My mother used to say, wistfully, “You’re always writing about your father’s family; I wish you would write about mine.” Vita Brevis readers will remember the posts on my Great-Grandfather Glidden and the fruitful search for his photograph; with this post, I trust I will begin paying down the arrears on my mother’s mother’s mother’s family, the Bouchers.

My great-grandmother Pauline Boucher (1875–1964) was the sixteenth of the twenty-three children born in Baltimore to her father, William Boucher, Jr. (1822–1899), and the seventh of the fourteen born to her mother, Mary Frances (Giles) Boucher (1843–1923). While the size of the family is impressive, I should note that about half the children died young, and only one child of Boucher’s first marriage (to Mary Agnes O’Brien) lived to grow up and marry. This was Francis Xavier Boucher (1854–1927), who was thirty-three years older than the last-born child, Constance Marie (Boucher) Burch (1887–1977). Nine of the Boucher children married, but only five – Frank Boucher, Josephine Stone, Gertrude Donovan, Pauline Glidden, and Constance Burch – have living descendants. Continue reading Organizing a family reunion: Part One →