A STRONG PEOPLE

When thinking of our ancestors and their daily lives; we most often have the thought that they were made of a stronger fiber then most people are today. They had that adventuresome spirit that made them pioneer into uninhabited and sometimes dangerous areas in their endless migrational patterns.

Unfortunately I recently had the opportunity to experience yet another one of the many setbacks that they faced in their daily lives; however, sadly they viewed it as a common event.

The death of a child.....

I recently lost a grandchild and after the grief, the anger and the questions I came back to researching and it wasn't long before I came across the death of a child in a family. This gave me moment to pause in the thought that many of these pioneers lost children at a tremendous rate and it was quite common.

It has been a month and yet I can still feel the emptiness and the unfairness of it all. I can see my son and daughter in law in their futile attempts to return to a normal lifestyle.

Fortunately, this is the only death of a young person in my family. But, I cannot help but think.

Some of our ancestors were the parents of 10-12 children and in one case in particular I can think of--they had a total of 9 children and in just short of 4 years they lost children in-

November of 1894--age 12

March of 1897-age 14

September of 1898-age 12

October of 1898-age 2

I personally can attest to the feeling of just losing one.

How did these people go on from day to day in losing so many?

Sometimes I am amazed that after battling the elements, land disputes, indians, crop failures, etc that these ancestors never lost the desire to further explore or conquer new areas. One would think those obstacles would be enough, wouldn't you??

Add to this the massive loss of lives within the families and the impact it must have had. I realize that persons must and do die, however, it is often most difficult with a child. Overcoming this particular obstacle over and over again gives me yet another reason to admire them in a new light. They were most definitely a strong people to survive this over and over again.

Somehow it makes you not question the old newsclipping stating that a woman had hung herself in the barn..reasoning unknown.

I have heard many people say that there were so many children born in the early families because they didn't expect many of them to survive to adulthood and increasing the children would increase the odds.

I think that this would be tremendously difficult to KNOW without a doubt that you were repeatedly having children to know that you most likely wouldn't see them reach the age of five.

There are no tips or lessons here, just a thought to ponder and more to admire in your ancestors in knowing that sometimes it wasn't the outside forces that caused them to constantly migrate from one place to another...

Perhaps there was just too much pain in one area to continue living there....