LARGE…Some weeks I really struggle with what to write…right now my garden which isn’t LARGE is producing abundantly so I am frantically canning and freezing. Not complaining because this is great problem to have. My writing, family history research and my quilting all take a back seat at this time of the year!

Now that I have stalled enough…..LARGE …. LARGE families…. LARGE people … LARGE farms… LARGE houses

Large Families

My mother was one of eight children. To me, especially today, that is a large family. In her German Ancestry lines, there were lots of large families.

Albert Hainer and Catharine Vollick had twelve children, of the twelve kids, nine children all had large families:

Dorothy Hainer and David Putman had ten children.

Henry Hainer and Nancy Schram had ten children.

John Hainer and Nancy Bowman had nine children.

Isaac Hainer and Mary Magdelena May had twelve children.

Hannah Hainer and John Swackhammer had nine children.

Sarah Hainer and John Brandt had six children.

James Hainer and Catherine had eleven children.

Deborah Hainer and Mathias Fisher had seven children.

Catharine Hainer and Jonas Larraway had seven children.

(As I was proofreading this I added up all of Albert and Catharine Hainer’s grandchildren… they had 81 Grandchildren!)

Large People…

My Great Grandmother, Cora Crites Smith was a large lady. Not only was she large “around” but she was pretty tall for a woman too. And as you can see from this photo, my Grandfather Everett who is standing behind Alvin, her husband who is seated next to Cora, took after his mother. So you see, we come from ‘LARGE” stock. (I am not making excuses here but I do have a pound or two to lose.)

A Large Farm…

James and Susannah (Overly) are my Smith Ancestors. They are my road block, my brick wall. Well James Smith is. There are so many James Smiths that I am unable to verify his parents but that is a topic for a different blog. James and Susannah had a large family. Fourteen children to be exact. They settled in the Fort Wayne area in 1845 or 1846 after leaving Darke County, Ohio. Two of their oldest Smith boys, William and Branson and some of their Davis cousins left the rural Fort Wayne area and moved to Madison County, Indiana, and settled in Pendleton sometime in the mid to late 1850’s. They married Kinnamon sisters, Hannah and Emily.…. the Smith Farm began. It has been operated by the same Smith family for seven generations. Today, they farm 3000 acres of wheat and livestock. They raise cattle and sell meat butchered in their own processing plant. They have a large pumpkin patch and a Farm Market where they have a fall festival every October. Please visit their website at http://www.smithfamilyfarms.com/Welcome.html.

Large House

My Mother and Dad had six kids and in the 1950’s and 1960’s that was a pretty large family. Until I was 12 years old we lived in a three bedroom ranch in Romeo, Michigan. It was a tight fit but it was all we knew. I remember fighting with my sisters about who was the messiest and having to clean our room. It was very difficult to have four girls all in the same room. My two older sisters were teenagers, I was a preteen and my younger sister was five years younger than me. We often blamed the mess on my youngest sister! We moved to Imlay City, Michigan in the summer of 1968. My father had bought a big house.

A big OLD house that used to be a doctor’s office….. I know, you thought I was going to say this big fancy house, didn’t you? Nope it was a monster of an old house. My Dad was the original “do-it-yourself” king. And he had three teenage girls that he loved to put to work. So we had to disconnect the left side of the house which was the doctors office from the right side of the house which would be our living quarters. (And that story would be good for a different blog!) Eventually the old doctors office became a nice size apartment and Mom and Dad had a good size bedroom suite downstairs. The great thing about this house was that all four girls had their own rooms. My younger brothers who you see standing on the porch several years after we moved in were toddlers at the time of the move. They loved sharing a room!

So I guess I covered LARGE. What do you think?

Enjoy the hunt,

Jan

#52Ancestors