Hempe Maria Dierksen – Oops! How Old Was She? – 52 Ancestors 2015 # 43

Oops! Finally, a theme I can relate to, if you will pardon the pun. This week Amy Johnson Crow suggested that we write about “An ancestor who made an ‘oops,’ or one that you made while researching one of them.”

Hempe Maria Dierksen (Dirksen, Dirxen) is my presumed 4th great-grandmother. She was born to Joannes Gerhardus Dierksen and Tobe Hüntelmann on 3 January 1740 in Lorup by Sögel in Lower Saxony. She married Johann Schulte(gerdts) on 14 February 1786 in Lorup at the Catholic Church Maria Himmelfahrt. I say presumed 4th great-grandmother, because some of the data seems to defy the dictates of science. I received help on my Schulte family from a researcher friend in Germany. I am very grateful for her assistance, but I would be more comfortable if I had copies of the original records to examine. Here is the detail of the report on the children of Hempe Maria Dierkesen and Johann Schulte(gerdts):

As one can readily see, Hempe Maria had her first child at age 47. That, of course, is possible, although not very common. The amazing thing is that she continued to have children well into her fifties. According to this report, she gave birth to her last child at the age of 59.

This seemed so improbable that I asked my researcher friend to take another look. I thought perhaps there may have been another Hempe Maria Dierksen in the same family. Sometimes a given name would be reused if an earlier child of that name died. My friend went back and reviewed the records again. Her conclusion was the same – the original report accurately reflects what she found in the records.

Did Hempe Maria Dierksen Schulte(gerdts) really give birth to five children from ages 47 to 59? Today, fertility drugs and other advances in medical technology allow women to have children in their 50’s and even their 60’s. It is difficult to confirm instances of natural conception in women over the age of 50 in prior centuries. The Guinness Book of World Records  documents the currently acknowledged oldest mom to have a child conceived naturally as Dawn Brooke. “On 20 August 1997, Dawn Brooke (UK) became the oldest natural mother when she gave birth to a son by Caesarian section at the age of 59 years. She conceived accidentally, having managed to ovulate past her last period.” (GuinessBookofWorldRecords.com, retrieved October 27, 2015).

Of course, it is known that sometimes older couples have claimed a grandchild as one that was born to them.  They do this to save the family embarrassment when the child is really the offspring of an unwed daughter. This doesn’t seem to be the case with Hempe Maria, since all of the children were born beyond the usual age of motherhood. I am assuming that there were no unusual notes about these children in the church records or my friend would have noted it.

Either I have a major error here in the research, or an amazing example of a woman who conceived and successfully gave birth to a child at an age that could vie for a world record. At any rate, the last child, Wilhelmus, seems like an “oops.” He was born a full five years after the previous child. I suppose that my next step needs to be to make a request to the Catholic Archives for copies of these records. Maybe I can still set this “oops” straight or confirm that I have an incredible ancestress.

Does anyone else out there have an ancestress who gave birth at a really advanced age?