My wife's family.....one branch

I have a pretty clear understanding of my wife's side of the family but I haven't been versed on it all of my life like we all are with our own parents when growing up in a family. I don't intend to have everything down to detail but I want to share the photo of her great grandparents Peitzman.

My wife Della Mae Seibert Burgus has the four family names in her history with Seibert and Peitzman on her father side,  and Cone and Mason on her mother's side.

The photo below is one branch of her history with her grandmother Anna Peitzman Seibert with her family members. Both names are from families in this branch are German.

Front row:   William Frederick Peitzman, Emma Marie Peitzman Grief, Mary Elizabeth Peitzman Knoll, Great grandmother Anna Mary Ellerman Peitzman ( b. 1838, d. 1933), Great grandfather John Frederick Peitzman (b.1837, d. 1908), Henry Frederick Peitzman.

Back row: ( Della's Grandmother) Anna Marie Lousie Peitzman Seibert, Frederick George Peitzman, John Peitman, Gerhart Louis Peitzman, and Helena Henrietta Peitzman Baer.

For my own clarity of understanding I like to explain that the members above are either Great grandparents, grandmother, or Great Uncle and Aunts.

John Frederick Seibert b. 1868, d. 1945 married 1905 to Anna Marie Louis Peitzman b. 1876, d. 1970.

My wife's grandparents on her father's side.

One of the relatives of the Peitzman family spent a lot of her life time recording the family history. If I were to share everything I would have to share the hundreds of pages of what we teasingly call The Book. It has been kept up in detail and is updated yearly with as much information as the families will share.


A side story to this post is that one of Della's distant cousins traveled to Germany a few years back to find family.  He actually found the family line of the brother to Della's great grandfather John Frederick Peitzman.  The house that they visited was the house in which Casper Heinrick Peitzman lived. It still stands today in Rhodinghausen, Germany.  It had been handed down through various female family members with the name of Klussman and Walker living there today.

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Two boys from the farm........

Two Iowa boys from the Murray, Iowa area who dropped out of school to help save the family farm. It was the time of depression era. My dad Jesse T. Burgus, born 1917 and his brother Donald, born 1920. Their father had sold a farm north of Murray and bought two other farms with the money.  It was said that he was trying to get closer to Murray so the kids could go to high school.  Some of them graduated from Murray High School but Jesse and Donald did not.

The two of them with their efforts to help Papa Burgus to save the farm did not succeed as they still lost the one farm to the bank.  The other one southeast of Murray did survive the depression.  In the 40's both boys from middle America were drafted into the Army.

After completing basic training my dad,  Jesse, was shipped to Washington D.C.  to guard government buildings and also to read radar to watch for enemy aircraft. His being stationed in that area, with a wife and son at home had to be a considerable adjustment.  In the photo above you can see him walking the streets of D.C.  maybe even going to the movies.

His brother Donald, three years younger than him, ended up in Alaska, at the Aleutian Islands.  There the U.S. military were stationed to monitor aircraft and I believe also to repair planes.  There was a harbor there too. He is sitting on the right in the picture.

 

I am going to make the assumption that his is my Uncle Donald with a friend, even though I thought it was my dad for a long time.  When Dad and his brother were younger they looked a lot alike.  I will post this as Uncle Donald and let the relatives correct me.

This is Uncle Donald Burgus at his barracks in the Aleutians.

A year and a half before the World War ended, dad was sent overseas to reinforce troops there. He ended up in the Battle of the Bulge.  Before then he was stationed in Belgium before moving out towards Germany.  This is the first letter that my dad to my  mom after arriving in Belgium.  In it he is writing his concerns for one of his son's health and also very concerned about his brother Donald.  Little did my dad know what he was about to have happen to him in active warfare.

Here is my dad in uniform in the Belgium village in 1944. I have those patches from the uniform. I can't imagine how that uniform stayed safe as he went to battle. They must have returned to Belgium when the war was declared over to retrieve his things.

The are so many questions that I will never get to ask now but it is interesting how you don't even thing about them until the person involved is gone.

Both Donald and Jesse are gone now. Donald died a few years before my dad, who died in 2000.

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Early on in my life.....

Larry Dean b. 1950

As the only child left living in the state,  I find myself shuffling through the remains of my parents things.  As I shift and sort photos and try to organize them, this 60 year old  man sees images of myself staring back at me.

I was a child who was born a year before the child, that died at birth.  It affected the number of photos taken of me and as I see a few coming through a couple years later after that loss.  I can see my parents are healing a little and getting on with their lives those few years later.  I remember my mom telling others that she sat and cried over her lost child and rocked me.

In the photo above, I am probably maybe 2 years old.  I am standing outside of the home of a farm my parents were  renting.  We moved to another farm that they bought during winter in 1953.

 Dwight Lee b. 1947 d. 2008  and Larry Dean b. 1950

I have two older brothers and they were always photographed together.  Ron and Rex can be seen as the prewar babies growing up together.  Dwight and I are the postwar babies and we two can be seen together in the pictures. This photo was taken the same day as the one at the top.

As I sort through things, I have tended to withdraw some of my younger self away from this process and just be about doing the business.  It does jolt you back when you pick up a new image of the past that takes you back to the time and place.  In many ways Sepia Saturday is all about remembering the families that we are following, but also it is a time to reflect on where we too fit in on this very large family tree. Our own lives carry the biggest set of memories and the lives of the past help us to know how we became a part of this very big family.

Thanks so much to all of you who have become my following.  I do appreciate your interest in the blog and it's process.  I hope to make new friends here, but most of all I hope it inspires you to start charting your past for others to see.

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Great grandparents Charles and Elizabeth Burgus

My great grandparents Charles and Elizabeth (Ries) Burgus. This photo is taken from the 1968 Murray, Iowa Centennial Book. I tried to bring it up to a better quality but this is it. There are other photos out there among my cousins and maybe I will get a copy from them someday. They had 14 children as seen below.  

A photo of their tombstones is in the blog two weeks past.

The above photo is of the 14 children shown with their mother Elizabeth Burgus.  My grandfather Charles is in the back row and he was apparently named after his father, my great grandfather Charles Burgus. He is not in the photo so he must be deceased when the photo was taken. He died in 1898 so this dates this photo some time after that.  Great grandmother Elizabeth died in 1911.

Charles b. 1832, d. 1898 and Elizabeth Ries Burgus b. 1847, d. 1911,  parents of:

Christian Frederick b 1 Nov 1865 m Emma Corbin
Anna Maria b 19 Sept 1867 m William Neidt
Margaret b 22 Dec 1868 m Fred Spellerberg
Catherine b 24 Oct 1870 m Oscar Klein
John b 5 Nov 1872 m Alice Bingham
Henry b 5 Dec 1872 m Laura Dick  John & Henry were twins
Charles Thomas b 28 Sept 1874 m Grace Turner (my grandparents)
Elizabeth b 7April 1876 m Brady Wetzel
Louis b  Have this date at home but am doing this at the library
William b 25 Oct 1879 m Winnie Stephjenson
Mary b 7 Sept 7, 1881 m Arile Jeffers
Matilda b 24 Feb 1883 M Frank Morgan
Ernest Leland b 1 Feb 1887 m Nelle Glee
Clara Jaunita b 25 Jun 1889 m John Devine

I just realized that these would all be my Great Uncle and Aunts.

Charles Thomas Burgus born 1874, died 1949

 I am reposting the wedding photo of Charles to Grace Elizabeth Turner Burgus to tie this lineage altogether. They had 10 children which included my dad Jesse Thomas Burgus born 1918, died 2000.

This is getting to be long but I should be posting the family of 10, but it is in a previous posting. If you are curious as to what 10 family members look like click here. I have posted a lot of different photos of them when they were younger.

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