I am doing my posts for 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks 2015 out of order; this one should have been done is September. I have been traveling back and forth, to and from Pennsylvania to look after elderly family and blogging has had to take a back seat to family responsibilities. One of the themes I was stuck on was “Large Family.” I really don’t have any unusually large families in my tree
Recently, I have been looking closely at my extended Whipple (Wippel) family from Beaver County, PA, as I try to figure out the background of an adopted cousin. I am not going into that subject here, but along the way, I noticed something about the family of Edward Thomas Whipple. It isn’t that his family was exceptionally large, it is simply that it consisted mostly of girls.
Edward Whipple married Bertha Pauline Frankenstein on 7 July 1903 in Mahoning County, Ohio. Their first daughter came along in December of that year and they named her Orpha Ferdilia Whipple. Just a little over two years later the couple was blessed with their second daughter, Bertha Gail Whipple, who was born in January 1906. Esther Pearl Whipple was the third daughter and she was born in January 1910. Another two years passed and Eddie and Bertha saw the arrival of Goldie Cerilda Whipple in March 1912.
Now that they had four girls, you have to imagine that the parents might have been wishing for a boy. If they were, they were disappointed; Isabell Mary Whipple was delivered as a Christmas gift on 25 December 1914. Was it really possible that the next pregnancy would result in adding another girl to the Whipple household? It was indeed. Beatrice Gayle Whipple became the sixth female child in February 1917. Was the family running out of names for girls? This is the only time that one of the names, Gayle, repeated itself as a middle name.
The 1920 Federal census for New Sewickley in Beaver County, PA, showed the Edward Whipple household to have been comprised of seven daughters. Vivian Emogene Whipple had been born in late October of 1919. The girls ranged in age from 3 months to 16 years of age. Edward Whipple was an electrician in a steel mill.
Did Edward Whipple yearn to have a son? My family became estranged from our Whipple relatives, so I don’t know the answer to that question. If he did, the next child was an eighth daughter. Thelma Eileen Whipple was a summer baby who showed up at the end of July in 1922.
You might think that eight would be enough as the book title turned TV series suggests – not for the Whipples, though. Onalee Rae Whipple was born in January 1926. If you’ve lost count, that’s nine female children.
The incredible thing is that Edward and Bertha kept going. Maybe they were hoping to set a record for the most daughters. Finally, though, on 12 March 1928 a son was added to the Whipple family. He became Edward John Whipple – Edward for his father and John for his grandfather. There were no more children after Edward, Jr.
All ten Whipple children survived to surpass 63 years of age – most even longer than that. Edward John appears not to have married. One can speculate that growing up with 9 older sisters he may have had enough female influence in his life without adding a wife.