The Common Beard.......

I tried to find a single relative that has an unshaven face.  I guess central United States has a tight rule that you have to shave your face.  In the past thirty years that has changed as beards have come into style.  I have a friend at school who grew a beard and it did improve his appearance. The hippie era while I was in college did bring on more hair on the face and now the hunters of the world must all have beards. The unshaven look is really in for now.

The guy above had his photo taken in his fine Mason's finery.  The late 1800's was a time when Free Masonry clubs become strong and there was Eastern Star for the women.  The sense of belonging was very strong in the city social structure.  I have seen a photo of citizens of this town standing on main street and they filled up most of the first block of town.  A lot of buildings in the old Iowa towns have Masonry symbols on the top of the building, second floor, where they had their meetings. The town I live in had two different meeting halls.  One is still in existence and the other was lost when they tore down the opera house.

The photo above came from one of these albums. My dad had rescued them from this house below, in Osceola, Iowa as he was about to tear down the house.  At that time, in the 70's, a man or a group of men would take down a house with hammers, pry bars and sledge hammers.  No machinery was involved.

The house's history is lost as they had to create an abstract for the property for my dad before he could buy it.  It had been donated to a church and the house sat empty and boarded shut for over 30 years or more. One photo in the two set albums had the name of Webster on the back of it.  There is a street named Webster in Osceola and also the first owners of the funeral home for a long time stood about a block and a half away from this house.

I don't have a name for the bearded man but I did find different photos of him through out the album.

In this posed setting you can see that I have his photo under the scattering of the two top photos.  There is an older gentlemen with his white beard. These two older people may be grandparents to him and then maybe not.  They are all from Osceola or the books came into the house from relatives who lived in Osceola, Iowa.

I am assuming that this is a different time and setting for the man and his wife to have their photo taken. I like the classical decoration in the backdrop.  The woman must have taken a long time to button down her top article of clothing. The collar of the man's coat is cut the same way as the one at top.  All the added pieces to his coat does sort of cover up the view of the coat.

The last photo shares the name of the business that took the photo. As you can see I could have some fun researching some of the tid bits of information from the Osceola area.

Again I want to point out that none of my relatives wore beards two generations back on my family tree.  I couldn't find a photo.  There was a centennial celebration of Murray, Iowa,  back in 1968 when all the men grew beards.  It was a short period of time and I don't have proof in photos.  All this being said I want to thank you for stopping in at my blog.  Sepia Saturday members have  posted many interesting things on their blogs so check them out by clicking HERE.  They are friends of mine from all over the world.