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PIQUA — With 15 children in a five-bedroom house, Orville and Agnes Huffman of Piqua rarely got too fancy.
Family outings were things like trips to the Ohio River to search for buckeyes. Christmas gifts were socks filled with apples, oranges and maybe, just maybe, a small toy.
“I think we thought we were rich,” said 75-year-old Nancy Dunn of Piqua, the fifth oldest Huffman child. “We didn’t go without. We thought we had the greatest Christmases. We couldn’t wait for those socks.”
With a combined age of 1,051, the Huffman children range from 58-year-old Jackie Kinnison of Greenville to 82-year-old Ellen May Brokaw of Covington.
Orville and Agnes’ family was considered large when the children were born 1926 to 1951. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the average number of children per family peaked at 3.7 between 1940 and 1957. By comparison, there were 2.1 births in the U.S. per woman in 2006, according to the CDC.
A marker listing the names of all the Huffman children was recently added to their parents’ grave site at Forest Hill Cemetery in Piqua. Orville died in 1969 at age 64 and Agnes died in ’78 at age 71.
Kinnison said her parents stressed the importance of valuing what you have rather than what you don’t have. “We had to use our imaginations,” she said.
All graduates of Piqua Central High School, the kids slept two to three to a bed and dressed in hand-me-downs.
“We had bologna salad on Sunday because we couldn’t afford ham or we had pimento cheese spread,” said 63-year-old Sidney resident Candy Leapley. “We never asked for anything because we knew out parents couldn’t afford it.”
Orville was one of eight children, but Agnes was an only child. “She always told us girls to have more than one child,” Dunn said.
Most of the Huffman children obliged, but they didn’t go to their parents’ extremes. Most still live in Miami County and none had more than four children.
Kinnison said there are now more than 100 grandchildren and any number of great-grandchildren.
“Five years ago, it was 83,” said Kinnison, who’s attempted to maintain a family tree with her brother’s Larry’s help.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2384 or arobinson@DaytonDailyNews.com.
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