Twenties Youth.......

Finding new photos of my parents  while in their twenties has been an interesting journey.  A black photo album with their early dating pictures glued in and and first year of marriage was found in a box upstairs.  I had brought it home earlier, maybe a year ago, and I had not checked it out for it's contenets until now.

I cropped out this photo of them at a park with a Burgus family reunion.  I am guessing that this is either 1940 the summer before they married in December or the very next year.  They could have been married in this photo and baby number one was on it's way in October.

Jesse T. Burgus  1917 -2000,   Zella M. Burgus 1919-2008

My older brother and I have had conversations with Aunts that told us that the War changed our father a lot in temperament.  They use to tell us he was such a happy young guy who really enjoyed life.  From this new group of photos I found this one of my dad.  He had to be 22 years old or a little more.  He reminds me of the high school kids I use to teach in school with that carefree happy smile. Dad is also dressed up for being in the park.  He either is courting my mom, which explains the good clothes  or he has just married her 6 months before which also explains the good clothes.  My mom was into clothes and being a little showy with them.  So her husband should be fancy looking also.

My dad had a lot of happy times and I don't think his change from being in the War ruined him.  I know he loved to laugh at a good joke, or smile when he caught a good fish.  He was so glad to see his  grandchildren and loved to travel.  The things that the War experience gave him was a continuous haunt of what  happened in battle.  He was one that talked about it a lot to any listening ear. He was still talking those last days when I took him to the emergency room the last time.  He was out of his head and his body was shutting down, mainly his  heart.  He was reliving the cutting off of a fellows leg out in the field with another soldier operating and his emotions were so real as if he was still over there at the very location.

Life is hard for all of us and we all have things that make us sad or distressed.  I don't think my father was any different than anyone else. The coping part is done so differently by each person in their own way.  Tragedy is a part of life and we lie to ourselves to think that any kind of life experiences can not be called tragic if they affect us emotionally in a severe way.  Scars are scars no matter how we receive them.

I am glad to find this new set of photos and to be able to view my parents in young love and their early lives before the war.

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Dad did have

Burgus Brood.......

A first cousin of mine, Joan,  told me that our Great Grandmother Turner referred to her daughter's ten kids as a brood.  Grandma Grace Burgus is sitting next to Grandpa Charles Burgus in a park. It is reunion time and that means a family picture is to be taken. It is a beautiful photo with everyone looking towards the photographer. The town where they lived their later years was Murray, Iowa which was founded as a town in 1868.  Grandpa Burgus had raised the family on different farms before the moved into town.   This photo is taken in the early 1940's.

I am exhibiting this photo to show a clan at a period in time where all the 10 children are alive, married, and the older children have their children lined up in front.  My parents are in the photo on the top left side of the photo.  This could have been the summer before they married, which was in December 1940.  This could have been the summer after my parents married which makes this 1941. I won't pretend to give out identities at this point but I will crop it eventually, enlarge sections and share their names.  I don't know this for sure but I am assuming a few of the children in front are still alive today. 

Thanks to my brother Ron who shared this photo with me, after receiving it as a gift from our first cousin Joan Callison who lives south of Murray. Thanks then to Joan also from me.

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Dad in Belgium......1944.....

Jesse Thomas Burgus 

1917-2000

I have written this story too  many times on some of my blogs so I will keep it short this time.  My dad had served a few years in the army, in the states,  and ended up his final time in the Battle of the Bulge.  He was in the very last part of that battle as he was sent over with replacement troops for the weary and the dead.  He arrived in Belgium in the fall of 1944 and spent some leisure time in this Belgium town.  I tried to find the name of it as I was told by a fellow blogger it's name.  I don't know why I can't find it as I searched my blogs but maybe the same person can help us out with the name.

The town had been held by the German army for quite some time but they were forced to retreat out of Belgium eventually because of the allied forces advancing on them.  The photos of the area are so great.  My dad and his buddy took a lot of pictures of the place while they awaited orders to go onto the front line.

Dad would have been 27 years old in this photo, which was old for men to be drafted.  He already had one son at home when he was drafted and then had another right before he was sent overseas.  He is a farm boy, mechanic who fixed tractors, and had never left the state of Iowa in his life time. In many ways it was a like sending a bunch of guys to Europe to be tourist even though that was not the end result.

The check is next to the window of the room that he stayed in at that complex.  I assume it had been apartments.  He must be in a tower or on a hill to have had this photo taken.

Not all of the soldiers were country kids as my dad did meet people from New York City and other larger more metropolitan place in the United States.  This photo is one of my favorites as it shows that the men needed each other to survive. The silliness of standing on a railing and making a silly pose makes me smile.  They were still kids at that age as all our kids in their 20's still are.

My dad wrote and sent a letter to my mom every single day, but he had to find friends to make the whole situation better.  He made friends even though there were good chances that one of them would be killed. He had a poster that has names of many men who signed it but no addresses were involved, so he returned to Iowa without any way to contact any of them.  He may not have know them all but it felt good to get everyone's autograph of a shared time together.

Family at war is my blog today.  I find that I am still needing to study the large packet of the war photos that I have and will share them when they fit the Sepia Saturday theme.

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No family history, just photo history......

I am now believing this is Daniel Webster who lived in the former house that stood on my parents property.  He is in Masonic uniform and I did find Masonic books in the piles of things that came from the house.  The photo here was taken at the Graves Photography in Osceola, Iowa.  I believe he is the same man as we saw in the past blog in the two top photos.  I have one other photo of him when he is older and Daniel Webster is written on the front of the card photo from Graves Photography.

The photos are coming from these two wonderful old albums.  My plans are to eventually to scan every photo and try to make sense of them by comparing shots on the computer rather that take the photos out of the book.  I want to leave them in the same order as the owner of the albums had placed them.

As an example as to how the pages look in the blue album they are simulated walnut design with gold decorations.  Watch the couple above as I post the next two photos.

This is the photo of the same couple as was above, only I believe they may have not been married yet.

The man did not live long as you can see the funeral card made here. There was writing on the back, no name, but that he had died March 28, 1897.  As you can see he and his wife were from Fort Wayne, Indiana.  I have yet to find an exact name but I have a set of three sisters in the book and I think that the man from Osceola in the photo is married to one of the sisters.

So the main portion of the pictures in the two albums are coming  from Osceola, Iowa and Fort Wayne, Indiana.  There is one photo from Kellerton, Iowa and another from Clarinda, Iowa.

The writer of the diary that I previous blogged about did not live in Osceola. The writer of the diary must be a relative of the Websters as her handwritten card is above.  I am thinking that the address is in Fort Wayne, Indiana.  This and two other handwritten cards were in behind a blank photo window.  The names on their cards were also Jackson women which were addressed as Miss which made them her daughters or her sister in laws.

I will post about my own family from here on but I had a little more "show and tell" to do here as I found names today and it does get interesting.  I will leave you one more picture of a woman with great  character and determination as you can see in her face.  She is an unknown for now.

 


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Not my family but historic inhabitants.........

The couple above are Mr. and Mrs. J. W. Jackson.  This card does not state the photo company on the front of the card.  It was found with a pile of loose photos in the house at Osceola. It comes with all the treasures that were in the previous old house where my parents owned the property.

This card is one that I believe is taken of the same couple.  I can't see the resemblance in the woman but it is the same man with the same trimmed beard.  I could be mistaken that they may be brothers but I don't think so.  The woman is in profile in this one so it is hard to be sure if it is the same woman. The Graves Brothers Photographers took this as they are identified on the card. It is dated as January 12, 1887.  I think that the second card is the older picture of the two.

I have a diary that was found in that house in which my father tore down due to it's bad condition.  The diary is written by a woman who does not identify her first name, but she is Mrs. Walter Hill.  Her son's name is Dan and he is in high school. She wrote the complete year out page by page in a book that was intended for note taking for a medical professional and the calendar year is 1917.  She writes of everyday happenings each day, from cooking a rabbit for supper to who visited who on the day. There are a couple of cake recipes included on certain days with notes jotted at the top of the page as to who died or got married that day. She mentions often that she does not feel well and that her husband bakes a cake once in a while, and to their going out to buy monuments for their graves including the prices they paid.

You are wondering where I am going with all of this but I do have a theory.  The woman who  wrote the diary in 1912 seems to validate my idea that the above couple in the photos did not live in the house my dad demolished.   I believe that the man and woman lived in Osceola and were probably related to the diary writer,  either as a brother or a sister to her.  The name of the diary writer is Hill and the man in the photograph is Jackson.

I have two large albums of the family photos from those who lived in the house as well as of their relatives.  I have yet to dig through that but I have noticed that their are sequenced pictures of people getting older. Their are only first names written on some of the cards.

The things that I know that I can eventually do to find out about the diary writer are numerous.  Her son Dan had to graduate from Osceola High School between 1912 and 1914.  I should be able to get that info from the school.  I really do think I could fine the graves of Mr. and Mrs. Hill in the Osceola Cemetery. I could look for the Jackson couple in the cemetery.   Lastly I am sure that once I try I should be able to find something on the different net programs that help you find ancestors. Not my ancestors but of the family group.

Not my relatives, but I have handled a lot of their possessions.  I have large sections of hand sawed paneling from their home.  I have the pictures and I walk where they use to walk in the downstairs cave. I have their canning jars in which Mrs. Hill made applesauce and canned meat. Their are books that showed they belonged to a lodge, leather postcards and their are knick knacks from other countries.  I have this need to know more as it will give me the faces and names and not just people from the past. My albums may have Mr. and Mrs. Hill in them with Dan's picture also but at this point I can't identify them, but I need to know more.

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Family with animals on the farm............

1956 -57

As a part of a family history I am including the animals that surrounded us while growing up on the farm.  My dad raised hogs and Hereford cows.  It was also a grain growing operation with 180 of tillable hill country covered with Southern Iowa clay.

The animals were always a part of out lives and Tippy the dog was my first known dog in our family.  We  had a border collie when on the rental farm and I was 3 years old and something must have happened to it during the move to the new farm.  It may have refused to move, I don't know what, but my parents would never be honest to us about the lost of animals.   I remember at the age of 4 going to a farm near us and seeing all these puppies running around in the yard.  My dad went up to the house, we had to stay in the car, and he just reached down and picked up a puppy and we brought it home.  My brother three years older than me had a speech problem at the time and Tippy is the only name he could say clearly so that was his name.
Tippy lived for over 15 years as he died while I was in college.  He became so ill and they just ad a hard time having him put down.
My brother Rex is in his Murray Mustang High School marching band uniform.  The school supplied the coat and my parents had to buy him a pair of white slacks.  Mom had to sew a purple stripe down the outside seam of the pants to match the purple and gold coat. They also had this neat hat with a white small bill and a large metal emblem on the front of it.  I see the photo was processed in 1956 which means it could be 1955 or 56.  He played a small bariton, while my oldest brother Ron played a French horn.  The school owned the horns so you played whatever was available. It was a small school but I did admire the marching band anyway.

My oldest brother Ron with dad's help selected a heifer to show in the county fair for 4-H club.  She was a special cow named Duchess and we had her for quite a few years.  I believe that he sold all of the cattle in 1969 or 70 but she had been a pet among the herd for years. She had many calves for my dad to sell or to use to increase the herd size. When feeding the cows in the winter time back in the timber, my dad could pick her out among the 30 cows and she was very friendly.

Larry Dean, age 5, with Blacky the cat and Dwight Lee, age 8, with Snoop the cat, kittens were an ongoing event on the farm.  The fun thing to do in early spring was to go into the haymow and see where the mother cats had birthed their kittens.  We had them tamed before they got a chance to be wild.  My mom made my shorts all the time so her selection of prints were always wild. Snoop had an early demise which was a childhood trauma for my brother. It was a sad thing but we learned a lot about hard knocks as kids on the farm.

Twin calves were a novelty and I  have a photo of a pair that dad must have brought up to the barn to keep out of the cold snow. The picture is not dated like the rest of them but I would think it still was in the 50's.

Lastly is a picture of our pigs and babies. I really don't know why the picture was taken unless it was because there were cute piglets.  My dad always raised hogs.  He had started out with just a few sows but then kept an average of 20 sows or more in order to raise pigs each spring.  What is interesting is that I can tell these are an older breed of sows as his herd of sows changed in appearance to a more modern looking pig later on in the years.  My dad started buying expensive boars in which to have hogs that would gain weight faster and be a larger pig.  They were bred special in Northern Iowa and the company was called Farmer's Hybrid Hogs.  Farmers who didn't do that would raise runty looking pigs that would mature to be about 160 pounds.  His market pigs were ideally 240 pound pigs.

I know animals are not genealogy but the animals were a part of our family history.  We learned tough lessons about animals when we would loose one or one would become injured and have to be taken to a butcher.  We lost cats with great grieving and loved dogs to the bitter end.  I would not have wanted to be on the farm the day my dad sold all of his cattle.  I know he probably cried. The herd was his since 1954 until 1969.  He had run out of boys to help him make hay and he couldn't do it alone nor were there any other neighbor kids to hire.  I actually was the last one to be hired out to four different farmers, besides my dad.  I returned from college one year and hired out to make hay and then I stayed in summer school from then on and worked at the ISU library.  The farm changes and the livestock became less and less.  My dad sold the farm in 1973 during the winter and I assume the sows were sold out right after that. 

My children never knew my dad as a farmer and I think they would have liked being on the farm.  As a teacher my students thought that I was so old and surpirsed that I was a son of a pig farmer.  I find the past has made me who I am today, the carer of animals, birds, and fishes and the grower of everything, including weeds.

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Two Grandmas.........and Oscar.........Week 31

My older brother was told to take a bunch of the old photos home with him many years ago by my mother.  Since he has learned to scan and post I am finding photos from him that I have never seen before now.

I have posted about my Grandmother Mabel Wheeler Brown Brooks many times and above she is standing among four of her brothers. There was another brother named Calus who lived elsewhere.  I guess they didn't see him very much as he married a woman from Des Moines and they didn't associate with him or her.  This is a rough looking bunch of people from my mom's side.  They all lived in or near Winterset  and Lorimor near the Madison County area in Iowa.

They area already identified but they are from the left, Lee Wheeler, Elva Wheeler, Mabel Wheeler, Weaver Wheeler and Elga Wheeler.  What were the thinking with the double W  name and also with the Elga, Elva similarity?

My Grandmother Brown lost her first husband and a few years later married the guy above.  His name was Oscar Brooks.  He was a grumpy character and I think I explained in an earlier blog that he sat and watched black and white baseball games, while spitting in a tin can next to his chair,  his chew.  I have notes on another picture where he went to in-laws and refused to get out of the car except to have his picture taken. That tongue thing is something he did all the time and I am not sure he is holding in a chew spit when he is sliding that tongue.  My brother Rex is in his lap here and Ron is standing.

This is a prized photo as I don't have many photos of my Grandmother Burgus.  She is holding my oldest brother Ron in front of their house in Murray, Iowa.  This woman is where I get my British blood line as she was Grace Elizabeth Turner Burgus.  Her grandparents on her mother's side were Abernathy. 

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