Just sitting there........

Great grandfather Charles Brown, Illinois.
Died when my grandfather was three years old in the early 1900's.

Unknown school scene of the early 1900's in southern Iowa

Unknown folk from an album found in a house in Osceola, Iowa.  Probably related to the Webster's of Osceola but that is yet to be researched.

Step grandpa Oscar Brooks with my brothers Ron, standing, and Rex on his lap.  By the age of the boys this has to  be around 1944.  Oscar was a grumpy old cote.  He would sit and stare at the black and white tv set with a baseball game being televised and spit chew next to his chair into a tall fruit juice can.  Baseball games that were televised back then usually only had one or two tv cameras so it was starring at the back of the head of a pitcher as he threw the ball.

My grandfather Leroy Brown died in 1937 and my grandmother remarried Oscar at an unknown date for me anyway.  The photo is taken on the steps of the porch of the house in Murray that my grandmother owned in Murray.  The house still stands today with it's second story having been removed and it being turned into a Cape Cod style house.  It is in a lot of disrepair these days but still stands.

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Building with Brick in the New Country.....

As the United States was settled in it's early years the building of structures for actual protection from the elements was necessary. There were no condos to move into or highrise apartments.  Living in the woods and along the shore outside were the two options

The available timbers supplied wood and the use of manual labor produced wood products that would create instant shelter.  The early years were lean and the use of wood beams and mud worked well but as they survived they wanted better, so they moved  to building all wood structures.

In many ways the Cape Cod style house above resembles the earliest structures created in this country.  The windows then were smaller and the whole building was smaller.  Lean-to additions created more rooms and even saltbox house. In the originals mud and beam there was a hole in the roof to let the smoke out from the burning pit. Now they needed stone fireplaces attached so the building wouldn't burn down and even maybe brick could be used if they could buy them.

The technology from the old countries in which each of the settlers had come helped in developing brick making companies. It did become prevalent once communities became established.  The resulting product to resemble brick streets and cobblestones gave them ideas of things to make from the local clay resourcss. They could create brick fireplaces and use bricks for walls of their structures.

Through the years as the middle America's were settled,  towns would have pottery or brick factories set up along the rivers and in clay filled areas of the United States.  Iowa is filled with reserves of clay beneath some of the rich soils. Murray, Iowa had it's own brick factory west of town and as a result the earlier years of the town had a main street  lined with brick faced building. This brick building once stood as the fire station in Murray.

 The quality of brick varied throughout as different factories had low or high firing furnaces which are call kilns.  When you see brick crumbling on buildings, many times it is because it was a low fired brick. The clay may not be a predominate material as sand could be too high in proportion.  Low fired material never gets hot enough to make it able to weather the elements. The higher the heat the stronger the brick.

Stone laying was also popular in this country and as various sources were found, stone companies were developed.  It would be transported sometimes long distances. The stone could be produced for the facing of buildings and used for foundations. Some European influenced designs required a stone facade up to the first floor.

A state institution that was built north of my town has mostly brick buildings. The main large buildings all are fully covered with brick. The farm buildings that were created to do the agricultural work for the institution were also made of the same material. The farm buildings helped to store food for the residence to eat throughout the year.

I am assuming that there was a brick company in this area or that they were shipped in from our county seat town of Perry, Iowa.  They have a brick factory there yet today making bricks that are shipped throughout the United States. It has become an automated factory with train car sized containers being fired with shelves of brick inside.

An older outbuilding that I photographed in Maine was created with brick.  Because the east coast has been settled longer than where I live, this brick could have been made in the early 1800's or even before that.  The lighthouse that sits next to this structure was probably made of brick but they covered it with a concrete coating like frosting to cover up it's brick appearance.

As a side note of info, I was surprised to find that the round columns placed on the grand porches of the southern plantations some were actually made from bricks laid in a circular shape. Then they were plastered with concrete like material to be made round and smooth. Whitewashed or painted white they resemble the wooden ones.

My diversion from the Sepia Saturday original intent is a little broad this week but history is history. I enjoy watching the progression of the use of building materials in this country. When I find a brick buried in the ground I wonder it's age and where it is made.


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Children of the past.

A photo of the past of a child that happens to be my mother Zella Marie Brown.  She was born in 1919 so we are looking at a 1921 era photo.  No, she was not a princess of a King or Queen but my grandmother lovingly nicknamed her Sis.  I am not sure if that came from Sissy or not.  She was the only girl among two boys and I do remember my Uncle Kenny called her Sis also.

This is a reposting of a photo that I have borrowed from my Uncle Kenny's stash of old photos. This boy was very good at standing still for his photo.

This is a past header that I used a year or so ago.  The little girl in the photo did not live much longer than when this picture was taken.  She was from a family with the last name of Halferty.  The person who had me frame it never knew the little girl's name or her parents name.  She just knew that it always hung in her mother's home and she wanted it to do so again.

Another reposted photo for the sake of showing you the little girl.  My grandfather, LeRoy Brown, is sitting next to a Marie Brown, a niece of his from Illinois.  From the age of my grandfather this must have been taken in the early 1900"s.  The group of relatives in the Illinois are lost but will be found on the internet. My grandfather's father, Charles Brown, died when he was three years old.  My great grandmother remarried and moved to Iowa, leaving a lot of that family history back in Illinois.  I am sure that my grandfather must have made a visit out there for the photo or Marie visited in Iowa.

My final child photo is of me on Christmas morning, 1954.  My brother's train sits on the floor and my dad is playing with his windup donkey toy.  It twirled it's tail around in circles and it really entertained him. This is the interior view in the living room of the old white farmhouse that I posted a few weeks before now.

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Sepia Trees on Parade.........

As I sort through the many pictures of the past that include the family members of my family tree,  I find it interesting that sometimes the trees help to identify the place in which the picture was taken.  They were taken before my time but yet I get clues and the mind starts to evaluate the background growth to know just where the picture was taken.

The above picture is clearly identified as my Grandmother Mabel Brown Brooks.  She is holding my mom's first born son, my brother Ron.  This makes it a photo taken in 1942 as my brother was born in October, 1941.

The trees are younger here and I can see a house in the background so it is in Murray, Iowa where my Grandmother lived or it was taken out on the corner a few miles out of town at the filling station where my parents first lived along highway 34.

My mom's brother, my Uncle Kenneth Brown, stands beside the big tree for his informal portrait. The tree doesn't give me any true clues but the house tells me a little.  The house is not my great grandparents house as this house is a single story with a coal shed or small garage.  It is in town but I cannot guess which one.  It is just a mystery tree to me.  The age of my uncle makes the picture to  have been taken in the middle thirties.  He and my mom lost their father in 1937 and mom who was the youngest was 18 years old at the time.  Judging by how old he looks there it must have been before '37.
Yes one of my blogger friends is correct.  Kenneth's t-shirt says Consolidated Aircraft.  He went to California and helped build bombers until he was drafted.  I expect it is the 1939 or a year later. He could have returned to Iowa to go into basic training.

This cemetery is the Union Cemetery in southern Iowa and my dad stands in front of the stones of his grandparents on his dad's side.  The trees in the background shows that it is a rural cemetery and the timber runs parallel to the gravel road in front of the place.  This isn't an old photo as it was taken in 1990's but characteristic of a lot of cemeteries in Iowa they are lined with volunteer trees around their fence lines.  The old cedar trees in the cemeteries are at least a hundred years old.

The trees in the background are in rural a rural area, on a farmstead near Murray, Iowa. You can see the barn in the background on the left and trees lining the fence row. The tree next to the small shed was probably a volunteer tree as it looks too close to the shed to have been planted there on purpose.

  The husband of the women at the end of the table must be taking this photo. They were having their evening picnic meal before heading inside to play card through the evening. She is Janice Nannen sitting at the end of the table and she is the only person still alive today. The photographer would have been Ted Nannen the farmer who owned this place with his wife.

In memory of those in the photo from left are Jesse Burgus,  my dad, Galen Burgus, a distant cousin, Bill Farr, my uncle, Janice Nannen, the hostess, Mary Farr, my aunt and dad's sister, Zella Burgus, my mom, and June Walters Burgus, distant cousin's wife.

As we all think back there were favorite trees in our lives that we experienced or remember.  I liked climbing trees and building things in trees but some trees were just large trees that shaded my sand pile or held my swing.  The large trees around my property now are old and have a lot of history that was before my time 35 years ago.  The weather has removed one while I was living here and one was taken away by the city.  I still have three large silver maples that could tell tales of lightening strikes and of model T's passing by the house.  As they become more of  a dangerous threat to my house they will have to be removed.  Before that I guess I need to write a poem about them. 

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Brothers on the Southern Iowa farm, August 13, 2011

The Brownie camera by Kodak was a great new invention. My parents put away the box camera and started using that little Brownie. It had a small viewfinder that you looked down into and then you pressed that plastic slide button downward. If you weren't careful the clicking of the button caused the camera to flip up and down.

The photos came back in a little packet all connected together at the top. It was designed so you could tear them out of the book but fortunately for me they were all still together.

Southern Iowa during the summer of 1956 and mom has lined up her boys again.  Two of us brought our cats and one grabbed the family dog.

Pictured from left are Rex Thomas Burgus b. 1943,  Ronald James Burgus b. 1941, Dwight Lee Burgus b. 1947, d. 2008, and Larry Dean Burgus, b. 1950.

The old house in the background is one of the T-shaped farmhouses with no insulation but it did  have electricity.  Running water, undrinkable, was in the house when we moved into the house in the winter of 1953.  In 1959 my dad built a modern ranch house on the same site.

Larry and Dwight standing next to Dwight's bike. I was 6 and in the first grade. My hand me down shirt looks a little large but I probably grew into it.  Behind us are the two locust trees with very sharp thorns.  To the left is a cistern where water was pumped into it from a pond a half mile south of there.  It was filled with water and we pumped it into the house for general use but water for drinking came from a well nearby.  The date on this one photo which must have been the top photo, indicates when it was developed so it could be early spring as there are no leaves on the trees.  Maybe it is fall but there are no leaves on the ground.

This is taken when it was cold as you can see the coats on the two young ones in front. I really don't remember that car as my dad bought a newer 1953 Ford and it was blue.

 Divide and conquer so to speak as we separate the youngest out for their photo.  This series of photos is the only bunch of photos that I have that gives me a visual record of the house.  The front porch on the other side of the house had square columns on it to hold up the roof.  I was always impressed with those square Greek influenced posts. I didn't fix the tear as it makes the photo have a little personality.

My Aunt Ruby was the sweetest woman.  She had lost her husband, Frank Henderson, before I was born.  She was one of my dad's older sisters and she liked to keep track of  him and his family.  She and I are standing next to the woodpile that will be burned in the winter. I really think this has to be in the fall as in the spring that pile would have been all used up and the bark would be in my sandpile that sat right next to it.

Having the two brothers come to Iowa for a short visit back from their California and Arizona homes made me a little nostalgic.  They left Iowa to live in the warmer climates in their late twenties.  Both of them love to come back in the summer and admire our weather.  They do not come back to survive our winters.

The last home where my parents lived in town is soon to be sold.   The neighbor boy on a nearby farm, who was my older bothers age,  had two children.  His two, brother and sister and their spouses, have bought the old farm, each owning half of it and they are trying to bring it back as a farm.  The previous owners allowed all agricultural land to grow up into weeds and trees.  It was 240 acres of land with 180 acres of farm land and the rest was timber.  The past is hard to find there when you return to visit as the roads through the property are overgrown and the barn has collapsed. 

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Down on the farm.......

This is not an American Gothic painting like Grant Wood's painting,  but it could be.  They all had the tendency to bring them outside for the good lighting and stand them on the front stoop right in front of the porch.   In this particular photo you also get to see the older son peaking through from the screened porch. I do think the shadow is the shape of my mom taking the photo with her box camera.  I now  have a photo of her with that camera which I will share in a later blog.

The date of the first three photos that I am showing come from a photo album of my mom's which I date around the early 1940's.  It has photos in it that I can sequence for a couple of years in relation to what is going on with my mom and dad's life at that time. The early photos in the album show my parents dating and the back of the book shows by oldest brother while young, making it a time spam of at least two years.

I wanted to guess the identity of couple but they I don't recognize the children.  It confuses me as they have similar features of some of the relatives.  The people who I thought they were though did eventually have four or five children but they didn't have two boys.  I guess they really could be neighbors.

Here are the kids all lined up for show.  The tall boy is the one you saw on the porch peering out at the camera in the first photo.  It must be fall as they are dressed warmly for cool weather.  I also noticed the clothing of the mother in the top photo.  She has her apron on on top of the dress and then a jacket on top of it all.  Women wore their aprons from morning to night on the farm especially of that generation.  My grandma had her apron on all the time and my mom didn't wear an apron except the pretty ones for card parties.

 

The little girl gets her picture taken again with the new lambs on the farm.  I am sure they were showing them to the visitors and the photo got taken.  Maybe as some of my relatives on my mom sides see this blog that maybe they will be able to identify them.  I know they are not from my dad's side of the family.

The privileges of being the first born includes being place anywhere and everywhere to have your photo taken.  This is a photo from the album and it says that  my brother Ron is 8 months old.  He was born in October 1940 which makes this photo to be June of 1941.  My dad Jesse had not been drafted into the service yet but will be very soon in the next couple of months. I remember that child's seat as I think all four of us brothers were put into it when young.  It was around still in the store room when I was five or six years old and I am sure it went to the dump sometime after that when they cleared that room for making a bedroom.

My brother Ron again the same day sitting on the Farmall tractor.  I don't know whose farm this is and the clues are few for me to figure it out at this time. The possibilities are numerous as all the relatives were farmers.


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The Train and Change in America.

As a young country the United States had no infrastructure for transportation other than river ways and Native American trails. The means to explore the country consisted of walking and riding on horseback.  As the country developed,  hand carts, ox carts and wagon trains trudged west through wilderness and plains, discovering the necessities of food and water as they traveled.  The wagon trains eventually created their own roads that one can still see evidence of today in our country.

The train made the major change to the advancement of the settling of this country.  The earliest trains were steam engines that were small but mighty.  The size of the steam engine grew with the need for more cars for passengers and freight.

  The movement of products, mail, and passengers advanced the settlement of the country much more quickly in comparison to the years by wagon train and horse drawn wagons. As a young boy in the 1950's I can remember the use of the steam engine as it crossed Iowa going from coast to coast. Today the Amtrak carries people coast to coast but the majority of the time we see freighters carrying coal east for the creation of electricity.

Steam engines were replaced in the 60's by diesel engines.  During my lifetime the train was eventually replaced by different passenger transportation and the trucking industry advanced and now dominates the shipping of products.  Along with shipping by air, the train has almost become obsolete.  Railroad track has been removed and the beds turned into bike trails.  In some cases it seems they were too easily removed and the wish for some of the track to be put back would be now too expensive.

Accidents did happen as the cell phone and other communications did not exist.  Swinging lanterns or red and green lights back and forth and waving flags were the means of communication between people and trains.

The electric powered engine was a trend for a while as the trolley traveled throughout city streets, tied to their electric connection.  Above is a trolley that was standard transportation for thirty years or more to the town in which I live to the city of Des Moines.

There are so many factors that change the way we live and many causes that have changed the way we live.  Sometimes the changes were for the better and other times they seemed to be an experiment as we transformed a good idea into another better idea or even into a not such a good idea.

The people have changed too as the necessities of life seem to be less of a necessity anymore but more of a luxury.  Our level of poverty has changed from no running water, food and heat to poverty being not having a big screen tv or two or more cars.

History has always been a fascination for me and the cause and effect factors are too many for me to give out a very factual post.  Being aware of the changes I guess is an appreciation for me of where we are and where we have been.

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