The branches are so many as we look at our family trees. Here in the center of the United States the larger families found offspring from other large families to marry who all lived in the same rural area. My family tree is full of large families in every direction when you follow my dad's lineage.
Above is a photo from a 1968 Centennial Book of the Murray, Iowa community. It is a photo of the Ries family taken in front of a Henrey Ries family home. I don't know for sure who it belongs to but my cousin Joan Callison must own the photo and know more about the photo.
Starting forward and going back I will explain this branch of the family.
My dad was Jesse T. Burgus, b. 1918, d. 2000.
His mother was Grace Turner Burgus and his father was Charles Thomas Burgus, d. 1949. Charles is the guy we will follow to get to the Ries family.
My Grandfather Charles Thomas Burgus had parents who were Charles Burgus, b. 1838, d. 1898 and Elizabeth Ries Burgus, b. 1847, d. 1911. We switch to the Great Great Grandmother Elizabeth Burgus to find her parents and family, the Ries family.
So the tree we are following is Father, Grandfather, Great Great Grandmother. I call that a jog for those who only follow the lineage of the one name.
Now to lead you down a beaten path to nowhere. My Great Great Grandmother Elizabeth Ries Burgus has to be some relative to this group. She is not in this picture. She could have been an Aunt because of the age of a couple of people in the photo that I knew. I knew of the Ed Hickman in the photo and of Leland Ries who is the short little guy on the left.
My original intent to show the photo and to share the diverse ages of all the children. Also I want to show the typical Iowa T shaped house that was a style used through out the country. I lived in this same shape of house on the farm as a kid and my house today in Woodward is a T shaped design farm house. I also was impressed with how all are dressed so well.
I am assuming that I will harvest more information about this photo from my cousin, now that I have posted it. Check back for amendments or I may just make it my next weeks blog. Clarification and corrections to Burgus's blog.
Check out the others who are participating in Sepia Saturday with blogs from around the world by clicking here.
15 comments:
Seventeen members, that is some family especially if they all lived under that one roof. The children certainly would not have had a room of their own even though the house looks big. It looks like they built the back of the house seperate from the front section. What a great photo Larry!! And related to your fathers family. They were all dressed so well. But perhaps it was a special day and a photographer was called to capture it?? There is a great story somewhere here???
The great thing about big families is that there are so many offspring over the generations, that someone will likely have done a lot of the genealogy research already. Do you find that at all? Well,then again, maybe that person is you :)
What a fabulous photo. I wonder if it was a special family celebration that they had gathered for, they are certainly well dressed and are posed quite formally.
Interesting to see the little girl standing on a chair; she doesn't look out of place at all.
You Are begining A Rich Journey ,Me'Thinks.thanks For Letting Us Come Along With You.
We were just talking this week about the same phenomena here in MN/WI/IA with Jerry's family. On the maternal side they came from and married into large families and often a brother or sister then must have been introduced to the married into inlaws and they in turn married into that family. We have several instances of sisters/brothers marrying into the same inlaws. Then it gets confusing in a couple generations when they start to morph again. I suppose social life centered on farm, home, and family and church; unlike today with all our vehicles and opportunities to meet so many different folks. This is why Jerry says he is somehow related to almost everyone around this area, still today.
Hi Larry,
We've talked before about our two families with the similar last name- yours-Ries and mine Reis. We're going to have to do more research to see if they converge somewhere. How do we do that? I haven't gone back very far with that family but they came form Mainz, Germany in the middle 1800's.
Barbara
This is such a fun photo. Traveling around Sepia Saturday is really feeding into my renewed interest in finding out more about all of the branches of my family!
A beautiful family portrait, composed very well. Do you know what year the photo was taken? The property looks so homey I wonder that it was the location of many family gatherings. Thank you for sharing.
I love the way kids were so often put on chairs in studio shots, but I've never seen a group shot taken outside like this.
And for some reason I always assumed this style of house was built at different times. I figured the one story was the original house with the two story built later. Obviously I've been wrong. Thanks for the information.
It is a great photograph Larry, but it has left me wondering whether they dressed up specifically for the reunion photograph - some of the costumes seem almost 19th century.
I do think that the one wing of the house was built first is some cases. The one we lived in on the farm actually had the lower ceiling downstairs, the chimney and a small bedroom upstairs. All of that contained for living, then the second wing was built with higher ceilings and was like an attached part. The stairway was a part of the first addition.
Hi Larry ... I enjoyed seeing your family photo and reading your story, and I appreciate you stopping by to say hello.
I was 17 in 1976 (now, with ditigal cameras I would have been all over that house!), and took two partial photos of the home with my Grandpa and Great-Aunt ... I just added them to my post if you want to take another look (I was wondering the same thing you were).
Have a great week!
Kathy
So this was posted quite a while ago but....Leland Ries was my great grandfather and his brother Wilbur was my great uncle. I wish I knew the story behind this photo.I remember my great grandmother Maxine Ries (Leland's wife) had a copy of this photo and she told me about it. Unfortunately I can't remember. Even more unfortunate Maxine died about 8 years ago.
It was good to find a distant relative to me. I really didn't understand the Ries connection until late in life. The photo was posted in the Murray Centennial Book, created by Joan Callison, of Murray. She may know something about it. Email me at ldburgus@yahoo.com if you want her address. Good to hear from you. I have seen you name in family lines that included Burgus names in it.
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