A love that stretches from Kentucky to SC - 6 generations captured in 1 photo

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. (WPDE) — It's not something that happens every day - six living generations appearing in one photo.

MaeDell, 98, has lived to see her 7-week-old great-great-great-granddaughter and will soon get a third.

Gracie Howell from Myrtle Beach said she was recently in Kentucky to visit family and captured a photo of the family ranging in age from 7 weeks to 98 years old.

"Grandma was 16 years old when she married my grandpa, Bill," Howell said. "He was 50 and a widower with 10 children; his first wife died while giving birth to conjoined twins at home (the babies did not survive either)."

MaeDell had 13 children with her first husband and lived with no indoor plumbing or modern conveniences, Howell said.

"Grandpa worked on the railroad and was gone all week. With so many mouths to feed, Grandma would rise early in the morning, stock the wood stove, go out and gather eggs, grab a couple of chickens (wring their necks and pluck the feathers), fry them up, make biscuits and gravy, and would have breakfast ready before the kids went to school."

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Howell said her mother told her that life may have been hard but they never went hungry, dirty or unloved.

"Grandma grew most of their food and canned it. Having been taught by her mother, she knew all the medicinal uses of the flowers and trees around her. Because NOTHING went to waste, she made quilts out of the rags to keep them warm in the winter under the snow that would blow in through the cracks in the walls."

Through the years, MaeDell has outlived two other husbands and will be 99 years old on July 19, 2023.

She now lives in a nursing home after falling in her home but even though she is completely bedbound, her mind and memory are "sharp as a tack," Howell said.

"We're praying, as long as she's healthy ... and if it's the Lord's will, she'll live to be a hundred or beyond!"

According to Guinness World Records, the most generations alive in a single family has been seven.