Eight Siblings, No Spouses: 52 Ancestors 2023 Prompt “Solitude”

 

The Vanlandingham Singular Siblings: Six Bachelor Brothers and Two Spinster Sisters

Oliver Cromwell Vanlandingham: 1826-1905 (Maternal First Cousin 4x Removed)

Margaret Jane Weir: 1830-1915 (Maternal Second Great-Grandaunt)
Their Children, all Maternal double First Cousins 3x Removed:
            Samuel P. Vanlandingham: 1850-1925
            Oliver Cromwell Vanlandingham: 1854-1916
            Mary Elizabeth Vanlandingham: 1856-1900
            John D. Vanlandingham: 1858-1937
            Elias S. Vanlandingham: 1864-1943
            James A. Vanlandingham: 1865-1946
            William B. Vanlandingham: 1868-1944
            Margaret S. Vanlandingham: 1872-1937
 

Every large family has one or two siblings who never marry and never have children, but I have never encountered a family where all the children chose to go through life without partners and without having their own families. The eight children of Oliver Cromwell Vanlandingham II and Margaret Jane Weir spent most of their lives living with their parents and each other. They chose unwedded solitude, with only each other for companionship.

Oliver Cromwell Vanlandingham was born in Louisiana, and was named after his father, O. C., who later bought a cotton plantation there, but also owned land in Kentucky and Illinois. The family moved between those states during Oliver’s childhood. O.C. had two sisters who married men from Muhlenberg County, Kentucky. Easter Vanlandingham married Francis Kimbley and had six children, and Elizabeth “Betsy” Vanlandingham married Samuel Miller Weir (parents of Lorene Jandy’s grandmother Nancy Vanlandingham Weir) and had seven children.

The three families probably socialized together frequently, which probably explains how Betsy’s youngest daughter Margaret Jane Weir ended up marrying her first cousin, Oliver Cromwell Vanlandingham II. The marriage of these true “kissing cousins” took place in Muhlenberg County on December 10, 1847. Margaret was 17; Oliver was 21.

 

Their first child, Ezekiel, was born a year later in December 1848, but died before his second birthday. The couple’s first surviving child, Samuel, was born in 1850. However, Margaret states on the 1910 census that she gave birth to eleven total children, so they probably lost at least two more children between Samuel’s birth and that of their final child, Margaret S., in 1872.  

I speculated that Margaret and Oliver’s close genetic relationship may have left the children of their marriage with brain defects or some genetic issue, which would have made them poor potential marriage partners. However, I found no evidence to support that. Census records show that all the siblings could read and write, and they worked together to operate a farm and support themselves. Two of the brothers, William and Oliver, also worked as carpenters. Additionally, recent research shows that first cousin marriages only increase birth defects by about 4-7 percent, so it is unlikely that the parents’ first cousin relationship caused some unidentified congenital problem.  

 

1910 Census showing Vanlandingham siblings

So we are left with no answers as to why these eight siblings chose to go through life without marrying. We don’t know if they had romantic relationships that failed before a marriage occurred, or if there was some problem with their upbringing that left them wary of marriage. I have found no obituaries for any of the eight, so I lack any details about their daily lives and community ties.

Whatever the reason for their choice to remain unwed, the Vanlandingham siblings’ unmarried state was unusual for their time and place in history. Their failure to wed and have children meant that their branch of the family tree ended with the death of the last of the eight siblings, James Vanlandingham, in 1946.