What happens when both parents die?

[Phoenix]

I'm looking at a will made in 1627 where a man mentions his seven children.

He dies some six years later, and his wife a couple of years after that.

The eldest daughter is twenty, the youngest child ten, so as an economic unit they could keep going. But what happens where the children are younger?

I know some orphans would plummet into poverty with the loss of their bread winner. But others survived to make decent lives. How? Has anyone been able to unravel the childhoods of orphans?

[Olde Crone]

I suspect that in 1627, some male relative - if not the executor - would come forward and take on the upbringing of the children, by guardianship, especially if there was some money!

If there was considerable money then the children would become wards of court (i.e. under the nominal guardianship of the monarch) and he would decide where they went and what happened to them - marriage for the females, some kind of court training possibly for the males.

OC

[Phoenix]

I have an instance in tudor times (not my ancestors, thank goodness) where the death of both parents was an excuse for a feeding frenzy. Horses, cushions, anything portable and disposable seems to have vanished, with a battle between the administrators (don't ask what might have happened to the will that patently did once exist) to gain control of the estate. The original administrators and indeed all the children were long dead before everything was in some sense resolved.

It looks as if in my case the local vicar was invited to help, but it always seems that the children are hugely vulnerable and the hiatus in the parish records mean that I lose track of all the daughters.

[Jill]

My 3x great grandmother Elizabeth Hughes was orphaned aged 7 in 1799, somewhat later than your example, she and her siblings appear to have been cared for by her father's eldest brother (a bachelor) who was also his executor. The brother failed to execute the will and on his death in 1809 her two oldest sisters did so having reached the age of 21.

[anne fraser]

My great grandmother was orphaned in the 1850's. Her uncle seems to have taken over responsibility and she was sent to boarding school and trained as a governess. She later had eight children and started her own school.