Woman With 230 Grandkids Meets Her Great Great Great Granddaughter
Timothy Roberts
Most of us knew our parents and can remember our grandparents. We may even be able to think back another generation to our great-grandparents.
Cordelia Mae Hawkins (MaeDell) is a grandmother 230 times, and she just said hello to her great-great-great-granddaughter.
Photo: Pexels/Rene Asmussen
Hawkins, who is 98 and lives in Kentucky, was seen holding her seven-week-old great-great-great-granddaughter, Zhavia Whitaker. She was in a nursing home in Kings Mountain, Kentucky, and surrounded by people she loved.
According to Fox News a now-private picture was taken and posted on Facebook, showing Hawkins along with the baby, the baby's mom, aunt, grandmother, and great-grandmother. It isn't often you see a six-generation photo of women. George Robert Vitkos reposted the photos so you can see them for yourself:
Photo: One of the women in the photo was her granddaughter, Gracie Snow Howell. The 58-year-old was on Good Morning America, where she said: "I know it's rare for six generations … it's even rarer for all of them to be the same gender. We're all girls - girl power, as well."
She also said that they had planned the day but weren't trying to gather all females for the get-together. It just happened that way. The other women in the photograph were MaeDell's daughter, Frances Snow, 77; MaeDall and baby Zhavia; great-granddaughter Jacqueline Ledford, 29; and great-great-granddaughter Jaisline Wilson, 19.
After having 230 grandchildren, Hawkins must have been accustomed to being around little ones. They said she was a natural with the baby, and when the baby got fussy, she said, "Here, give me that baby." Zhavia is not the first great-great-great-grandchild of Hawkins, but it is her first great-great-great-granddaughter.
Photo: According to Good Morning America, Hawkins was married three times, with the first marriage starting in 1940. She was 16 years old when she married Bill, Howell's grandfather.
In speaking with a local news outlet in Myrtle Beach, she said: "He was 50 and a widower with 10 children; his first wife died while giving birth to conjoined twins at home (the babies did not survive either)."
That is how Hawkins became a mother when she was very young. She had 13 children of her own with her first husband, and had quite a task ahead of her.
Howell spoke about what her grandmother had to go through, saying that her grandfather was gone all week because he worked for the railroad.
Photo: She said: "With so many mouths to feed, grandma would rise early in the morning, stock the wood stove, go out and gather eggs, grab a couple of chickens (wring their necks and pluck the feathers), fry them up, make biscuits and gravy, and would have breakfast ready before the kids went to school."
MaeDell canned most of the food for the family and took advantage of local plants to use them as medicine. This was something she was taught by her mother.
Howell said she made quilts out of rags to keep warm in the winter, as snow would blow through cracks in the walls. Her grandmother took care of everybody, and she never heard her complain.
When you add them all up, Howell has 623 descendants. Her daughter-in-law, Janice Taylor, put together a chart showing the 106 grandchildren, 222 great-grandchildren, 234 great-great-grandchildren, and 37 great-great-great-grandchildren.
Photo: And the family is still growing.
You don't hear about six generations of family still alive at the same time very often, but it still isn't the record. In 1989, a New York family set the record with seven living generations.
