Do we ever admit how poor our ancestors were?

[digitS']

. . . and, how difficult and often short their lives?

Just last night, I was reading a letter written by my great grandmother. She must have written it during the Depression when she was about 70 years old. It isn't dated but she mentions her 1 surviving sister. Only 1 brother survived into the 20th century and he died in 1918.

This was out of a family with 14 children!!!

Her father was a circuit riding preacher and her mother finally insisted on settling down. Her father, sad to say, died when she was only 12 years old. She was a middle child and born just at the start of the Civil War.

Steve

 

[Ridgerunner]

Steve, I may not define poor the same way you do. I think poor is more dependent upon your wants and expectations than what you actually have.

One of my grandmothers had 9 kids, the other had 10. Both buried 3 kids before they were 2 years old. One of my aunt's died when she was 60 but the rest lived until they were in their 80's and 90's. Some are still going. One grandfather died in his 50's due to an accident. The other two made it to the 80's and one grandmother made 91.

A cousin wrote a geneology book about several families that grew up in that rural neighborhood. Many of my ancestors were included. A lot of those lived to a ripe old age, but many had siblings that died very young. There are a few exceptions, mainly accidents, but looking at it, if they made it out of childhood, they had a real good chance for a long life. Instead of the 80's and 90's, that was more likely the 70's and 80's. Modern medicine has done a lot in treating heart attacks and strokes. The average life span has increased quite a bit, but the changes in early childhood mortality has probably changed it more than people actually living longer. Both obviously contribute though.

Based on my memories growing up, you could make a pretty good living back in the hills of East Tennesse just farming and such until the mid-1950's. You didn't have a lot of things because you pretty much did not have any spare money, but you did not go hungry, you had a place to live, and had clothes to wear. Then, for different reasons I won't go into (my opinion only on those anyway) you were poor if you did not have some cash. You could no longer just get by just by growing and raising most things. I guess that's called progress.

Their lives definitely required hard work and they could not take off to go see all the tourist attractions of our country. They had animals to feed and crops to take care of. But looking at how long many of my ancestors lived (these records go back to the first of my paternal line that came across in 1635) if they made it past childhood, it was usually not a short life.

Let me tell a story about being poor. One of the places I worked in Africa was in a camp that was so isolated in a river delta you could only get to it by air or water. No roads of any type. I lived in a room that was old and the floor and walls were cracked. It was so damp you had to clean the mildew off the wall above the bed regularly. There was no way my wife would ever consider spending the night in those conditions.

Next to the camp was the native village. They lived in grass huts with dirt floors. Did not need heat but there was no air conditioning. The drinking and washing water came from the river. No electricity or running water. Really primative living conditions. Those people lived a hard life and looked old at 40. They considered what I was living in as luxury. I was considered rich to them and I was. But if they had what I was living in, my wife would have considered them very poor.

 

[897tgigvib]

My great grandparents were born in the 1840's. There is no having to admit they were poor. They were. The amazing thing is that they survived the turmoils, even local right at your door wars, and the stuff that went on before the civil war. There is no need to admit the struggles of their lives. I'm proud they survived it. Seamstressing, sheepherding, working on someone elses dairy, growing food in Ireland, being a soldier, seeing your brothers hung by chains still smoldering after taking runaway slaves to Canada... Oh, life can be tougher than we know, but billions of folks alive today know how tough it can be. Each of my great grandparents had a story, and with the long generations in both sides of my family some has been lost.

That is why I put my nephew in charge of dad's things, so he can know and learn, can hold dad's father's watch, and learn how he stopped the sheepmen/cattlemen wars in southwest Montana by calling a large meeting of them to teach them how to use the range right, and how to share the range.

 

[catjac1975]

I am the youngest child of the youngest child. My Grandmother was 80 when I was born and died shortly there after. She was born nearly 140 years ago in Poland. She had 12 kids, only 4 surviving to adulthood, all living to be late 80s, one aunt lived at home until she was 94. My Dad was the only one born here when she was 50! They lost 4 children in a week to an epidemic of diphtheria while in Poland. The others died at birth or at a very young age. This was very common for the times. Much of that heartache probably would have been avoided by some very basic standards of modern care. We long for the simple life but it was avery hard life.

 

[Mickey328]

I have to agree with Ridgerunner..."poor" has a number of connotations. Nobody on either side of my family were ever really "monied up" (although my maternal grandparents, through hard, hard work and careful spending ended up comfortable) but nobody starved, either. My "old country" (Belgium) ancestors were growers of roses and meat rabbits but after everyone arrived in North America, there were no more who really lived off the land, so to speak. They pretty much all had gardens and canned food, but mostly they worked...and worked hard. One thing I do take note of though, is that the size of the families has shrunk dramatically. My grandmother had 9 brothers and sisters, my mother was an only child, so was I and so is my son. I guess on the whole, my family has been pretty fortunate, really. Not rich by any means, but everyone had what they really needed.

 

[digitS']

Sylvia relates a little of how difficult it was for her mother to have so many children and move so frequently. Then, after insisting that her husband find a permanent home for the family, he dies. The oldest child was 21, youngest 3.

Ridgerunner and I have talked about this before. There is very little difference between the life expectancy of a 65 year old person who was born in 1947 and that person's grandparents who were 65 in 1947. It is a matter of so few years, you can count them on the digitS' of one hand!

Great Grandmother Sylvia, who was born in the same week that South Carolina seceded from the union, lived to be 75. Online records show the dates of death for only 9 of her siblings:

"Son" was born and died the same day
Lucy died less than 2 months after her birth
Grant died within a year of his birth
Mary May was 3 when she died
Ann was 8 when she died
Martha died at age 16
Abbie died when she was 27
John lived into the 20th century and died at age 55
Fannie live to be 98 years old and died in 1963!

By the time she wrote the letter, 3 of Sylvia's own 7 children had died. Two died at childbirth and one little girl died at age 6. Luckily for me, her twin sister did not die. She was my grandmother.

All of these childhood deaths occurred prior to the 20th century. My grandmother had 9 children beginning in 1909 and none died as children! Only 1 of her children passed away before retirement age.

It was tragic for families to lose so many young children.

Steve

edited to get the #'s right!

 

[Mickey328]

That's one thing that has definitely changed from last century...infant/child mortality. Personally, I think much of it had to do with the mother's resources just being depleted, giving rise to babies who were more susceptible to lots of things going around. Of course, we don't have the cholera and diptheria outbreaks like they did; most of us have access to better medical care, and polio has mostly been eradicated. That makes a big difference.

My grandmother with the 9 siblings lived to nearly 95, and was in her own place till then. One of her brothers was sickly all his life and died in his mid 40's but the others all lived at least to their mid 60's. I don't know how many children great-grandma had who didn't survive...it's quite likely that there were some, but it wasn't something she'd talk about. Shoot, the kids wouldn't even know she was pregnant till the new baby arrived!

 

[digitS']

Two cousins do genealogical research. This is how it happens that some of these things get, kinda, dumped in my lap every now and then.

Great Grandmother's circuit riding father gave a speech before some group immediately following the Civil War. It seems like they were state Chamber of Commerce people but it has been a few years since I read his speech. In it, he argues against a Transcontinental Railroad! His idea was that resources needed for that effort would be better spent in binding the North & South together.

The transcontinental lines were built anyway. In 1893 the Great Northern completed its railway through the Rockies and Cascades all the way to the waters of the Pacific. Two years later, Sylvia, her husband, her husband parents and two more of their youngest children, arrived in Idaho .

Steve

 

[retiredwith4acres]

Family took care of family then. My grandfather died at age 23 leaving a wife and two children under 3 years of age. They moved in with my grandmother's parents and lived there for many years. My mother says they survived on chickens. They sold the eggs or traded them for salt and sugar and ate the roosters. They grew everything they ate. She remarried a dozen years later but remained poor all her life. She worked very hard and led a wonderful Christian life. She had another daughter and sent her to college. She looked into the Sears catalog and picked dresses she liked and made my aunt her clothing for college by looking at those pictures. She is the one person I admire more than any other because she lived a hard but good life, under extreme conditions and never gave up but stayed positive and such a blessing to all of the family.

 

[digitS']

Here is something Sylvia wrote about her life in that 80 year old letter:

"(W)e had some sorrow to bear alone with our joys but as it was the Lord's will I have tried to bear with what Patience I could."



Steve