Which family draws the "winning" piece in "The Lottery"?

To say that the family that is chosen in the short story "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson "wins" is ironic because the story is about a horrific annual ritual that takes place every year in various villages and towns. The tale begins with an upbeat, almost festive tone. Everyone in the town attends the event, including the children, with the exception of those who are too ill or incapacitated. The village in the story is small, and so the lottery is scheduled to take place in the morning so that all the villagers can get "home for noon dinner."

Children assemble first, and then the men and women arrive. Some people start to gather stones, although the reason for it is initially not disclosed by the author. The waiting people discuss the lottery as if it is any major holiday event. Every family and individual in the village is required to participate.

To begin the lottery, the heads of the families come up and take a folded piece of paper out of the box. One family that draws a paper different from the rest is chosen. If it is a large family, the lottery is conducted again to choose a family unit and individual households. However, in the drawing in the short story, the chosen family is small. It is the family of Bill Hutchinson. It consists of the husband Bill, his wife Tessie, and their children Bill Jr., Nancy, and Dave. The five of them each select a paper, and the one with the losing black spot on it is Tessie, Bill's wife. Once it is clear that she is the one with the "winning" paper, the villagers all pick up rocks and stone her to death.

Which family can we infer won last year's lottery in "The Lottery"?

When Mr. Summers, who is in charge of running the annual lottery, asks for a member of the Watson family to come and draw a ticket, a tall boy steps forward. The boy says that he will be drawing the ticket for the Watson family this year. He seems to be nervous and is cheered on by members of the crowd. Indeed, from the crowd we hear one person shout, "Good fellow, Jack," and another shout, "Glad to see your mother's got a man to do it."

The implication here is that Mrs. Watson's husband is not present at this year's lottery because he won the lottery last year, and, like all supposed winners, was promptly stoned to death. This would explain why the crowd seems to be so sympathetic and so encouraging to the Watson boy. They appreciate that the boy has lost his father. They also appreciate that the boy must be rather anxious about taking his father's place this year, given that he saw what happened when his father drew the winning ticket last year.

When one of the crowd shouts out, "Glad to see your mother's got a man to do it," we might infer that this crowd member is glad that Mrs. Watson has found, in her son, a man to take the place of her husband. This in turn suggests that the husband was recently alive, compounding the impression that he was killed as the winner of the previous year's lottery.