SallySearches: The Family With 17 Children

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

The Family With 17 Children

One part of my ancestral makeup is French-Canadian. I recently made a double-cousin connection via DNA. This cousin and I each descend from the same Blanchette and Dionne families two times. Making that connection got me back to filling in gaps on my tree. Those gaps can be pretty big because a lot of my Quebec families had a large number of children: 8, 10, 12 and more was not uncommon.

I was in my database, updating the fourteenth baptism in a particular family, and I thought, hmm, I wonder how big is the biggest family in my tree? And never one to shy away from data, I spent some time in the Statistics tab of my family tree software to see what other ~~shocking~~ interesting facts I could find.

I use Legacy Family Tree 8.0. Here is where I find the Statistics tab:

The report in Legacy comes 'pre-filled' with a number of interesting facts like longevity by century, number of children, most popular names, etc. I have about 7,000 people in my database including both parent's trees and my husband's tree. The report includes the entire database.

Let's begin!

Longest female lifespan: 102 years, 1 month, 10 days
Longest male lifespan: 99 years, 11 months, 5 days

Average female lifespan: 59 years, 7 months, 27 days
Average male lifespan: 59 years, 2 months, 22 days

Sorry guys!

Families with 10 or more children: 49
Most children: 17 (yes, that really says 17)

Ignace Blanchette and Julie Lampron of Ste-Monique in Quebec had 17 known children, including two sets of twins, between 1846-1876. Ignace is my first cousin 5 times removed. Julie has my sympathy.

Most popular names in the 1800's: Mary and Joseph
Most popular names in the 1900's: Dorothy and Edward

Not sure I even know a Dorothy in real life!

Most popular locations: