It's Saturday Night -
1) Determine who is one of the most prolific fathers in your genealogy database or in your ancestry. By prolific, I mean the one who fathered the most children.
2) Tell us about them in a blog post, in a comment to this blog post, or in a comment on Facebook.Here's mine:
One of the most prolific fathers in my ancestry is my 4th great-grandfather, Zachariah Hildreth (1754-1828), who had 9 children by his first wife, Elizabeth Keyes (1759-1793) whom he married in 1777, and 8 more by his second wife, Abigail Hart (1775-1846) whom he married in 1794. The children by each wife were:
By Elizabeth Keyes: Aaron Hildreth (born 1778), Elizabeth Fletcher Hildreth, Hannah Hildreth, Zachariah Hildreth, Lucy Hildreth, Patty Hildreth, Fanny Hildreth, Nabby Hildreth, James Hildreth (born 1793).
By Abigail Hart: Abigail Hildreth (born 1795), James Hildreth, Joseph Hart Hildreth, Mary Hildreth, Jonathan Stowe Hildreth, Elizabeth Hildreth, John Hildreth, Levi Hildreth (born 1808)
Of course, not all 17 children lived to adulthood. Four of the children born to Elizabeth Keyes died in infancy or childhood, and 3 of those born to Abigail Hart died young.
The family story is that Abigail Hart was helping Elizabeth (Keyes) Fletcher care for all of her children when Elizabeth died after childbirth, and then Abigail stepped into the mother and wife role.
It looks like poor Abigail cut Zachariah off after child #8 was born in 1808. She was only 43, but he was 54. I wonder how many descendants Zachariah Hildreth has? Perhaps another SNGF topic sometime!
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