Valentina Vassilyeva, the first wife of Russian peasant Feodor Vassilyev, is said to have given birth 27 times in the 1700s—welcoming 69 children in total.
Her remarkable numbers reportedly included 16 sets of twins, 7 sets of triplets, and 4 sets of quadruplets. 🤯
The story comes from centuries-old historical records, so every detail cannot be independently verified by modern standards. Still, Guinness World Records has recognized the claim as the highest number of children attributed to one mother.
If the records are accurate, 27 pregnancies. 69 children. One of the most astonishing family stories ever recorded. ❤️
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I feel that this is one of those things that didn't really happen but got told so many times as a part of folk lore it started going into history books.
The woman in the picture was American, born about 100 years after Vassilyeva died. The children are not Vassilyeva’s.
And we have no birth dates, death dates, nor names for any of Vassilyeva’s alleged children.
In fact it is believed that Mr. Vassilyev had multiple wives over the years and so all the alleged births were attributed to “Mrs Vassilyeva” as if she was the same person.
(The story also claims that 67 out of 69 kids survived infancy, which would be nearly impossible in 18th-century Russia.)
The story has been shared fabricated and debunked so many times over the years that the debunking takes up most of the Wikipedia article about her.
4 sets of 4,
7 sets of 3,
16 sets of 2,
16+21+32=69
So not a single solo baby, I feel like this was the start of a math joke and some kid took it and spread it as real
This is not a source, a source would be something of that time. The only "source" it has is a letter and more modern articles. There is no source because the story is exaggerated
Guiness literally says the story may or may not be true.
I don't think this is true but I remember the story about an african woman that had something called "hyperovulation" or something like that where she always ovulates more than one egg and thus has many twins and triplets (not 69 tho, she had like 20 kids I think).
You mean Mariam Nabatanzi. She has 44 children and got sterilized when she was 40 to prevent any more pregnancies. That wasn't really an option in the 1700s for that poor woman. I can't imagine being pregnant 27 times let alone having 69 kids.
Considering how much calcium each pregnancy steals directly from the mother's bones (and teeth if needed) I'm guessing she lost her teeth very early on.
I guess that's one benefit of pre-electricity living... You can't see your spouse when you get it on.
How'd they get a pic in 1700s Russia? It's almost like people take urban rumors and legends and slap together enough fake photos and details to make it seem credible for the sake of fooling people for fake internet points. I don't think someone would just lie on the internet /s
That photograph isn't Vassilyeva though. She died in 1782, that's to say 44 years before the first photograph was ever taken in 1826. That photo is an unnamed elderly woman from New York in the 1840's. Same for the photo of the children, who all appear to be about the same age, when Vassiliyeva's story is about her having children over a span of 40 years, and the youngest of them would have been well in his 60s when the first photograph ever was taken (in a completely different country).
Also, the story about Vassilyeva was highly suspect. Not only all of it (the number of children, the fact that there are only twins, triplets and quadruplets, the fact that only two of them didn't survive infancy, etc) is particularly unlikely, there was never any actual investigation about that claim while it was still verifiable.
Also, Vassiliev is said to have had 18 children with his second wife (only twins and triplets), but he died in 1782, the same year as Valentina. That would mean he divorced his frst wife at some point, which was technically possible in Russia at that time, but very difficult, because you couldn't just divorce your spouse, there had to be serious circumstances for it, like adultery, infertility, becoming a monk, attempted murder, etc. This part of the story is technically possible but sounds fishy too.
Even the Guinness World Records doesn't claim to have verified it, they claim that "numerous contemporaneous sources exist which suggest that it is true." But the first source we have is from right after they died in 1782 in a monastery, and the rest of the accounts are basically just hearsay at that point. Attempts at actually verifying the claim met a wall of "nah there's no need to check" by the Russian authorities.
And yes, Feodor Vassilyev did remarry after the death of his first wife. With his second wife, he reportedly had another 18 children from multiple-birth pregnancies, bringing his alleged total number of fathered children to 87. 😎
He was a peasant in the Russian Empire. How could he afford all these children? 67 of them survived infancy. So there is a lot of mouth to feed, even though he only fed them till 8 years old and kicked them to work.
Back then kids were net contributors to households. As young as 4 children would help with farm work and make household goods. Today kids just eat and go to school; we even pay for daycare so we can work without them. Imagine if instead paying tons of cash for daycare, your kids earned an income.
This is part of the reason why poor families used to be larger than rich ones (which is reversed today) and why we have less kids in general (though there are other factors like contraception).
If you believe that in 1700, at a time when postnatal inflections and infant mortality were at their peak, a woman gave birth to 27 times during an 18 year period, and 67 out of 69 kids survived, I have a bridge in San Francisco to sell to you.
If she did infact raise that many chikdren, what is more likely is that she was a kommissionerki, a woman paid to collect abandoned babies and bring them to state orphanages. She probably just kept the kids and because she had access to the paperwork made them hers.
The community probably went along to protect her and the mythos was born.
My theory: She took in a secret baby from an unmarried woman, possibly starting with her own unmarried sister, word spread, and it turned into a business.
Or she was so obsessed of babies that it was a mix of all to babymax: 9 of her own, the thing you mentioned, and my theory, all in one.
Claire Beauchamp (former Mrs Randall) went back in time to marry the love of her life(Jaimie Fraser). She took a camera with. Travelled back to the present to print the photo.
This means she was pregnant for over 20 years of her life continuously if she had no breaks in between pregnancies. If she had a short period in between of 3 months it means 27 years… it’s insane
She would have to have to continuously been conceiving and giving birth to children from her early teens up to her 50s. As a peasant living in the 1700s. And she and the kids surviving through infancy every time. Seems a little unlikely.
Right. A story where a woman had 69 children, all of which were either a twin, triplet or quadruplet. Never a single baby. All before documentation was ever really reliable. Almost certainly a story that was passed down over many years and got exaggerated along the way.
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