EXTRAORDINARY BIRTHS
It is stated by Burrock that the wife of a countryman in the Moscow district had given birth to 69 children at 27 confinements–four times four at one birth, seven times three, and sixteen times twins. In the year 1800, the Vienna newspapers contained the following announcement :
Maria Ann Helen, the wife of a poor linen weaver in Nuclerchenfeld, 20 years married, bore at 11 confinements 32 children–28 living and 4 dead ; 26 were males and 6 were females ; all were begotten by one man and nursed by herself. She had at her last confinement three children, one living and two dead. Her husband was a twin, she herself one of four. Her mother had produced 23 children and died during a confinement with twins. The greatest number of children ever produced at one birth appears to have been 6, all of whom were boys, and all dead. The woman who gave birth to them had been twice married, and had already given birth to 44 children ; during her first marriage, which lasted 22 years, she bore 27 boys and three girls ; in her second marriage, which lasted but three years, she bore 14 children–three at the first, five at the second, and six at the birth confinement.
Originally published in The Perrysburg Journal of Perrysburg, OH on 15 Jul 185 pg 1.
