Even if an illness or injury didn't cause your ancestor's immediate demise, it could have thrown the family into a difficult situation, both financially and emotionally. Families may have had to split up because the father could no longer work and and support all the children or children may have had to quit school early in order to support the family.
Sometimes there are family stories of these situations and sometimes there are not.
The same holds true with the death of the mother. I know a man whose mother died when he was born. His father was unable to care for an infant and he was raised by his father's brother and his wife.
ReplyDeleteBack in the really old days, the widow or widower remarried quickly! My GG-Grandfather had 7 children, one an infant, when his wife died in April 1845. He remarried in October of that year to a widow with a small child.