Among Clabe and Leora Wilson’s ten children were two sets of twins. I’d heard that twins were more likely every other generation, but no one else in the family had twins that I knew about.
Grandma Leora said she’d had miscarriages before both sets of twins. I believe the first time was while she suffered through the influenza pandemic of 1918-1920. She was a very strong young woman and yet she was miserable, so miserable that she said she would have been glad to die. But she had two small boys and a baby daughter whom she had to get well for.
Her recovery took months, borne out by family postcards and even a newspaper item.
Twins Dale and Darlene were born in Stuart, May 1921.
The second time, they’d just moved to a house south of Dexter that had bedbugs and was filthy. Leora scoured and scoured for her husband and seven children. She was hospitalized at least overnight, worn out, and perhaps another miscarriage?
That was in late 1926. Twins Jack and Jean were born in January 1929. (These twins succumbed to whooping cough when they were only a few weeks old.)
I finally discovered twins in Clabe Wilson’s ancestry. His father, Daniel Ross Wilson, had a twin named George A. Wilson. They were both born in Carroll County, Iowa, July 24, 1868.
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There is a good-sized Wilson burial plot at the east end of the Coon Rapids cemetery, but I could not find George buried there.
The story of the births of twins Dale and Darlene is in Leora’s Early Years: Guthrie County Roots.
The poignant story of Jack and Jean is part of Leora’s Dexter Stories: The Scarcity Years of the Great Depression.