the first six children, liz belt, francis, levi, mary, ann and george were bought to eliza parker. immediately after george was born, eliza came down with a child bed fever. no one really knows where the origin of this fever per se, but this is an era which doctors themselves didn't wash their hands after autopsies even before delivering babies. when oliver wendell holmes presented a paper that suggested maybe they should wash, the president of a major medical college said sir, i'm a gentleman, and a gentleman's hands are clean. so this is the likely origin of her child bed fever. she died within days, within weeks robert is looking for a new wife. he eventually marries betsy humphreys who has eight children before slipping mercifully into menopause. [ laughter ] now, some i think have tried to claim that this is two families. that there's a first iteration of todds and a second iteration of todds. i think that is an enormous mistake. in this era, it was all too common for a woman to die in childbirth and a widower always remarried, especially if he had six children. this is fairly