Anniversaries of our Ancestors

50th Wedding Anniversary cake of author's great grandparents. Author's collection

We tend to celebrate everything in the twenty-first century, including birthdays and anniversaries. Friends are celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary soon and I wondered how and if our ancestors celebrated these milestones. Let’s look.

I do know that one set of great grandparents were fortunate to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. This golden anniversary was celebrated with their ten living children and their spouses, grandchildren and others with a dinner and gathering at the family farm they homestead in the early 1900s. The event was also documented in a local newspaper. We have pictures of the anniversary cake which was stored in a glass encased box in a closet for another fifty years! Sadly, it crumbled soon after that but it gives some precedence to how the family and couple valued the event. Do you have a similar story to capture for your family?
People of my parent’s generation as well as great aunts and uncles celebrated this milestone with a party and celebration. I’m not sure that there will be the case with younger generations. People are marrying later or not marrying at all so logistically they might not make the 50-year mark.
All of this made me think about earlier ancestors. I’ve been puzzling through a few marriages from the 1700s—sometimes I’ve been lucky to find documentation while other times I’ve had secondary information that supports the marriage. One thing that I noticed was that it was common for people to be married two or three times due to the death of a spouse. Women were at higher risk of dying from childbirth plus depending on living conditions and disease, people did not live as long. Out of curiosity, I decided to see if I had any early ancestors who were married for thirty, forty or fifty years.
Originally, I thought I might be able to run a report from FamilyTree Maker that would tell me but trying the marriage report and the calendar report didn’t give me the start and end date of a marriage like I wanted. Perhaps other family tree programs do Instead, I used the individual view to determine if they made it to fifty years. Surprisingly, there were a number of ancestors who did make it to fifty years in the 1800s. Of course, we don’t know if they celebrated or not but can only assume that they did. I did find a collateral relative who had their anniversary featured in an article in the Luxembourg Gazette in the 1880s. As you write your family story, you might want to explore and determine if you do have some relatives that celebrated these milestones. Perhaps you can find a newspaper article which mentions attendees. Like today, some celebrated with vow renewals as well as a family celebration. Knowing this gives your family story more layers and brings your ancestors to life.
I hope exploring celebrations and anniversaries helps you tease out more stories about your ancestors’ lives. We tend to think of them as distant people who only worked but they liked to enjoy life like we do. Good luck finding those events to celebrate!