The Dangers of Childbirth

Our ancestors generally had very large families, with as many as a dozen or more children in some families.  And it is quite miraculous that so many children and mothers survived childbirth, especially when you think of all the things that can go wrong including breech presentation, incompatible Rh factors and infection. 

Although the majority of my female ancestors survived childbirth, I have come across a number who didn't.  One was my grand aunt Rebecca Shaw Waggoner, my grandmother's younger sister.  I remember my grandmother talking about this with my mother.   Becky was apparantly Rh Negative and her baby Rh positive.  Since this was her second child, she had already built up antibodies in her own blood to Rh positive blood, but of course routine tests were not done for blood factors then so Becky and her husband had no way of knowing how dangerous a second pregnancy could be, especially if the second child was also Rh positive.  Both Becky and the baby died from this incompatibility. 

I discovered another death related to childbirth several months ago.  Bridget, the wife of my great grand uncle, Edward Brennan, had already had seven healthy children when she died along with her eighth child.  This appears to have been due to an illness or infection but since this was in 1914, when medical science was very primitive, we cannot know for certain the exact cause of the deaths.

Just today, I discovered a third death which I believe is related to childbirth. I discovered it by accident.  Elizabeth Wagner, my second great grandmother, died on August 1, 1864 and in the 1870 census her husband John is remarried to a woman named Sophia.  At least, it appears to be the same John Wagner who was once married to Elizabeth, as the children's names are the same.

I began searching in the cemetery records of Delphos, Ohio, where the Wagners lived, to see what I could find out about a Sophia Wagner.  (In the St. John's cemetery records, the names of spouses or parents of the deceased are often listed.) I couldn't find a Sophia Wagner, but I did a Wagner infant.  The child's name was Michael John Wagner and he died in November, 1864. He was listed as the son of Elizabeth and John.   I then looked at his birth date:  August 1, 1864, the same date Elizabeth died.  I think it is reasonable to assume that Elizabeth died in childbirth, and the infant died a few months later. 

I can't help but be impressed with the courage of these women.  In the days before antibiotics, sterile environments, modern medicine and the drug Rhogam that helps prevent deaths due to Rh incompatibility (I was a beneficiary of this life-saving medication) women faced danger with each pregnancy. They are true heroes.

Family Size

I went sailing a week ago, and I was talking about genealogy to one of my fellow sailors.  When I mentioned that my husband is descended from at least 3 Mayflower passengers, he asked how many descendants of the Mayflower passengers there were.  He imagined there must be a large number.  I told him I didn't know exactly, but I had read somewhere that it was in the millions.  Even though only 50 of the 100 original passengers survived the first year, those 50 went on to have many children, and over the years, the number has increased geometrically.   Of course, up until the 1960s, when the birth control pill was developed, most families were large.  In my background as well as my husband's, the number of children in families was rarely less than 5, and often more than 10.  Many men married several times - often because a wife had died in childbirth -  and had multiple families.  It wasn't unusual for a man to have as many as 15 or even 20 children from 3 different wives.

Today, the situation is very different.  It is a rare family that has more than 2 children.  People marry later these days and for financial and other reasons, limit the number of children they want to raise.  Of course, our ancestors did not have the means to limit their families, unless they chose to forego marital relations, but obviously most of them didn't.  It wasn't only the absence of reliable birth control that led to large families, however.  It was also the need for many children to help run the farms, or the obedience to religious directives to "increase and multiply," or simply the belief that children were a gift from God.

Today, we're concerned about how expensive it is to raise children and we worry about overpopulation.  Women pursue careers along with men and no longer think about child-rearing and housewifery as a lifelong occupation.  Raising children is, instead, something one does in one's spare time, or in addition to climbing the career ladder.  Some couples choose not to have children at all.  This is neither right nor wrong.  Each generation has its own culture, challenges, and desires, and the smaller families of today fit with the values and needs of our times.

It will change things for genealogists, however.  There will be fewer siblings to research, and it it will take a lot longer for an original group of 50 people to produce over a million descendants.