Having any number of kids, even just one, is a challenge. But while most parents learn to balance two or three kids, one 1920s family from the Boston area managed to raise 13 children.
Naturally, with that many kids, they had to make some very specific adaptations! The family, whose names have sadly been lost to history, gained local attention at some point in 1925 for their large size. In the '20s, the average family had 2.3 children, similar to today. Although there were certainly plenty of large families, they were not the norm — hence the newspaper coverage!
They became so well-known that Boston Herald-Traveler photographer Leslie Jones was sent out to capture images of them.
The family — including the mother and father, 10 girls, two boys, and a baby whose sex we don't know — lined up gamely for photos, showed off their daunting shoe-polishing routine, and, most impressively, demonstrated how they could all pile into a single car!
The photos show the enduring love that families have for one another no matter the time period, but they also show how things have changed! While some 1920s trends are fun to revisit, like the silent-movie-starlet finger wave hairdo, some, like piling 15 people into a single car thanks to a lack of road safety laws, are better left in the past.
Check out these great pictures, and if you know who this family is, let us know!
[H/T: Mashable]
Photographer Leslie Jones, who worked for the Boston Herald-Traveler from 1917 to 1956, met the family outside their home.
Jones was known for covering small, slice-of-life stories like this, as well as bigger news like Charles Lindbergh's tour of the U.S. after his transatlantic flight.
The family consisted of a mom and dad, 10 daughters and two sons. There was also a small baby, but it's hard to tell from these photos if the baby was a boy or a girl.
The eldest children were teenagers when these photos were taken, and besides the infant, the youngest looked to be about 4.
Needless to say, that's a lot of kids! It probably meant a lot of sharing, hard work, and hand-me-down clothes. But they seem to have made things work.
And Mom and Dad seemed very proud of their brood.
Of course, with a family this large comes extra chores. Polishing everyone's shoes, for example, was no small undertaking. But like with any family, they had a system.
But their next system was even better…
The family only had one car, but they developed a way to fit everyone inside for road trips.
We hope they weren't going too far, though, because this is not safe!
But times were different, and cars were considerably slower. Still, let's hope this was not a common practice.
Check out the baby in Mom's arms in the front passenger seat. Car seats were not a thing in the 1920s.
Don't try this at home!
But while they might have all fit into one car, they couldn't fit under one umbrella.
Oh well, they tried.
It's pretty amazing to see these photos from so long ago and see how things have changed, but also how they haven't!
UPDATE:
We recently received information from two descendants of this family, Maralin Manning and John Noonan, who recognized the photos. They're the children of one of the girls and one of the boys in these photos.
This family is the Noonan family of Lawrence, Massachusetts. The father, Maurice Noonan, was an Irish immigrant who ran a local pub, The Morning Glory, and also worked in forming unions in the wool industry. The mother, Mabel Metcalf Noonan, would sadly pass away, along with their youngest child, about four years after these photos were taken, leaving Maurice to raise 12 children on his own.
But the Noonans grew and thrived, and their descendants are still alive and well today! Special thanks to John and Maralin for reaching out and sharing their family history with us!
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