Larger than life

I post this not as a story of an extreme family size but unusual in that it involves two quite separate families with the surname LARGE. One on my paternal side and the other maternal; the surname belonging to either the father or the mother.

Family 1: Twycross/Large (Large/Burford) – paternal line
Family2: Large/Reeves -maternal line

Twycross/Large (1840-1912) Large/Burford (1862-1925) based in Birmingham . Mary Large had a son out of wedlock and then married a Twycross and had 6 more children. The son Henry Large went on to have 8 children with a Burford mother. For a fair amount of time the two families lived together.

In truth the ‘Large’ contingent was even greater as Mary had 4 brothers and they each had significant sized families.

Large/Reeves (1832-1909). Based in Worcester. Much more straight forward as it involves 13 children (7 girls and 6 boys) all born to the one union and all with the surname Large of course.

Once again it does not take account of the ‘Large’ boys who went on to have decent sized families of their own (or the girls of course)

As an interesting aside and harking back to the Twycross line and introducing a second marriage (Langford), we have a daughter marrying a Collins and together they had 17 children. Of these, 13 lived on to a reasonable age. Remarkably 14 of the children were girls and one of the 3 boys - the last child born 1897 - served in WW1 and was killed in action in 1916.