A GREAT-GRANDMOTHER AT FORTY-SIX

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 10319, 19 December 1896, Page 2 (Supplement)

A GREAT-GRANDMOTHER AT FORTY-SIX

A MOTHER AT FIFTEEN, A GRANDmotHer AT THIRTY, AND GREATGRANDMOTHER AT FORTY-SIX. In the San Gabriel Valley, in Southern California, lives the youngest greab-grarid-mother in .the United States. She is a handsome, vivacious woman jnst entering middle life., She was a mother at fifteen, a grandmother at thirty, Mid a great-grand-mother at forty-six. That is tlib Wdbfd tlmt has made Mrs. Jetmio Nelson the youngest great-grandmother in the country. Mrs. Nelfibh was bom in San Bernardino, Cal,, in May, 1850. Her mother was a Spanish woman and her father an Englishman. Mrs. Nelson's maiden name was Jennie Fawcett. There were less than fifty white people in the old Mexican and Indian town of San Bernardino when she was a little girl, and there was no settlement of whites nearer than Los Angelesninety miles to the west. It was natural that) these few white families there should be vory intimate with ono another. So whon Miss Jennie was fourteen years old she was married by a Methodic missionary to the son of the Fawcetb family's host friends, the Nelsons. T/ie husband, George Nelson, was then nineteen, but he had soon so much of hardships on the bordorlan'. jf civilisation in the South-west chat he seemed like a sedate, hard-headed pioneer of thirty. March 9,1865, when the bride lacked two months of completing her fifteen years, her first child was born. It was a' gill. The youthful family moved to San Diego a year later, and there in the course of eleven years six more children were born. The eldest was named Isiibelle. She was famous in the little pueblo of San Diego in those days as the prettiest girl in town. A dashing young Yankee, Earl E. Phelps, came down the Pacific Co'ist from Sun Francisco to San Diego in 1879. Ho had recently boon graduated from Cornell Uni versity, Ho fell in love with Miss Isabella, who was then a girl in short dresses. One day young Phelps and tiie schoolgirl name home from a drive married. June 12,1880, their fust child, a girl, was horn in the Phelps ranch home. TIIO mothor was fifteen years old, and the grandmother, Mrs. Nelson, was thirty. Tlin grandchild, Amelia, has grown to girlhood, Last year she became engaged to a young Orango County ranchman, Henry \Y. Walker, and a tow weeks thereafter ah ) was married. A month ago, at the ago jf sixteen years and three month', Mi's. Amelia Walker became the mother of a little boy. Thero are several uncommon facts in connection with these generations of youthful mothers. One is that the great grandchild recently born is a week older than nil aunt, who was bom to his grandmother 011 September '20, and is bub two years younger than a grand-unclo born to Ills great-grandmother in 1891. baby Wnlkor'e father in twenty years old, his grandfather ha' just passed his thirty-fifth birthday, and his great-grandfather Nelson is barely forty-nine. The great-grandparents have nine children, aged from two to thirty years, eighteen grandchildren, aged from one month to fifteen years, and ono greatgrandchild. None of their descendants hits ever died.

The little Walker baby lias, also, four eat great-grandparents, who are more than severity years of age,