Ask any parent and they will tell you, raising children can be challenging at times. That is true when you have one or two children but this family from the 1920s managed to raise 13 children in the Boston area. As you can imagine, they had to make certain adjustments in order to manage.
The names of this family have unfortunately been lost to history, but they gained some attention in 1925 because of their large size. The average family in the 20s was 2.3 children, similar to what it is today. Leslie Jones, a Boston Herald-Traveler photographer was sent out to take these pictures.
Along with the mother and father, there were 10 girls, 2 boys and a baby. They lined up for family photos and a photograph even showed the routine of polishing all of those shoes! Perhaps one of the most interesting series of photos was how they piled into a single car.
Whatever the time period, families can display love for each other and although things have changed, there are also many things that are similar. Of course, no family would think about shoving 15 people into a car today, but it is interesting to see what happened in the past.
Leslie Jones, a photographer for the Boston Herald-Traveler went to meet the family outside of their home. She was known for covering life stories such as this. She also covered more significant news stories, such as Charles Lindbergh’s tour after his transatlantic flight.
The family included a mother, a father, 10 daughters and two sons. There was also a baby held by the mother, but we can’t tell if it is a boy or a girl from the pictures.
The oldest children were teenagers at the time these pictures were taken. The youngest one, aside from the baby, appeared to be about 4 years old.
That certainly is a lot of children! They likely had a lot of chores to do every day and wore a lot of hand-me-down clothes. It seemed as if everything worked fine.
The parents certainly did seem proud!
There are some extra chores that go along with having a family this large. One of those chores was polishing the shoes but they seemed to have a system in place to do it.
Wait till you see their next system.
They only had one family car but they found a way to fit everyone inside for a road trip.
Admittedly, this is not safe but times were different back then. Many cars didn’t even have seatbelts and they were considerably slower than the cars of today. There was also a lot less traffic.
Look at how the baby rode in the mother’s arms in the front seat. There wasn’t such a thing as car seats in those days and no airbags.
They may have fit into a single car but it looks like they need a bigger umbrella.
At least they tried!
It’s amazing to see pictures from so long ago and to see how times have changed. In some ways, however, times have remained the same.
Via: Little Things
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