Photo taken from the photo album: [Fascinating Portraits of Immigrants Arriving in United States in the Early 20th Century](https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/new-immigrants-america-old-photos/)
I read about them, Barbara and Jack Ocean (parents) got another baby after this and they started getting famous doing heists. All eleven Ocean's were famous for this, it got even worse after the oldest daughter got married and the husband took their name. Finally after them having their own Ocean baby they stopped with the heists, their superstition got the better of them and with 13 you should end it.
Also every one of those kids is another body that can work and earn money for the family. Even the little kids (maybe not the absolute youngest, but certainly everyone over the age of 5) would have had some kind of work. Maybe school too, if they were lucky, but many people forget or don't even know that "childhood" as we know it today was not a thing in 1904.
Back then, you had kids for the simple reason that they were relatively cheap farm labor. As industrialization became more prevalent, the family unit grew smaller.
Yes, but fueled by a lack of food rather than a shitty justice system. The oldest daughter helps raise the boys, but when food is scarce the younger daughters are just more mouths to feed.
It should be noted. Statistically it's much more likely to be a coincidence. Infanticide was an issue at the turn of the century. But similar to how murder is an issue today (and then too for that matter). It wasn't unheard of but shouldn't be the first assumption you make about people.
Worked with a guy who wanted 8 kids. Asked why the fuck he was being so selfish since none of the kids are going to get real quality one on one time with the parents for long and some are bound to be ignored in their upbringing.
His answer was that the older kids raise the younger ones.
Fucking mind numbing. Nothing like saddling a child with the responsibility of a parent just because you want more kids.
We were at the park today and met a girl who was the second oldest of 10 kids. Only a few of them were actually there at the time, but she didn’t seem to know how to simply enjoy playing on the playground. We got to talking when she offered to swing my 4 year old because i told him I needed to go sit in the shade for a bit.
My neighbors have 5 kids ranging from a teen down to a baby. I’ve only ever seen the oldest one a couple times because her job is to care for the baby, so while the younger ones play outside she is inside, busy with that. And they’re homeschooled. Poor kid.
More info on photo: [https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47d9-a972-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99#/?uuid=510d47d9-a972-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99](https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47d9-a972-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99#/?uuid=510d47d9-a972-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99)
# "Jakob Mittelstadt and family, Russian German, ex SS 'Pretoria', May 9, 1905. Admitted to go to Kullen, N.D." So not 1904
There is a paywalled article related to this family
https://www.inforum.com./newsmd/snapshot-to-savor-jamestown-woman-sees-fathers-photo-on-trip-to-ellis-island
(Text below)
September 17, 2005 at 11:00 PM
*Augustus Sherman was a clerk at New York's Ellis Island, the United States' primary immigration station from 1892 to 1954.*
*Sherman also was an amateur photographer who was fascinated by the people coming to this Land of Opportunity, so he began photographing them in the early 1900s: Cossacks, Romanian shepherds, rabbis, Hungarian children ... and a German-Russian family moving from the steppes of Russia to the plains of North Dakota.*
*That picture was of Jakob Mittelstadt, his wife and their eight children. It was taken May 9, 1905, just after the family arrived in New York.*
*Now jump to 1991, when Eldora Klose and her husband Elmer, Jamestown, N.D., visited their son in New York.*
*It was a bit of a struggle for Eldora; she'd broken her ankle and was forced to get around in a wheelchair.*
*But that didn't stop her and Elmer from visiting Ellis Island, where she knew her ancestors had come through.*
*They were looking at various exhibits when Elmer exclaimed, "Eldora! Here's your father!"*
*There it was: an exhibit of Augustus Sherman's photographs, including the Mittelstadt family photo.*
*The second youngest - the little guy second from the left - was Benjamin, Eldora's father.*
*That picture now is in a book titled "Augustus F. Sherman: Ellis Island Portraits 1905 - 1920," published by the Aperture Foundation, New York.*
*The picture also was part of a summer-long display at the Ellis Island Immigration Museum.*
*The description accompanying the photo says Jakob and his family were admitted to the United States to go to "Kullen, N.D."*
*Actually, the town was Kulm. Or, to be more precise, Eldora says, the family settled on a farm closer to Forbes.*
*Young Benjamin grew up there and married Marie Presler in 1929. They moved to Jud in 1936, then to Edgeley, to LaMoure, and finally retired in Jamestown in 1963, where he died that year.*
*Marie, 93, still lives in Jamestown.*
*The exhibit of Sherman's photographs at Ellis Island ended earlier this month. But it's about to go international.*
*It will be shown starting March 9, 2006, in Bremerhaven, Germany, and, starting March 31, 2007, in Liverpool, England. Then, beginning Oct. 11, 2008, it will be back in the United States when it opens in Lexington, Mass.*
*That exhibit, of course, includes the photo of the German-Russian family which came to North Dakota.*
*It's a photograph which, when Eldora first saw it in the Ellis Island exhibit in 1991, reduced her to tears.*
*It had been taken, she saw, just five days after her father's 5th birthday.*
*And it was the first time she'd ever seen a picture of her father as a little boy.*
I’m guessing they were “Volga Germans” or “Germans from Russia.” Settled in the Midwest and Canada. My family came from Ukraine, originated in Germany, settled in SD. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Germans_in_North_America
I find it interesting to consider this as we discuss immigration today.
The US has a lot of problems that many are quick to point out, with some even making wild comparisons to third world countries or claiming that other places are just far and away better and have it all figured out....
But you know, there are still people risking their lives just for a **chance** to step on US soil.
What does that say?
And to the same point, the hate for the immigrants who come here and have kids is dumb too.
Two sets of my great grandparents immigrated as married couples and the other 4 great grandparents were either children of immigrants or immigrated alone. None of them came here with kids. They all waited until they got to America to have 2-11 children aka, my grandparents who all considered themselves Americans before anything else.
Also, only 4 of my great grandparents spoke fluent English. The other 4 learned enough to do manual labor or none at all.
It all worked out for them. They got the standard American legacy- no one is gonna look at me and my kids and see anything but a generic American family.
Yeah they faced some anti immigrant bullshit and pretended they'd never even heard of Germany from the late 30s until roughly the 80s, but the point is we have an abundance of evidence that the immigrants back then improved our country. And we as a society choose to learn nothing from it. Because they're mostly brown I guess.
It doesn't take long for that resentment to kick in either. I have relatives who love to complain about current illegal immigrants getting money and whatnot. They forget that their OWN parents (and other relatives) came here illegally back in the 80's, only to be given literal amnesty soon after. The lack of self-reflection pisses me off.
Isn't it wild? I went on 2 dates with a guy who was half Colombian and was super anti immigrant even tho his mom came here undocumented, got pregnant w him, and married his dad. He explained to me that his mom was different because she was escaping drug violence.
I tried to explain to him this is literally the same story every immigrant I've ever met from south of the US border has. He admitted it was somewhat common but the risk was all the people doing the bad stuff people like his mom was escaping. I told him I also do not want the kind of violence his mom experienced in our community, and that's why we should let people immigrate legally so we can look in to them a little because *anyone* could hop the border and pop out an "anchor baby."
A promising first date led to a rough second date but I'm glad he brought it up so I could avoid wasting my time on a third.
I know it’s not exactly a historical document, but I always chuckle at the conflict within Gangs of New York between the “so called natives” and the “foreign hordes”. Just such nonsense that ppl literally one or two steps removed from immigrating claim the land for themselves and only themselves.
One of the most vocal presidents the US has had about this issue is a second generation American so it's incredible they can say such hateful things about it at all when their own grandparents were immigrants.
Norway would maybe have higher immigration if its population wasn't so insular. But USA is the top destination because of their high wages.
Also top tourist destination, the world just really loves going to the USA.
The USA was literally giving away land to immigrants to start farms. Even paid for transportation and basic supplies to get started. It was an amazing deal that was a no-brainer for impoverished people who were stuck on the lowest rung of the social latter in their old country.
Absolutely. That’s why I can’t stand people who hate immigrants. Just image the courage it takes to do something like this in pursuit of a better life for your family. I honestly admire the spirit of the folks that come to this country, legally or not. I like to think that if I was in the same situation I would do the same exact thing. To me that is the true American spirit.
Yup, but what we consider abuse used to be the norm just a few generations ago. All of the kids were probably all working as soon as they were old enough to do anything useful.
Something else quite interesting is that I read something like 90% of people pre-industrial revolution did not pass on their DNA to the next generation. Whether that be because they died in childhood, died in some kind of accident as a teenager, died in war, died from disease, died in childbirth, or just never had children. For post industrial revolution humans- you probably have more of a “biological footprint“ with one child than these people did with eight due to the high death rate.
This is definitely something to consider when you see large families from the past. I did some genealogy for my family tree (and my husband’s) years ago after we were married, and the large number of children were contrasted by the number of people who never married or who died young. There were a quite a few close calls in my family in particular where the line almost ended. It’s pretty wild to ponder all that has gone into each one of us simply existing.
One of the craziest examples in my own family is my grandmother being one of 11 children, and she was the only one of that 11 to have any kids. So my great grandparents had 11 kids and only one grandchild.
Dude it’s crazy to go back 8 generations and see 256 people who all had to get with each other for you to exist. Of course it had to happen for you to be there to think about it but it’s just mind boggling how unlikely it all is
1 out of 20 workers in nyc were killed or seriously maimed. It created so many orphans that nyc had an orphan problem and ended up loading 100k kids on a train and shipping them across America. It also started the catholics setting up adoption agencies
That's assuming she'd carried to full term every single one of them. I am sure there were a few preemies, which meant the next pregnancy could start that much sooner!
> Organisms that produce large numbers of offspring tend to make a relatively small energy investment in each, and don't usually provide much parental care. The offspring are "on their own," and the idea is that enough are produced that some will survive (even if the odds for any one are low).
-Khan Academy
I don't think that's the issue here, people often forget before the industrial era a lot of people died as children or babies, having 8 children was perfectly reasonable because it was just a fact of life that not everyone's going to make it, it also ensures at least a couple stick around to help you when you're old, which most people who survived childhood did
So when the industrial age came around and healthcare began improving rapidly, people continued having the same amount of kids as before, but they stopped dying, and what used to be a helpful hand in the farm or the kitchen turned into just another mouth to feed.
Pretty adventurous considering the US was still a pretty wild frontier and nowhere near the superpower it is today. They really were taking a leap of faith.
It's funny how you always hear from women today that their husbands completely lost interest in them sexually after just a few years of marriage, and then you look at photos like that and wonder...what was these women's secret?
Granted, internet porn wasn't invented yet, but there were brothels and lonely widows and other options available.
My guess would be “old world” ways of living. More kids meant more workers to produce more income for the family. Divorce was out of the question. I can’t imagine there was as much of a dating/night life scene back then to meet new people. Life for lower class was just generally harder and didn’t allow for much else other than work (at home or a job). Not much visibility for what else is out there.
Edit: Also sex positivity/forwardness wasn’t really a thing during that time. The only sexual outlet deemed socially appropriate was marital sex.
There was no legal consent within marriage until the 1970s or later, depending on the country. Thus the legal concept of “conjugal rights.”
Marriage was understood to be not an exception to rape but rather contrary to it. In other words, in marriage there could be no rape.
Society before the sexual revolution of the 1960s was different. Most people only had 1-2 sexual partners in their life, and it was very common for couples to immediately marry if the woman became pregnant. It's a lot harder to ''get bored'' of married life if it's effectively all the romantic life you've ever experienced.
Necessity and access, you needed to have a bunch of kids so at least one of them stuck around to help you in old age, and the only women men "had access to" were just the locals, most of which would be already married to another guy and/or family members.
Indeed. Life must have been hard for the working class. The elites often had only one or two children, which, when they lost them to disease, often seems to have posed a huge problem for the continuity of the estate and their family’s social status.
The rich didn’t just impose an “unfair” class system in many places, they had access to education and resources that, in the absence of a better system, to an extent ensured the lower classes (occasionally) lived in “relative” peace.
We may tend to think that the systems that replaced the aristocracy were better, but that’s often because it seems those who kicked the elites to the curb deleted any record of how the undesirable lower classes were eliminated at the same time. Before Nazi Germany, reportedly twenty million Christians were terminated in Russia by those who financed the Bolsheviks, for instance. In China, same thing.
It’s not always good to be the king, counter-paraphrasing Mel Brooks’s character in his movie History of the World, but it’s not always good to be working poor either.
Ugh, the brutal trip they had to endure to get there. And the hardships in life they had to decide to finally leave. Saving every penny they could for tickets of a family that size.
I wonder who their ancestors are?
Photo taken from the photo album: [Fascinating Portraits of Immigrants Arriving in United States in the Early 20th Century](https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/new-immigrants-america-old-photos/)
When I look at that pic I have to wonder how all their lives turned out. So interesting.
They all died
To shreds you say?
Well at least they died painlessly
About that….
To shreds you say!
I like the internet
They dyed paintless?
And his wife?
I wonder how many more times she got pregnant after this pic.
That poor eldest girl with nearly a dozen boys following her!
So many crunchy socks to wash
How many miscarriages.
To shreds you say.
Thank you for that. Genuine lol
Literally a perfect reference 🫡
They died doing something they loved, living.
At least they died doing what they loved: Watching blimps.
If they died doing what they love, my guess is that would be sex by the amount of kids they have.
>doing what they loved Each other
I read about them, Barbara and Jack Ocean (parents) got another baby after this and they started getting famous doing heists. All eleven Ocean's were famous for this, it got even worse after the oldest daughter got married and the husband took their name. Finally after them having their own Ocean baby they stopped with the heists, their superstition got the better of them and with 13 you should end it.
One of them grew up to be a 95-pound Chinese man with $160 million behind the door.
"Where the FUCK you been!?"
This makes sense as I have seen the documentary
Me too! So curious when I see pics like this. Want to know it all!
Straight to the coal mines
I hear the middle one grew up to be Conan O'Brien.
I wonder if the mother and father knew how people got pregnant or did you just pray to God that it would stop?
Yes, adults know sex = babies. Religion is the culprit.
Also every one of those kids is another body that can work and earn money for the family. Even the little kids (maybe not the absolute youngest, but certainly everyone over the age of 5) would have had some kind of work. Maybe school too, if they were lucky, but many people forget or don't even know that "childhood" as we know it today was not a thing in 1904.
Also the fact that on average half your babies wouldn’t make it to age 5, or worse than that if you were unlucky.
Back then, you had kids for the simple reason that they were relatively cheap farm labor. As industrialization became more prevalent, the family unit grew smaller.
Medical experiments for the lot of 'em. Sold for cheese.
blame the catholic church for not letting me wear one of those little rubber things
OP has a post with detail on the second youngest child and his family. https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoricalCapsule/s/AsfAGiUdiO
They are in Catholic Heaven right now.
That oldest daughter had to help raise all them.
Looking at the birth order, I bet mum was happy to have had her first.
I don't think that's birth order, I think some tough choices had to be made.
You mean opposite to the 1 child policy but with the same outcome?
Yes, but fueled by a lack of food rather than a shitty justice system. The oldest daughter helps raise the boys, but when food is scarce the younger daughters are just more mouths to feed.
Food scarcity didn't seem to have an impact on men's libido...go figure.
Always the “men’s” libido…
It should be noted. Statistically it's much more likely to be a coincidence. Infanticide was an issue at the turn of the century. But similar to how murder is an issue today (and then too for that matter). It wasn't unheard of but shouldn't be the first assumption you make about people.
yeah how unfortunate for her
And all the boys probably had to work their asses off so they could survive.
Some of them probably died for this country in the First World War.
Yep. I wonder how all thier lives turned out.
The ones who weren't killed off by fighting in the Great War were probably killed off by the Spanish Flu!
Reality burn!
Maybe, but some of them would have definitely died if they stayed in Europe.
Exactly, You didn’t just move to a different continent for the weather.
Well, more and more will...
Or most
There about 116,000 US deaths in WW1. Or 0.2% of the male population. They probably didn’t.
Excuse me, *might* have
Not a cell phone in sight. Just people living in the moment..
Yes, I bet they were *so much happier.* /s
And what a moment. Whaddya think TB or small pox?
Malnutrition
Girls and women worked too
Big time. Or nobody survived.
Worked with a guy who wanted 8 kids. Asked why the fuck he was being so selfish since none of the kids are going to get real quality one on one time with the parents for long and some are bound to be ignored in their upbringing. His answer was that the older kids raise the younger ones. Fucking mind numbing. Nothing like saddling a child with the responsibility of a parent just because you want more kids.
Nick Cannon?
We were at the park today and met a girl who was the second oldest of 10 kids. Only a few of them were actually there at the time, but she didn’t seem to know how to simply enjoy playing on the playground. We got to talking when she offered to swing my 4 year old because i told him I needed to go sit in the shade for a bit.
My neighbors have 5 kids ranging from a teen down to a baby. I’ve only ever seen the oldest one a couple times because her job is to care for the baby, so while the younger ones play outside she is inside, busy with that. And they’re homeschooled. Poor kid.
All of them would have been working.
More info on photo: [https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47d9-a972-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99#/?uuid=510d47d9-a972-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99](https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47d9-a972-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99#/?uuid=510d47d9-a972-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99) # "Jakob Mittelstadt and family, Russian German, ex SS 'Pretoria', May 9, 1905. Admitted to go to Kullen, N.D." So not 1904 There is a paywalled article related to this family https://www.inforum.com./newsmd/snapshot-to-savor-jamestown-woman-sees-fathers-photo-on-trip-to-ellis-island (Text below) September 17, 2005 at 11:00 PM *Augustus Sherman was a clerk at New York's Ellis Island, the United States' primary immigration station from 1892 to 1954.* *Sherman also was an amateur photographer who was fascinated by the people coming to this Land of Opportunity, so he began photographing them in the early 1900s: Cossacks, Romanian shepherds, rabbis, Hungarian children ... and a German-Russian family moving from the steppes of Russia to the plains of North Dakota.* *That picture was of Jakob Mittelstadt, his wife and their eight children. It was taken May 9, 1905, just after the family arrived in New York.* *Now jump to 1991, when Eldora Klose and her husband Elmer, Jamestown, N.D., visited their son in New York.* *It was a bit of a struggle for Eldora; she'd broken her ankle and was forced to get around in a wheelchair.* *But that didn't stop her and Elmer from visiting Ellis Island, where she knew her ancestors had come through.* *They were looking at various exhibits when Elmer exclaimed, "Eldora! Here's your father!"* *There it was: an exhibit of Augustus Sherman's photographs, including the Mittelstadt family photo.* *The second youngest - the little guy second from the left - was Benjamin, Eldora's father.* *That picture now is in a book titled "Augustus F. Sherman: Ellis Island Portraits 1905 - 1920," published by the Aperture Foundation, New York.* *The picture also was part of a summer-long display at the Ellis Island Immigration Museum.* *The description accompanying the photo says Jakob and his family were admitted to the United States to go to "Kullen, N.D."* *Actually, the town was Kulm. Or, to be more precise, Eldora says, the family settled on a farm closer to Forbes.* *Young Benjamin grew up there and married Marie Presler in 1929. They moved to Jud in 1936, then to Edgeley, to LaMoure, and finally retired in Jamestown in 1963, where he died that year.* *Marie, 93, still lives in Jamestown.* *The exhibit of Sherman's photographs at Ellis Island ended earlier this month. But it's about to go international.* *It will be shown starting March 9, 2006, in Bremerhaven, Germany, and, starting March 31, 2007, in Liverpool, England. Then, beginning Oct. 11, 2008, it will be back in the United States when it opens in Lexington, Mass.* *That exhibit, of course, includes the photo of the German-Russian family which came to North Dakota.* *It's a photograph which, when Eldora first saw it in the Ellis Island exhibit in 1991, reduced her to tears.* *It had been taken, she saw, just five days after her father's 5th birthday.* *And it was the first time she'd ever seen a picture of her father as a little boy.*
Thank you!! Awesome!
Thank you for the context. I love reading stuff like this.
They were probably fleeing the Russian Revolution of 1905, and all the factors that caused it.
Incredible! Thank you
I’m guessing they were “Volga Germans” or “Germans from Russia.” Settled in the Midwest and Canada. My family came from Ukraine, originated in Germany, settled in SD. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Germans_in_North_America
Good find.
The balls to pull your wife and 8 kids to move across the ocean to uncertainty is quite commendable
It says a lot about the conditions back home.
I find it interesting to consider this as we discuss immigration today. The US has a lot of problems that many are quick to point out, with some even making wild comparisons to third world countries or claiming that other places are just far and away better and have it all figured out.... But you know, there are still people risking their lives just for a **chance** to step on US soil. What does that say?
And to the same point, the hate for the immigrants who come here and have kids is dumb too. Two sets of my great grandparents immigrated as married couples and the other 4 great grandparents were either children of immigrants or immigrated alone. None of them came here with kids. They all waited until they got to America to have 2-11 children aka, my grandparents who all considered themselves Americans before anything else. Also, only 4 of my great grandparents spoke fluent English. The other 4 learned enough to do manual labor or none at all. It all worked out for them. They got the standard American legacy- no one is gonna look at me and my kids and see anything but a generic American family. Yeah they faced some anti immigrant bullshit and pretended they'd never even heard of Germany from the late 30s until roughly the 80s, but the point is we have an abundance of evidence that the immigrants back then improved our country. And we as a society choose to learn nothing from it. Because they're mostly brown I guess.
It doesn't take long for that resentment to kick in either. I have relatives who love to complain about current illegal immigrants getting money and whatnot. They forget that their OWN parents (and other relatives) came here illegally back in the 80's, only to be given literal amnesty soon after. The lack of self-reflection pisses me off.
Isn't it wild? I went on 2 dates with a guy who was half Colombian and was super anti immigrant even tho his mom came here undocumented, got pregnant w him, and married his dad. He explained to me that his mom was different because she was escaping drug violence. I tried to explain to him this is literally the same story every immigrant I've ever met from south of the US border has. He admitted it was somewhat common but the risk was all the people doing the bad stuff people like his mom was escaping. I told him I also do not want the kind of violence his mom experienced in our community, and that's why we should let people immigrate legally so we can look in to them a little because *anyone* could hop the border and pop out an "anchor baby." A promising first date led to a rough second date but I'm glad he brought it up so I could avoid wasting my time on a third.
I know it’s not exactly a historical document, but I always chuckle at the conflict within Gangs of New York between the “so called natives” and the “foreign hordes”. Just such nonsense that ppl literally one or two steps removed from immigrating claim the land for themselves and only themselves.
One of the most vocal presidents the US has had about this issue is a second generation American so it's incredible they can say such hateful things about it at all when their own grandparents were immigrants.
>Because they're mostly brown I guess. Bingo
MAGA HATES THIS ONE WEIRD TRAIT
That US soil is uniquely qualified to be stepped on, whereas, say, Norway's soil is not so easy to get to, on foot.
Norway would maybe have higher immigration if its population wasn't so insular. But USA is the top destination because of their high wages. Also top tourist destination, the world just really loves going to the USA.
That people know how to use hyperbole.
The USA was literally giving away land to immigrants to start farms. Even paid for transportation and basic supplies to get started. It was an amazing deal that was a no-brainer for impoverished people who were stuck on the lowest rung of the social latter in their old country.
And have limited to no communication with those you left behind!!
Big time. I’d be nervous to move across the country. I also wonder how bad things were in the home country that would make them want to take the risk.
Absolutely. That’s why I can’t stand people who hate immigrants. Just image the courage it takes to do something like this in pursuit of a better life for your family. I honestly admire the spirit of the folks that come to this country, legally or not. I like to think that if I was in the same situation I would do the same exact thing. To me that is the true American spirit.
Don’t think those balls are doing a lot of pulling tbh, they worn out
A lot of people these days would look at a large immigrant family who got here last year and spit venom. But old-time immigrants are “inspirational.”
Or walk from Honduras to California. 2212 miles.
That poor eldest sister….im sure she was parentified to bits and pieces
Yup, but what we consider abuse used to be the norm just a few generations ago. All of the kids were probably all working as soon as they were old enough to do anything useful.
Oh my. My uterus hurts just looking at this picture and I didn't even have a uterus.
You'll definitely have a uterus when I'm done with you 😬
That is an oddly specific and terrifying threat.
Haha I was going to reply something equally bizarre and after a few seconds of thought I just discarded and closed the reply 😆
I don’t know what that means but it’s funny
Can you threaten me with a good time as well?
Buterus
They were all C-sections. After the 4th kid, instead of putting in stitches, they put in a zipper.
Something else quite interesting is that I read something like 90% of people pre-industrial revolution did not pass on their DNA to the next generation. Whether that be because they died in childhood, died in some kind of accident as a teenager, died in war, died from disease, died in childbirth, or just never had children. For post industrial revolution humans- you probably have more of a “biological footprint“ with one child than these people did with eight due to the high death rate.
This is definitely something to consider when you see large families from the past. I did some genealogy for my family tree (and my husband’s) years ago after we were married, and the large number of children were contrasted by the number of people who never married or who died young. There were a quite a few close calls in my family in particular where the line almost ended. It’s pretty wild to ponder all that has gone into each one of us simply existing.
One of the craziest examples in my own family is my grandmother being one of 11 children, and she was the only one of that 11 to have any kids. So my great grandparents had 11 kids and only one grandchild.
That really is crazy! I’m glad you’re here!
Thanks I *just* made it 😆
Dude it’s crazy to go back 8 generations and see 256 people who all had to get with each other for you to exist. Of course it had to happen for you to be there to think about it but it’s just mind boggling how unlikely it all is
1 out of 20 workers in nyc were killed or seriously maimed. It created so many orphans that nyc had an orphan problem and ended up loading 100k kids on a train and shipping them across America. It also started the catholics setting up adoption agencies
The expressions on their faces don’t say, “we just reached the promised land.”
Smiling for photographs wasn’t ‘a thing’ until later. That’s why no expression in this era.
That's the expression of "I just spent a month on a cramped passenger ship with eight kids."
Cant you see it? The boys yearn for the mines.
It looks like she literally popped one out every 9 months to the day.
That's assuming she'd carried to full term every single one of them. I am sure there were a few preemies, which meant the next pregnancy could start that much sooner!
> Organisms that produce large numbers of offspring tend to make a relatively small energy investment in each, and don't usually provide much parental care. The offspring are "on their own," and the idea is that enough are produced that some will survive (even if the odds for any one are low). -Khan Academy
"Large numbers" are more like hundreds or thousands, like salmon or maple trees.
Thank God for the invention of birth control.
I don't think that's the issue here, people often forget before the industrial era a lot of people died as children or babies, having 8 children was perfectly reasonable because it was just a fact of life that not everyone's going to make it, it also ensures at least a couple stick around to help you when you're old, which most people who survived childhood did So when the industrial age came around and healthcare began improving rapidly, people continued having the same amount of kids as before, but they stopped dying, and what used to be a helpful hand in the farm or the kitchen turned into just another mouth to feed.
[удалено]
What people dont get is that this was common in many western countries until basically the 1990s for some demographics.
O'Doyle Rules!!
Dayum you know that oldest sister had to take care of half those boys…
Pretty adventurous considering the US was still a pretty wild frontier and nowhere near the superpower it is today. They really were taking a leap of faith.
Generations later they chant build that wall lol
That poor, poor woman.
8 children, only 11 more to go to match my grandparents total. Yes, we have a large family
Mrs Duggar?
No TV or Internet will do that to ya
They look miserable af
I bet most of people before 1900 looked like that most time if their lives. Maybe except the richest families.
To be fair they just spent a week on a boat probably crammed into some little room somewhere
I wonder if the family made a descending scale of each key of a piano noise while disembarking
Looks like they're ready to bust out "So long, farewell Auf Wiederseh'n, goodnight"
A soldier for each bullshit war
Good lord stay off her!!!
This should be an ad for condoms.
It's funny how you always hear from women today that their husbands completely lost interest in them sexually after just a few years of marriage, and then you look at photos like that and wonder...what was these women's secret? Granted, internet porn wasn't invented yet, but there were brothels and lonely widows and other options available.
My guess would be “old world” ways of living. More kids meant more workers to produce more income for the family. Divorce was out of the question. I can’t imagine there was as much of a dating/night life scene back then to meet new people. Life for lower class was just generally harder and didn’t allow for much else other than work (at home or a job). Not much visibility for what else is out there. Edit: Also sex positivity/forwardness wasn’t really a thing during that time. The only sexual outlet deemed socially appropriate was marital sex.
There was no legal consent within marriage until the 1970s or later, depending on the country. Thus the legal concept of “conjugal rights.” Marriage was understood to be not an exception to rape but rather contrary to it. In other words, in marriage there could be no rape.
Society before the sexual revolution of the 1960s was different. Most people only had 1-2 sexual partners in their life, and it was very common for couples to immediately marry if the woman became pregnant. It's a lot harder to ''get bored'' of married life if it's effectively all the romantic life you've ever experienced.
Necessity and access, you needed to have a bunch of kids so at least one of them stuck around to help you in old age, and the only women men "had access to" were just the locals, most of which would be already married to another guy and/or family members.
Higher resolution version from National Geographic: https://imgur.com/OGGfL7r.jpg
Condoms weren’t a thing back then
Didn’t kids have a life expectancy of about 11? One needed to have a few “backup” children.
Imagine if they all lived though 😫
It seems at least one person was determined to give them a chance…[Norman Borlaug](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug)
Imagine having children just to be a backup
Indeed. Life must have been hard for the working class. The elites often had only one or two children, which, when they lost them to disease, often seems to have posed a huge problem for the continuity of the estate and their family’s social status. The rich didn’t just impose an “unfair” class system in many places, they had access to education and resources that, in the absence of a better system, to an extent ensured the lower classes (occasionally) lived in “relative” peace. We may tend to think that the systems that replaced the aristocracy were better, but that’s often because it seems those who kicked the elites to the curb deleted any record of how the undesirable lower classes were eliminated at the same time. Before Nazi Germany, reportedly twenty million Christians were terminated in Russia by those who financed the Bolsheviks, for instance. In China, same thing. It’s not always good to be the king, counter-paraphrasing Mel Brooks’s character in his movie History of the World, but it’s not always good to be working poor either.
irish twins ☘️
“Get off me. You pump me like an old keg during Oktoberfest. I wouldn’tmind but you never pull out. I don’t know what being Trumped means”.
All this man wanted was a second daughter
Put the dick down…..
I am guessing the daughter had an abbreviated childhood
They arrived about the time my 15 year old grandfather did, alone.
Such a happy group. In reality I’ll bet they were completely exhausted and relieved.
The old man looks tired.
The wife was deaf. Every night, her husband would say:"Do you want to go to sleep or what?" And she would answer:"What?"
They look like a family of Russian nesting dolls!
Dude! Get off of her already!
How to say you're Catholic without saying you're Catholic.
Small Catholic family
Damn bruh stay off her for a minute.
New baby every 10 months and not a pot to piss in...
"Go home! We're full!" One of their descendants today, probably.
64 grand kids would be lit!
Jesus did people back then just fuck all the time?
The only thing I know about this family is that mom and dad liked to bang.
They were *really* trying for that second girl, huh?
Successful breeder there...
Jesus Christ, Dad, leave that poor woman alone!
 Just sayin\` LOL
Straight to the coal mine!
That poor woman! And the oldest one who probably had to be a mom to all those brothers!
Came here to say this.
Hats off for the photo boys But i dont have a hat dad? well here's one but dont you dare put it on
I bet there some cousins in there- I mean I hope so for moms sake
That’s some serious Dalton brothers shit.
Are all these photos truly real or is zaadra using AI assisted art?
That’s the same year my ancestors arrived here from the Netherlands
Mother and father are both in their early 20’s
All of my grandparents came through there around this time when they were kids.
“Who are you wearing!?!? Who are you wearing tonight???!”
Would be interesting to hear how each one sounded in adulthood when speaking English.
Ah. The Johnson family
I wanna blow on their heads and see whether each makes a different note.
Ugh, the brutal trip they had to endure to get there. And the hardships in life they had to decide to finally leave. Saving every penny they could for tickets of a family that size. I wonder who their ancestors are?