#52 Ancestors # Week 11 - Large Family

#52 Ancestors # Week 11 - Large Family

This large family is the Stanford family of Lismore, NSW.  It was taken in 1899 and it shows Charles and Susan (nee Golding) with almost all of their family who were alive at the time. Fourteen (of 15) children, 2 sons-in-law, 2 daughters-in-law and 14 grandchildren.

At the centre of the photo (numbers 15 and 16) are Charles and Susan, aged 56 and 51.  They look much older to me, but 50 was considered old at a time when the average life expectancy in Australia was only about 54.  Susan did in fact die only four years after this photo was taken, of heart disease.  Perhaps having given birth to 15 children from the time she was 18 until she was 46 had something to do with it.  Charles lived to be 83 - a very old man by the standard of the times.

The eldest of the children was Stephen (14) sitting beside his mother.  His wife Eliza (nee Lumley)(20) sits just in front of him, nursing their baby, Susan, and their other three children are also there.  Five year old Roy (10), seven year old William (12) and three year old Albert (28).  Stephen and Eliza went on to have three more children.  Roy and Albert both enlisted in WW1; Albert returned to farm at Ellangowan, near his parents, but Roy died in the Norwich War Hospital in England on 18 November, 1917.

Of particular interest to me are three generations of my direct line.  My great grandmother Elizabeth (18) was the second Stanford child.  She is aged about thirty two in this picture and is nursing her son Charles (Boy) White.  My grandmother Alice White (27) is in front of her - she's about eleven.  Her older sister Nellie (23) is also wearing a white dress and the other two children in white in the front row are sisters Eliza Jane (Weenie)(32) and Violet (34).  Interestingly, Elizabeth's husband Robert White, is the only son-in-law not in the picture.  Did he take it, I wonder?

Christina (3) was the third child.  She stands beside her husband Jack Adams (2) who is nursing their baby Herbert.  Their other children are Lorna (26) and Reg (11).

Fourth in the family was Clara (9) who stands next to her husband Jack Gray (8).  Their children are Fred (whose full name was Emerald Frederick((33) and Grace (32).

Sam Stanford (6) and his wife, Rose (7) had only been married a year when this photo was taken and had no children.

After Sam came Charles (17), Sara (22), Eliza (5), Amy (13), Arnold (4), George (24), Ida (25), Ettie (29), and Dyscha (30).

Born between Arnold and George was Violet, who died as a baby in 1886.

Most of the Stanford men stayed in the Lismore area and became farmers.  Many of the girls married locally too.  There are hundreds of descendants still living in the Northern Rivers of NSW.