survive the accident with extensive injuries.

Benjamin was a master baker with a very successful business.

Evelyn Murray McKelvey  (Murray-2307)

Answer 8

My great grandmother Annie Maston had 12 children. 9 lived and three died before they were two.

Answer 9

My grandmother was one of nine - she had 7 sisters and one brother. Most had three or more kids, and all lived into old age. Big noisy Italian-American family.

But one story stands out. Caroline was "transferred" to a childless cousin at a young age and raised in the other family - knowing her siblings as cousins. It was only after she was in her 30's that the truth came out. She never married her long-time partner Samuel, and they never had children of their own. But she was always close with both of her families.

Answer 10

Jesse Thurman Bird (1845-1923) had 17 children with his wife Mary Angeline Kelsey Bird (1846-1933)

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Bird-5948

Answer 11

A member of our large THIFFAULT family had 22 children. The largest of our 14 000 people BK-7 Data Base : Indiana Thiffault (1890-1974) and Léopld Lahaie (1885-     ).

Yvon Thiffault, Born in St-Tite, County of Laviolette, QC Canada.

Answer 12

My Draper line....   one man had 7 wives and 52 children.  Polygamy at it's finest...  ;-)

Answer 13

The Klosterman family with 15 children is the biggest one in my records. Not only that, there are sources for all the family members! Unless I missed a few. 

Winifred (Kennedy) Klosterman

Answer 14

Charles Ephraim McKinney of Altapass, North Carolina (c. 1773-1852). He is sometimes referred to as "Forty Charlie" or "Cove Charlie". He was my 5th GG.

4 wives. 40+ children. I've read in some places that the count could be as high as 48.

Answer 15

My 4x great-grandfather had Richard Lawrence (1732-1796) of Surry County North Carolina had 17 children with two wives. I don't know if the youngest children survived to adulthood, but they are all named in his 1796 Will.

Answer 16

My 3xgreat uncle James Charlton Hudston and his wife Mary had 14 children between 1863 and 1887. Sadly many died as infants and only 6 of them outlived him.

Answer 17

i Have 6 families with over 20 children but the best one has 23 children with another 4 adopted children and 3 grandchildren living with them

Comments

Sandra you are a great wikitreer and with all due respect to you and your family, when do they find time to work? :o)

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they lived on a farm the eldest child was 21 the youngest was a new born and all the kids helped on the orchard and the older ones helped with the animals as well

the adopted  and grand children ranged from 1 to 17 in those days everyone helped pull there weight

i grew up on the same farm the youngest of 7 and we had 1 of my nephews living with us at one point and it was the same everyone pitched in to help get things done

Answer 18

My 3xggps Jacob Casper Cronise and Anna Matilda Ramsburg had 17 children over 25 years; eleven of them survived infancy.

Answer 19

Zachariah Liles, my 3x great-grandfather married twice and had 18 children. On the 1850 Census he had two households, one headed by him and his second wife and one headed by his oldest son and his wife. And it wasn't just the first wife's children lived with her son and second wife's children lived with her. There was a mixture of ages in the households.

Answer 20

My grandparents on my father's side Had 21 children. 2 died as children and 19 lived to adulthood.  My aunts and uncles had smaller familiers in mid 1900s to present. My great grandfather Isaac M Harder had 19 children as well.  He had children with his first wife and 11 more with his second wife. Have 19 to 21 kids was quite common with the 'mennonites'   Let's just say, us mennonite roots people have many distant cousins  ha...  My great grandfather had many records kept on his parentage and all the kids and dates, including the wives's siblings lists and parents.  Probably how I got my start interested in genealogy.