The "Long" Family: When it was common for mothers and daughters to have babies at the same time

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  One year when I was working as a reading teacher, two of my first-grade students were an uncle and his nephew. They were both six years old. Several years later, I had an aunt and niece in my fourth grade class. “Cynthia” and “Mia” both had always lived in the same house. In both situations, the other teachers thought this was very strange - almost freakishly bizarre. An aunt and niece the same age? And uncle and nephew in first grade together? The idea of mother and daughter pregnant at the same time – how weird!

     Historically, it wasn’t unusual though. There were many situations where the niece or nephew was older than an aunt or uncle. There were many more instances when the uncle or aunt was just a few years older than niece or nephew – essentially peers. Scholar Leonore Davidoff wrote about what she called the “long” family. Mother married and had her first child young, and continued having children into her forties. The family was “long” because it stretched out over age spans of sixteen or more years, with twenty or more being common. She examined the dynamics of the long family, with older siblings often playing a parental role to younger ones, or the oldest and youngest barely knowing each other, if at all. Often younger daughters were sent to live with older married ones to help in their households. There were clusters of close siblings within the long family, often referring to each other by names like “the pack” or “us three” – three of four who became special friends and helpers to each other out of the whole. 

     Anyone can look back in his or her family tree and find examples of cross generation relationships among siblings, or uncles and aunts who were peers of their niece and nephews. Of course when fathers remarried and started second families, the age spans could widen dramatically. My fifth great-grandmother, Laura Taylor Suttenfield, had a half sister, Nellie Taylor, who was 42 years younger than her, for example. But here I am focusing on the children born from a single marriage. These are just a few examples from my family tree:


  • My fifth great-grandmother, Martha Phelps Barber, had eleven children over a span of 22 years. She and her daughter Rosetta were pregnant at the same time. Martha had Abigail “Nabby” Barber and Rosetta had daughter Rosetta Leonora Pettibone. 

     Martha’s husband, Daniel Barber, died when Nabby, the youngest, was a baby. The oldest, Daniel Barber Jr., acted as a surrogate father. The two were close, and both took the then-radical step, when Nabby was an adult, of converting to the Catholic church. Nabby was only three years older than her oldest nephew, Truworth Barber.  

  • Roswell Barber, brother of Daniel Jr. and Nabby, had “only” six children with his first wife, with an age spread of 17 years. My third great-grandfather, Myron Fitch Barbour, was the youngest. He became an uncle as a baby when his oldest sibling, Laura, had her first child, Lucina Godfrey.  

  • Roswell’s son Milo and his wife Miranda had eighteen children, but “only” ten survived to be named. These ten were born over a 26-year time span. The oldest, Abalina “Abi” Barber was pregnant with her first, Armina Brockway, at the same time that her mother was expecting her last, Theron Barber.  

  • My grandmother was named after a favorite aunt, Grayce Brownlee. Grayce married into Grandma’s Patchett family. Her husband was John Wesley Patchett. Grayce was the fifth of twelve children. The oldest, Clara Brownlee, was born in 1870, and the youngest, Ralph, was born in 1894. He was a year older than his first nephew. 


     A coworker had her first two children at 19 and 20, and her third at 38. She talked about how her first two had a young mother, and her last had an “old” mother, with both being very different experiences. A friend of mine who was the youngest of seven joked about “not even being littermates” with her oldest siblings. They were teenagers when she was born and were soon out of the house. Her childhood memories of them were of adults visiting, adults she wasn’t very close to. The dynamics of the Victorian long family are interesting, and now can only be speculated upon. 

     Most Americans today do not know what it was like to grow up in a “long” family – but if they look in their family trees, they will certainly find them.   


Sources:


     Davidoff, Leonore. Thicker Than Water: Siblings and Their Relations, 1780-1920. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.


Copyright by Andrea Auclair  © 2024 

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