Concord Register

Fecundity.—In examining the records of the town of Billerica in Massachusetts, about ten years since, we found recorded the names of twenty six families, consisting of ten children each, twenty families of eleven children each, twenty-four families of twelve children each, thirteen families of thirteen each, five families of fourteen each, one family of fifteen, and one family of twenty-one children—total ninety families consisting of one thousand and forty three individuals, besides the parents. The greatest number of children to any one family was 21, and these were by two wives. Such instances of extraordinary fecundity in the early settlement of our country were not rare. Dr. Mather mentions "one woman who had not less than twenty-two children, and another had no less than twenty-three children by one husband, whereof nineteen lived to men's and women's estate, and a third who was mother to seven and twenty children." The mother of Governor Phipps had twenty-five children of which twenty-one were sons. Rev. John Sherman, the first minister of Watertown had twenty-six children by two wives, twenty by his last wife. Rev. Samuel Willard, the first minister of Groton, and afterwards of Boston, and Vice President of Harvard college, had twenty children. Major Simon Willard, his father, one of the first settlers of Concord, had a family of seventeen children, of whom nine grew to mature age and had families.

N. H. Historical Collections.