Hagan Triplets (Part 2)

There's a couple more interesting facts about the Hagan triplets that I wrote about in my previous posts.

In 1902, John Van Hagan and Mabel Deal were married and living in Chicago, Illinois.  Cora Deal (Mabel's mother) was a scrapbooker, in the victorian days around the turn of the century.  She had clipped and kept many newspaper articles about their family.   

So in January 1902, there's a short clip (see article below) about Cora and Clarence Deal (Mabel's parents) returning from visiting John and Mabel in Chicago (probably for Christmas).

The next clipping I have is from July 1902 (see article below) about Mabel staying with her parents in Three Rivers for a time.   Note that they would have been making all these trips by train between Chicago Illinois and Three Rivers Michigan.

The next clipping I have (see article below) is from Sept 13, 1902.  This is about John coming to visit his family.  Note that it doesn't say  "Mr. and Mrs".  So perhaps when Mabel came in July, she stayed with her parents and never went back to Chicago.   We know that Mabel was pregnant at this time.  Perhaps she was having trouble with her pregnancy (as would be the case if she were carrying triplets) and needed to stay with her parents.

The next event is, of course, the birth of John Gerald Hagan, as I mentioned previously.  The birth record in Three Rivers indicates that he was born Sept 15, 1902.  (see record below)

Birth records at this time were NOT recorded at the time of the event.  (That apparently did not happen until 1906).  Before that,  a supervisor/assessor went around once a year asking households for births or deaths.  So it's probable that if there were triplets, they would have only given the supervisor/assessor the birth record for the one living child.  There's a really good blog post about how they collected Michigan birth records. http://kalamazoogenealogy.blogspot.com/2013/02/why-early-michigan-birth-records-are.html

 I mentioned that there was a photo taken of the 3 babies at the time of their birth (as evidenced by the letter from William Hagan to John Van Hagan in 1903 - see picture below)

The next newspaper article is from September 26, 1902 (see below)

Then the next newspaper article is from October 15, 1902 (see below) Now it mentions that there is (one) little child.  So sometime between September 15 and October 15, two of the little babies had died.

The last related newspaper article I have is dated January 1903.  Where we find that John and Mabel and child have moved from Chicago, back to Three Rivers with her parents.  He takes a position (as a draughtsman) with Sheffield Car Company.  This is the same company that John Van's father, John A Hagan, had been the chief draughtsman for some 25 years earlier  - but that's a story for another day.........

So, here's a possible scenario for the whole thing:
*  John and Mabel get married, lives in Chicago, and after 2 years, she is pregnant;
*  She starts having trouble with her pregnancy and so goes to stay with her parents in Three Rivers Michigan;
*  The babies are born early in September 1902.
*  Three (probably premature) babies are born.

*  Photograph taken of the three babies and sent to John's uncle in New York.
*  Two of the babies die.
*  Mabel and baby go back to Chicago to their home in October 1902.
*  John and Mabel move from Chicago to Three Rivers to be near her parents in January 1903.

I cannot imagine how heart wrenching and tragic it would have been to loose 2 of your 3 babies. Because of that, it was one of those family events that wasn't ever really talked about.   And so we really have no record of the event, other than that one letter from an uncle and a mention by another uncle at a reunion that there were twins.