Raising a Family.

Waikato Times, Volume X, Issue 573, 22 January 1876, Page 2 (Supplement)

Raising a Family.

I About the year 1700 one Lady I Elpbiustone died, the mother of thirtysix bairns, of whom twenty-seven were living at one time. The late Bishop Bathurst, of Norwich, was the twentysixth child of Mr. Bathurat. But this is only part of the story, for Mr. Bathurst who had had twenty-two children by his first wife, was destined to have fourteen by his second, making a good round three dozen altogether. Bather distinguished in this way were the Bathursts ; for two brothers and a sister of hia had, during their respective married lives, sixty-four children, which, with his thirty-six made an even hundred. Another married couple, Thomas and Helen Urquhart, are ranked among those whohave had thirtysix children. The parents lived at Cromarty Castle, in the early part of the sixteenth century; their twenty-fire sons all grew up to manhood, and many of them distinguished, while the eleven daughters all lived to be married and many of them to be the mothers of large families. The Urquhart blood, therefore, must have been rather extensively diffused in Scotland by the end of the century. An authenticated case of thirty-nine brothers and listers was afforded by the G-reenhill family in the closing years of the seventeenth century. Thomas Greenhill, a surgeon, afterward author of a treatise on the ' rt of Embalming' ao dressed, in 1098, a memorial to the Duke of Norfolk, in his capacity of Farl Marshal of Kngland ; • That in consideration of your petitioner bein.' the seventh son and thirty-ninth chill of one father and mother, your grace would be pleased to signalise it by some particular motto or augmentation in his coat of armor to transmit to posterity so uncommon a thing.' The College of Arms, or FTerald's College, of which the hereditary Earl Marshal is the official head, assented to the application of Thomas Greenhill by granting an addition to the armorial bearings of the family. In the language of heraldry, which is not very intelligible t> outsiders, the addition was in the form of 'a demigriffin, powdered with thirty-nine mullets.' — All the Tear Round.