My Virginia Ancestors Part I

My Virginia Ancestors  Part I

My mother was born in 1934 in rural Virginia.  She was an only child.  If I could go back in time and ask my grandparents why they only had only 1 child, I would do that in a heart beat because that question haunts me.

I know that my grandmother was 1 of 12 siblings, 6 boys and 6 girls.  She was #5 in the birth order, the fourth of the six girls.  She was born the year World War I broke out in Europe, though I feel that the war had very little affect on her life as a child in the rural hills of Virginia.  None of her siblings were called to war(being toddlers)and I have yet to unearth any extended family that enlisted, though I have found registration cards filed for some of  her Uncles on her mother's side.  Living a rural, agrarian life as they did, food restrictions implemented during the Great War had little effect on my Virginia ancestors.  They lived a life where they grew their own food and didn't rely on stores and money to buy groceries. 

When my grandmother, Lillian Grace, was 10, her mother, Lucy Ellen, my great grandmother, had delivered her 9th baby at home.
There was  a baby born when my grandmother was 2.5, another at 5.5  and again when she was 7.5 years old.  After the 9th sibling born when grandmother was 10, yet another baby followed when my grandmother was 11.5, and again another 6 days before grandmother's 14th birthday.  The last child my great grandmother had was born the same year my grandmother, a married woman, had her first and only child, my mother.
This was 3 months AFTER my grandmother had my mother.  This made my mom older than her youngest Uncle.

Living in rural Virginia at the end of the 1800's and the beginning of the 1900's was a harsh life. 
Most folks were farmers.  Many hands were needed to get the work done.
The 'work' was to feed and clothe your family.  If you could also make a few extra dollars to make your lives easier(by purchasing appliances or better wagons or fancy yard goods, etc. or by putting currency aside for your old age)that was a bonus.  But most work involved just keeping your family whole and out of poverty.
The more children you had the larger your work force.  Childhood was short and very different from today's idea of that time in life.  You were raised up to pull your own weight in a family and you often began doing chores before you could string a few words together.
Schooling was only for the basics of reading and writing and arithmetic so you could function as an adult.  As soon as you learned enough....around 4th grade or so.....you left school and started working around the farm.
The work you did on the farm was mostly dictated by your sex.  Boys and girls had very different jobs on the farm and mostly you didn't do the other sexes chores unless there was a grave need to.

The boys learned the Manly jobs of plowing and planting, weather prognostication, running the machinery, carpentry and caring for and/or butchering the animals.  There was often a side job that brought in money, such as milling lumber if you had forested land, or selling wooden items if your carpentry skills were good enough to allow you to make salable goods to the town folk, etc.  And there was also bootlegging if you were so inclined.

The girls learned the Womanly jobs of food prep and preservation, cooking, cleaning, kitchen gardening, laundry, sewing(and weaving often times) and small time doctoring.  Along with all these jobs women were also wholly responsible for giving birth to the workforce and childcare.

I feel that given my grandmother's birth order and the ages of her sibling, she was called upon to care for all those younger siblings her parents had.
She was sort of a mother's helper as it were.
My grandmother's 3 older sisters where probably involved in the harder housework like cooking, laundry, cleaning, due to their older ages.  The 1 older boy was probably out learning how to run the family farm with his father and the hired help.

If this is the case-that my grandmother helped raise up the siblings that came after her until she married and left home, then I don't doubt it was a conscious effort, this having only one child.  Nature and her God may have had something to do with it too, but I feel she had had enough of raising babies and wanted something else out of life besides changing diapers and feeding babies.

And this whole having your first child 3 MONTHS BEFORE your own mother gives birth to her last child is just awkward to me with my modern sensibilities.  I guess back in the day of large families it was not unusual for 2 generations to be "in the family way" around the same time, in the same years.

Another reason why my grandmother may have only wanted one child was because of who she fell in love with and married.
Fram what I saw of their relationship as a young child, having my grandfather was very much like having another child for my grandmother.
I see their family as being composed of 1 adult and 2 children.  My grandmother was the adult and my grandfather and my mother were her "children".  If you have a spouse who is more like your child than your husband, it would be a very big incentive to me at least, NOT to have more children.

To Be Continued......

Sluggy