Ode to the Family Functional!

OK, so once upon a time, a young woman (Hannah) married a young man (Alfred). Hannah came from a decent family. We don't know about Alfred...

They had a son (Augustus) and a daughter (Mary Jane) and another son (Chauncey) and another son (Charles) and when Charles was a week old Hannah died. Charles died a month later.

Alfred remarried and had two more children. His new wife was about 18 and was the stepmother to 3 children (possibly, at first, but then it was 2 - Chauncey died a year after his mother).

Augustus grew up and when he was barely 20 he married an Irish lass named Alice. She was 17 and had come to the US when she was 10 to live with her sister, leaving her parents behind (or perhaps they had died).

Augustus and Alice, two somewhat motherless kids, had William, then Charles, then Lorenzo, then Lucretia. William never married, but died of syphilis when he was 50. Charles married late and never had kids. Lucretia married late and never had kids.

Lorenzo, when he was about 20, married a 19 year old daughter of Irish immigrants named Margaret. They had 4 children: Minnie, Gus, Christopher J, and Ella.

Margaret died when CJ was 12 of chronic alcoholism and heart failure. She was 37.

Ella lived with an aunt, Christopher J lived with his grandparents out of town, Gus joined the Spanish American War quite young, and Minnie? We think she got married, on the young side.

Everyone got married within the next several years, all on the young side, except Gus, who was a merchant seaman and didn't marry till later.

Christopher J married Ida. Her mother ran a boarding house. Her father was here and there, rarely home, living mostly in a hut in a rural part of town.

Really, that was to be expected: His father brought him to the US when he was a baby, no more than 3, without his mother or brothers we think. His father was 15 years younger than his mother, and when he married her at around age 20 he became a stepdad to her 5 other children. Then they had 3 together...

The baby was named Charles, and he became Ida's father.

Ida's father, who was called Foxy because of the way he flitted through the woods, wasn't a big part of her life.

When she married CJ, they had Christopher A, then CJ was killed in an automobile accident (when CA was 12).

CA grew up and married Ruth. They had 3 kids, Peggy, Debby, and Topher.

Finally the family became normal! After all those generations of early departures and parentless children on the CA side, all was well.

:)

PL