(THREAD: 1/5) As a #genealogist, you have to be fairly emotionally insulated against tragedy. Otherwise, we'd all lose our minds early on, between high infant mortality rates, genocides, and epidemics. But sometimes, things still get to me. Today, that was the story (cont.)

(2/5) Of a family in the former Austro-Hungarian province of Galicia. I'll use initials, for privacy. So D is born to A and To in 1824. He marries G. His mother, To dies in 1842; G has twins in 1845 and as is Ashkenazi naming tradition, D names one girl for his mother (cont)

(3/5). We'll call the twins To and Ta. D's father, A, dies the following year, in 1846. So D names his next child, a son born in 1847, for his father. Again, tradition is followed. Then tragedy strikes. (cont)

(4/5) First, two year old To and baby A die in a cholera epidemic that strikes the village. Then, D's wife G dies in childbirth, with a girl who is also stillborn. Finally, D himself dies of typhus in 1855. Leaving Ta an orphan who has also lost her siblings by age 10. (cont)

(5/5) Sometimes, you almost forget how incredibly short and brutal life could be only ~170 years ago. And then you find stories like this and it all comes rushing back to you. (/THREAD)