A cut branch

Anyone who has carried their genealogy back more than a century, or who has spent time walking the rows in a cemetery will note the number of children born to a family is much higher than we consider "normal." Likewise, the number of children--and mothers--who die, usually shortly after the birth seems very high from our modern perspective. A few entries from a name study underway illustrates how our understanding of conception, birth control, and general health has expanded over the years, and how that plays out in real terms for real people:

• Barbara, born in 1698, married Anton in Betra, then part of Prussia, when she was 19. She bore 13 children, 8 of whom died as infants. She died at the age of 45, shortly after giving birth to a boy named Anton; the baby also died within days of his birth.
• In the same village, Magdalena married Johann when she was 25 (8 months after their first child was born). She bore 10 children, only half of whom lived to adulthood. In 1777, she and five of her children died in a 6-month period, likely from illness, possibly smallpox.
• Felicitas married Johann in Betra, Prussia, when she was 21 years old in 1778. She bore 12 children, of whom 6 died before the age of one. She died one year after the birth of her last child, at age 44. 
• Afra was born in Betra in 1822, and married Johann Baptist when she was 22--the day after the birth of her first child. She bore four more children, of whom three made it to adulthood. She died 9 months after her last child was born. She was 29.
• Christina married yet another Johann when she was 28 years old. She had one child seven years later, followed by a son when she was 55. That baby lived three months; she died a month after he did in the winter of 1869. 
• Olga was born in Betra in 1888. She never married, and was a midwife. According to baptismal records, she had three children. It is unclear if she gave birth to them herself, or "found them in the swamp" as her family explained it--possibly unwanted children of her clientele. One child died at 6 months of age, and one was killed in WWII by friendly fire.
• Margaret, a first generation immigrant from Betra, married Harry in Pennsylvania in 1911, when she was 22 years old. She had one child three years later, who died within hours of his birth. She never had any other children. 

Mother and child