Democrat and Chronicle
(Rochester, New York), 9 Sep 1940, Mon • Page 27 Column 4
SEXTUPLET, 77, MARKS BIRTH
Perry - Mrs. Alincia Bushnell Parker of nearby Silver Lake, one of the two surviving members of the Bushnell sextuplets, the children that fame and fortune never touched, yesterday quietly observed her 77th birthday.
Alone in the world but for her sister, Mrs. Alice Hughes, Arizona, whom she has not seen in years, Mrs. Parker looks back upon a life that might have been in utter contrast to the one she has lived, 'if only . . . '
And that 'if' centers around why there never was any widespread publicity to the amazing birth of three boys and three girls at one time to Mrs. James Bushnell, a former French actress, on Sept. 8, 1863, I a middle-class Chicago neighborhood.
There was some early excitement when the news finally went out of the sextuplet birth, but why there was no concerted effort made by Chicago journals to publicize the event remains unanswered.
A few days after James Edwards, M.D., signed an affidavit attesting to the sextuplet birth and the now faded and rumpled paper also carries the signature of the midwife, Priscilla Bancroft.
Early records of the family are obscured and there is no evidence to show that the world knew of the outstanding event of their birth. Here's how Mrs. Parker explains it. 'Those were days of large families, and I suppose the neighbors just accepted our birth as ordinary. Mother or father never boasted or bragged of what should have been the biggest story of the year 1863, and I guess my father pleaded with the doctor not to tell about it.'
Four of the Bushnell babes lived to adulthood. Lucy died when about two months old and Laberto succumbed at about eight months. The family moved to Medina when the four remaining children were still babies, and from there Alincia moved to Silver Lake after marrying Dan Parker. He died in 1922. Alice studied music and later married and went to the west. Norberto died in Buffalo in 1933 and Alberto passed away in July of this year in Albion."
