Mayor Horatio Green and his wife Edele (Cornwell) Green are celebrating the birth of their seventeenth grandchild,
"Good God", said an unidentified source, who may or may not be Doug Honker. "Seventeen? Isn't that a bit much?" With five children, such a number isn't beyond the realm of possibility, but what surprises many is the source of the most recent births: his oldest daughter, Harriet.
Harriet giving birth while her mother Edele (Cornwell) Green and her husband Matthias Ingersoll look on.
Townsfolk were astonished when Lady Harriet suddenly began using her husband's Matthias Ingersoll's name a few years ago. Married at an early age, Lady Harriet (conscious of being the great-grandaughter of two venerable town fathers, and the daughter of the mayor) refused to abandon her family name for any other. Their first children carried the surname Green, and so thoroughly did Harriet raise them as hers alone -- it should be noted she only married out of duty and never viewed Matthias as a partner of equal standing in their relationship -- that he left the Green home in disgust, moving in with his ailing grandmother. The two spent the next fifteen years estranged, living seperately but attending odd public events like balls as a couple for appearances. Recently, they seem to have reconciled: with the boys off to university and the girls helping nurse an elderly relative in another home, Harriet decided to join her husband at his family home, and adopted his name to boot. Newlyweds in spirit, they've apparently decided to give furthering the Ingersoll line another go.
The line continues, but for how much longer? Hiram and Edgar are quite content to remain Greens, as are Georgiana and Emma. Harriet's last pregnancies -- including the surprise of twins -- have produced, in order, three girls: Cameron, Joan, and Abigail. Horatio Green is enormously proud of his daughter and adopted son for having made up, and wryly notes that Matthias seems to have gotten his luck: the mayor and his wife were pregnant four times, and each time produced a girl. (Hence his agreeing to Harriet's most unorthodox name-retaining...)
Considering that his second daughter Elizabeth has four children and twins on the way, it appears the mayor will easily have twenty grandchildren before long. (Pictured above: Anne, Tobias, Klaus, and Christopher Potter.) Some family members are urging him to retire so that he can spend more time doting on his impressive horde of descendants.
Girls are predominating this generation of Greens: Isabel, who kept her family name as well, has a host of girls, the eldest being Lily and Eve. Barbara, who also kept her family name by virtue of marrying into the Perceval Green branch of the extended family, has yet to have kids -- but at least one is inevitable. While some are concerned with the size of the Green clan, the mayor is pleased. "There's plenty of room for hands at the family farm," he says, alluding to the expansive ranch the family owns. That is its newest aquisiton: the family also owns the General Store, operates a bank, and completely dominates city government to the point that their clan is something of a superpower.
Other families have been grossly large in the past, but fallen apart. Such a fate may be avoided by the Greens, who are obsessively close to one another: members of the Green clan don't simply wander away from home. Not a Green lives alone; families share homes, and the close connectively keeps their varied interests working in combination with one another. Horatio's brother Nathaniel is the richest man in Queen's Bluff, being both president of the bank and city treasurer. (It should be noted that no one other than a Green has ever been city treasurer.)
The brothers' close working relationship will continue into the next generation: Harriet's son Hiram and Nathaniel's son Calvin are as close as brothers, constantly at one another's side and both destined for great things. Recent graduates from university, they're already being groomed for leadership roles in both the family businesses and the city at large.
