Fourteen Strong...

I have had in my side panel, a photo of my nephew holding a photograph of my great grandma Burgus. She is surrounded by her fourteen children. The photo I lost track of was the one my nephew was holding.  My dad did not own the photo but his sister did.  He asked to hang in his house for a while and my aunt Amy did consent.  I do think she put a time limit on it like six months.

Anyway, the story is such that after my dad returned the framed photo, my dad died, and then about a year or so later she died.  The photo was gone for sure.  My aunts daughter, my cousin Patty, grabbed it and ran back to Colorado.

Probably 19 years later another cousin of mine who lives an hour away, received this wonderful digital copy of the photo.  They were a distant relatives who sent it to her.  There line of family of the above family was gone and they had not one to will it to.  So the image is back in her hands and now in my hands, digitally.

My grandfather is the one fourth from the left. His name is Charles Burgus. He was the son that was named after his father Charles Burgus.  He had passed away before this photo was taken.

I now have time to study this photo and find the names of all of them. My grandfather in the back row died in 1949.  You can see him in the past blog of this one.

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The Past and the Future.....

A cousin, Rosemarie, shared this photo a few years back.  She has passed away a year ago.  The photo is of her baby brother Gary.  He lives today in an institution with autism difficulties.  The photo then is about 60 years ago and it is taken next to the Pacific Ocean.  The finding of this photo is a special one to me as there is so much family stories in all that is showing in the photo.  My Grandfather Charlie and my grandmother Grace lived in Iowa in a very small town.  They took the train to Washington State to see new grandson and the grand daughter Rosemarie who would have been three years old. Their son Donald and his wife Eileen lived out in Washington.  Eileen was a war bride being a full Brit.

Charlie and Grace look so out of place being on the beach.  I doubt that they had ever visited the coast before then. Living in Iowa they would not have had a car nor would they have made the drive.  The two of them were at the end of their years having raised 10 children and living some very hard times as farmers. They lost a farm from a bad economy and struggled on a smaller farm to keep food on the table.

The picture was taken in early 1949 when Gary was born.  My grandfather died that same year.  I never knew him as I was born in the next year.  I have a few select photos of him and heard stories of how nice of a guy that he was.  This photo is a great one of Charles (Charlie) Thomas Burgus. It is one of my Grace Elizabeth Turner Burgus and it does resemble her as I did know her for another 15 years since the photo was taken.

My second and last photo shows thing in my life in the future.  Our son and  his wife live near Bar Harbor, Maine.  This is a photo from Cadillac Mountain looking down on the Atlantic shore line. Our son and his wife love it here as they hike the trails and camp along the coast line.  We are so landlocked here and thing they are so fortunate to live there.

Others are answering the call of posting Sepia Saturday articles following the seashore theme. Check them out at the SEPIA SATURDAY  site.

Fishing.....

A couple of G.I.s trying their hand at fishing with the local kids. The place is Belgium where my dad was stationed before he went to the front to fight in WW II.  The bridge looks like a temporary one after the original was damage by bomb warfare.

Crossing the river by boat because the bridges are gone. My dad was a farm boy in southern Iowa where there were bodies of water for boats. He then had a fascination for them and was fortunate to by a fishing boat is his older years thirty years after being in the war.

My father is exploring another vessel in the same area of Belgium. I see there isn’t a sail to go with the mast. I like the little roof piece that is covering a portion of an opening of the boat.

My dad took a shot of one of the smaller boats in which he two traveled in to come over to Europe. The smaller the boat the worse it is to get sea sickness while being on the ocean.  He was extremely sick from that crossing in 1944.








The theme was a boy with a wheel barrow with fish to eat in it.  My extension to things in the water is a far stretch but I really wanted to share something today. WW ll era may have been in the same time frame of the little boy at the harbor.

Others share photos on their Sepia Saturday’s blogs.  Click on the HERE to go see other sharing of photos and words.

It’s the Dress......

It may be a wedding dress but I have no proof.  I do know that it is a dress that is duplicate of my Grandmother Brooks’s wedding dress.  The layers of the ribbons allowed the woman to shorten it to make be a custom fit. They could hem them up into the inside or the could cut it. The photo was taken in the late1800’s and was from a set of family albums.

I have two albums from a house that my father demolished in order to build an new home. The photos from the family have given me clues that the house was built in the late 1800’s.  The town was Osceola, Iowa established in 1870s or earlier. From the photos I have found a dominate name of Webster in which there are many of the family buried in the town cemetery.

I have a photo of this in a rectangular format but can not pull it from my Sepia Saturday posts. This is my Grandmother Mable Zella Wheeler who married Leroy Brown in July of 1913. She became my Grandma Brown. Leroy Brown died in 1937 and a few years later my Grandmother remarried a widower and became Mrs. Oscar Brooks.

My Grandma had a photographer help her to get that ribboned hat to look good. I still have the ribbon hat and wedding dress which I am planning to give to a younger first cousin soon.

Other photos from the album gave me images of dresses but not necessarily wedding dresses. The style of dress does make it look to be a newer styled dress with the drapery on the skirt.

It is definitely not a wedding dress but is at the photo studio with all of there street corner props.  Probably this is more of the early 1900s. Things are more complicated with this dress than the original ribbon dress that I started out with at the top photo. The diamond shapes and patterns at the bottom of the double ruffled makes it more complicated in design. In the photo albums I did notice that the studios have lots of combinations of props in which for them to take photos.  I have a couple that have a stairway included.

The last photo I share today is one of a couple standing on the fake street corner. The dark colored dresses were popular but the guy even has his top coat on along with his hat. The drapery on her dress is a little bit more complicated as the style developed.

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Kids......

My son seems to be pretty serious playing his sax in a high school Jazz Band performance. His group won a lot of competitions as he worked through his four years in band.  I am thinking the year is 1997.

Kids love school picnics and these two are having their picture taken with their country school teacher.  My mom is the teacher and the year must be 1939.  I like seeing the old car and a concerned parent or grandparent looking on as the photographer was snapping the picture.

Even thought is says it is 1956, I am betting the photo was taken in the fall of 1955.  I am standing there at the age of five with my brother, Dwight, named after one of our presidents.  Dwight, 7 years old,  has a good bike there but I didn't have one at the time.  I really didn't learn to ride a bike for another couple of years later, when my dad brought home a couple of beat-up old bikes from a farm sale.  We had a hill in the back of the machine shed and I learned to coast down it and eventually pedal. I like seeing the hand-me-down pants and shirt that I am wearing in this photo. My age difference to my brother was three years so his clothes really were too big for me most of my childhood. I did have the privilege of having my own underwear and socks.

Living on the farm meant having lots of pets.  The cats were continually reproducing and the dog Tippy lived long after I was in college. Tippy was mostly border collie with some other mixture added to his breed. We got the dog in 1954 and he was still around in 1970. I am thinking the ages of the boys, this summer shot, no shirts, is four, seven, thirteen, and twelve. Leaves on the old locust trees in the backyard and the Chinese elms are standing strong as a windbreak for the old house.

This is a photo from an album that I have full of family shots. I now know that the house they were from had owners by the names of Webster. I don't have much more to find among the photos.  The youngster doesn't look too happy having his photo taken. If it were a photo where he had to hold still, it may be why he is so stern.

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Wheels of Fortune......

Tractors and bicycles have some things in common, but not too many when you think of all of the differences. Wheels make them belong to the same big family. My brother was born in 1942.  He sits on this tractor 74 years ago.  A Farmall M, which must have belonged to one of my uncle,s as my dad was in the service at that time and didn't become a farmer for five more years.

Carnival rides really don't have any bicycle in them  and yet there are all those wheels.  A classmate of mine in school shared this photo of her family on the ride, going in circles of course.  The think that has always fascinated me about this photo is what is in the background on the left. The year this was taken has to be in 1953, judging by the age of the littlest girl whom I still know today. The carnival is set up in a park right next to the train track in Murray, Iowa.

A first cousin of mine also is proud of his wheels. Unfortunately for him, he drowned within the next year. Keith was an only child and was probably close to being 15 in this photo. He and his friends ran off to swim at the Thayer lake. His parents, my uncle and aunt, did not know he was even gone until they told them of his drowning. This photo is also taken on a main street in Murray, Iowa. I can only guess that this was taken in 1936. The wheels of misfortune that helped to cause his death was said to be bicycles that took out to the lake. I don't think he was allowed to drive this family car.

Uncle Kenny was a dashing guy as he grew up. He is proud of these wheels.  He sits on the running board of a car sitting in the yard of my great grandparents, near Macksburg, Iowa. Those who know anything about American cars can probably date this photo. This guy was born around 1916 and had not gone off yet to be in the army for WW II. I am guessing 1938.

Southern Iowa farm boys leaning against the Ford not even thinking of their futures.  They were leaning against the one set of family wheels. I am the youngest here with my older brother to the left of the photos. Second older brother is the tall one and my brother, three years older, is on the far end. The year is 1956 and we have been on this farm since 1953.  The guy on the left is the guy that was sitting on the tractor in the very first picture.

The weather was probably middle summer  as three out of four were without shirts. We were poor but we did have undershirts that we could have worn. The two youngest guys probably didn't wear shoes most of summer until school started. The photo was taken with the Brownie Kodak camera and you are seeing the photo that is being held in a packet of photos as was the way photos were process then. The fortunes of these four guys were all different with the two older guys now live in warmer climates. The older brother is in Arizona and the other is in California.  The brother on the end died in 2008 from additions of his past. He had lived in Arizona and returned to Iowa for about 15 years before he passed. He was 61 yeas old unlike the age of 9 that his is at the time of the photo.

I will close with the photo of our 1957 Ford Fairlane.  It was green with a cream color. It seemed like a beautiful car at the time and we took family trips in it to the great out west in the summers.  No air conditioning in this car other than rolling down the windows. The heater did work in the winter. This is the first time that I have seen in the photo tail fin of a 1976 Plymouth of a relative of the family.

As others create blogs for Sepia Saturday you are able to see their entries to this group themed blog. CHECK them out by clicking HERE to see what people are sharing from all over the world.

Line Them Up and Jump Around........

Shown here is a small group of school mates of 1959.  Due to the necessity of making students exercise, the students all eventually had to take physical education classes when they entered the 6th grade. Up until that time the lower grade students had recess to help with their exercise program.  Playing soccer, or chaise would get one winded but swing on the swings and jungle gym was a low grade of movement. Playing tag could get one into a good run as people would scatter all over the old school grounds.

One who went out for the sports like football, basketball and track did get more exercise than the ones who did not participate. At this time a majority of them lived on farms so they did get to do farm chores and work as farm kids in the summer.

Jumping back in time the students of this day,1920s, were lucky to have finished eighth grade at a country school. There was not time for physical education back then even though health would have been taught. The older kids of this family did go to a town school and graduate. The youngest boys in this photo never attended high school but were home trying to help save the farm from foreclosure.  They didn't save the farm but all of that added to their character.  Those two boys ended up being in WW II, traveling far away from their farm roots to Europe and Aleutian Islands.

Check in on others who are participating in Sepia Saturday this week by CLICKING HERE. Many responses to a prompt with creativity exposed to the public.

Fixing and Finding......

I found an old newspaper article cut from the Sentinel-Tribune paper of Osceola, Iowa.  It was first published right after the end of WW ll.  All the local men who returned from serving during the war were asked to show up at a cemetery in Murray, Iowa.  There the seven guys of various services fired off a 21 gun salute. The names of the guys described in the row are all familiar with me.  When the article was republished years later, the paper said all were gone except for three men in that front row.  My dad must have been alive at the time when the republished it. The reason the article was cut from the paper was not for what you see but for what you don't see.  Jesse Burgus, my dad, is standing behind the second shooter as was marked with an arrow by a blue pen.  His brother, my Uncle Donald is in view with a blue line marking his existence. Both guys were in their early 20s in age as later they neither one would be able to fit into the uniform.  They were wool uniforms. I tossed a lot of my parents things but this is a fun one to have.

In the past I had this as a header for my Sepia Saturday blog.  These kids were all children from a country school in 1939.  My mom was their teacher.  When I posted more of these photos  on my blog I was contacted by a woman, my age, searched on the blog and  asked me about one of the photos. She said one of those girls was her mom.  I sent her the photo and  scanned pictures of the whole country school crowd.  The woman wanting the photo ended up being one whose mother was related to the an Aunt of mine, who was married to my Uncle. She also had lived in the town and graduated from the school that I had been working in for 31 years.  Small world, curious sharing of first cousins and we were not related ourselves.

While fishing for a photo of the past that would fit the theme, I found this one.  It is one of my dad's photos taken while he was stationed in Belgium during WW ll.  He is not in the photo but it shows two soldiers getting in on the fun, trying to catch a fish, while the local children are all so very entertained with his work or should I say play. The bridge they are on is a makeshift one as you can see the original bridge is collapsed in the foreground.

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Here, watch my baby.

The year must be 1951. The baby is about a year old or more and he is surrounded by relatives.  Great uncles and aunts are all in the yard.  They seem to be dressed up for some reason.  They aren't church goers so to speak so they must be there after a funeral. The men for sure are all my grandmother Mabel's brothers. They were all farmers and probably were 55 years old or more. To see them in suits seams unusual for farmers.  I can't identify the women but I am assuming that they are wives, great aunts of mine.

I am the little guy being held by Elva Wheeler. It is an amazing good photo of me as I was the fourth child and most all photos of me as a baby were blurry shots. There were not a lot of pictures taken as I was the fourth child and another child died 8 months after I was born.

 When I grew up to get to know Elva he had changed in appearance.  He was short all of his life but he became rotund as a well-fed mans should be. He was a friendly guy and bald completely.  He had a very angry wife who cussed a lot. Later on in years, she mellowed and became a kind, quieter  woman.

My grandmother's brothers are here with names labelled above.  There is one other bother not in the photo who just didn't hang around with these people. He went to the big city to make his fortune. In the top photo the back sides of Lee are directly positioned behind Elva and the next one back is Weaver. To follow the theme of "watching over others" my grandmother lost her husband in 1937.  Her brothers hovered over here and made sure she had a place to live and food on the table. Everyone was poor back then and they got by with whatever they had. The tree behind them is my great grandparents tree.  I have so many old photos of various people standing outside in  front of that tree. The all lived in the Madison County area, "Bridges of Madison County" locality, Winterset and Lorimor, Iowa.

While I am on a roll here, these are the parents of the ones above. They are my great grandparents.

Cyrus Henry Wheeler, 1872-1948, and Martha (Mattie) Selena Mobley Wheeler, 1876-1941.  Most all of these people are buried in the Moon Cemetery near Macksburg, Iowa.

Check in on others who are posting thoughts and photos on their Sepia Saturday blogs. Click HERE and go see the list of Sepia Saturday members who are participating today. 

The Rockefeller Bridges of Old.....

John D. Rockefeller, Jr.  bought some land in Maine.  It just happened to be an Island  off the Atlantic coast and a small fishing town was next to it. The town was Bar Harbor. His island was great to see with the cliffs along the shores and mountain-like roads through the property. Giving buggy rides was  difficult when he wanted to show off the property.  He hired European stone builders to come and build him bridges to span some of the crevices of the hills. They lived on the site until the job was done.  I don't know the exact number of the bridges but I know of at least three and there probably were more.  At first the date visualizes as 1994 in the above photo.  But the stone is uneven and it actually says 1924.

The bridges were designed with decorative additions that made them more that just common bridges. The circular  pieces were built at the end of each bridge railing. The ability to get round edges must have been done by experts who liked to carve stone.  A photo below shows that a circular column was built below this round decoration.

On top of the highest point of the island is Cadillac Mountain.  This is the city of Bar Harbor down below the peak. 

After searching through literally 1000 photos in one file, I did find pictures of one of the bridges. A creek runs under some of the bridges and one bridge spans a road. There is a keystone at the top of the gothic arch. Being it is in Maine, I am sure there were rock quarries where the stone was purchased and shipped, by horse drawn wagon to the different sites. . 

Our two sons and one daughter-in-law are gazing down below from the one bridge. We were hiking the same trails as the horse and buggies use to travel for Rockefeller to show off his property. 

A different side view of the bridge shows the circular pillars that were built at each end of the bridges. The landscape of the now Acadia National Park is much the same. The Rockefeller family donated the most of the area. My one son you livers near there says that the family still holds some land with a house in the area.  He has met one of them while jogging one morning. 

It has been a long time for me to Sepia Saturday blog.  I promise many black and whites to share from years ago. As I moved to a new home, all of the photo boxes are out and ready for me to seek new, old shots for sharing.  

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Work and Play

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As the worn photo shows in the farm scene there is a thrashing process going on of wheat or oats.  The horse power  was the use of real horses to haul the grain but a gasoline engine would have run the thrashing machine.  The engine would sit a ways away from the thrashing machine and a long wide belt would connect the engine to a flywheel on the thrashing machine.

My grandfather, Leroy Brown, was the tallest one in the row of men with the writing of dad above his head.  He was not a rich man even though he had a wife and three children.  I was told that he dug graves for a living and apparently worked as a hired hand during the fall harvest season.  It was told that he owned a barber chair and cut hair on weekends for neighbors and relatives. My mom told that no one would pay him for cutting their hair. My grandfather died in 1937 from TB.

The baton twirlers are working hard to entertain the crowd while the high school band plays a rousing marching band song.  It was the era when many girls were needed to decorate the band with batons and also sometime pom poms.  As a band marched down the street the majorette would have a couple of rows of girls in uniform marching behind helping to introduce the band members that were following.

A newer generation of baton twirlers and pom pom girls stand to attention for a group photo found in an old Murray High School yearbook.

Country school teachers were paid very little to help educate the children of the farming community.  A man could be a school teacher but an unmarried woman was usually the norm to hold the job.  My mom was a country school teacher having had a special training class taken her senior year of high school.  She took over the job of a future sister-in-law who had married and became pregnant.  Both conditions were not accepted while being a teacher.

Others are posting blogs about this weeks theme of Inverse Work, on Sepia Saturday.  Click HERE to go to the other blogs from person around the world. 

Facing the Future in Third Grade

It is 1958 and this third grade class has finished decorating the little tree.  It is a real pine tree and the school has bought them for each grade school classroom in order to decorate for the holiday. The town is Murray, Iowa and it has a school with one class of every age in their building.   This group is being lead by Mrs. Thelma Thompson.

They are all such young faces not knowing much about what their future will bring. Three of the boys will end up in the service, two in the army and one in the navy.  Each one had a different destiny as one, Larry Gene, served in Japan, another, Bernard, was in Germany, and the third, Denny, was sent to fight in the Vietnam war.  The one who served in Nam ended up with addictions that probably shortened his life. He has been gone now over 20 years. The other two guys are close friends of mine living in the area.

Gary and Fred are still farmers today living near their homes of their childhood. Anna lives in Florida and was a realtor with her husband. Phyllis married a minister and lived in the southern states most of her life. One other girl who was widowed young in her marriage still lives in the Murray area. My one cousin Carolyn worked and lived most of her life in the neighboring town becoming the business manager for the hospital. My other cousin Jim has lived most of his years now in Arizona being a teacher like me. He and I were the only two teachers in the bunch.

Wilmer moved away the next year and I have no idea where he is today.  His brother married a first cousin of mine and I do keep track of his brother.  Ann lives in Osceola.  Mary Ann also lived in Osceola and was a hairdresser in her younger years.  She later became the manager of the country club of the golf course in town.  Mary Ann passed away just a few months ago. Patty in the photo married right out of high school and became a widow ten or so years later.  She is remarried and lives elsewhere from the home town. Sandy married early and she is a great grandma now.  She lives in the Ankeny area. On girl Barbara became a successful business person climbing to the be vice president  of a company.  She lives in Colorado and rarely returns to Iowa. She now promotes positive thinking and living seminars in her retired years.

In the photo is a guy, Larry, with a striped shirt and short sleeves.  He is by a girl named Kathie who was a step cousin to him. Their grandparents married and made them seem a little like family.  Kathie lives about 25 miles from where Larry lives and they never see each other.  I don't understand why Larry's mother let him wear short sleeves shirt to school in the middle of winter.

The social structures of school seem to be a tradition that isn't as strong as it use to be.  Students today move in and out of schools continually.  The group in the photo above, 15 of them, graduated together all starting kindergarten together. Because country schools were closing our class had three or four more people added to the class who also graduated with this group.

I have stayed pretty distant from the past group for most of my years and the last ten years have reunited with a lot of them. It is interesting to return to see people who still carry their original personalities and yet have moved on to live lives so differently.  We really don't know each other very well now but I guess the bond of our youth keeps us together.  Our 50th anniversary from high school graduation will be in 2018.  Some of the core group who still live in the area of the school are getting very excited.  Me, not so much.........I hope we are all still around.

Check out others who are posting in Sepia Saturday today.  Each post has its own twist to what the group is doing.  All of the post are very interesting posts. Click here on Sepia Saturday to check them out. 

City Living........

The two guys and my dad are in the backyard of their temporary home in Murray, Iowa. I was having some confusion about the time and ages of everyone here but I had not been born yet.  Their squinting from the sun makes it hard to identify them but the one on the left is my brother Ron. He is 17 months older than my brother Rex on the right side.  My understanding is that my dad, Jesse, was shipping out for Europe headed to Belgium.  He was saying goodbye to his sons and my mom Zella. My mom was living with her mother Grandmother Brown.  Dad's mom and dad also lived in the area on the opposite ends of a block.

My dad had been in the army for a few years but was stationed in Washington, D.C.  He was able to be home when Rex was born but returned out east after the visit.  I am sure now in this photo he was headed for the train station to again be on the coast to ship out. My oldest brother was a smaller guy than his older brother Rex so they do look to be closer in age.

Sitting in from of my Grandmothers Brown's house is Ron and Rex.  My dad was fighting in the Battle of the Bulge at the time this photo was taken 1944.

When my dad went into the service, my mom and my two brothers lived there with grandma. My mom was returning to her home to live as she and dad had first lived in a small house right next to the train track. It all is a complicated story and by my simplifying it makes it confusing but when dad returned home the family of four lived here until they found a farm to rent and farm house to call home.

The oldest brother, Ron, is sitting in back of the box and Rex is in the front. By the time they were in grade school I believe the two guys were the same size. Rex did outgrow my older brother. The photo is probably taken in the same town of Murray. 

This is a photo of my Uncle Kenny standing in front of grandma's house. It was a big four by four styled house and had the corner wrapped around porch on it. Some day I am going to share the life of this house with all the photos of family that were taken outside around this house.  Photos have been taken on all four sides of the house. Next door many family photos were also taken as they thought the Morrow's house was nicer looking with its fancy porch.

Both houses are still standing today but one would not be able to identify them. They were remodeled into totally different styled house. The two story house had the second floor removed and it was made into a ranch house with a cape cod flavor. On the whole block of Fourth St. only three houses are still standing.  At the far opposite end of this block my other Grandmother Burgus lived and that house is still standing. The three houses between them have all been removed.

As the theme was a prompt showing two children who were orphaned by the sinking of the Titanic I expand the idea of what could have happened.  My dad went to war and the chances of returning were low.  He carried a radio with the scouting party that was searching and spying on enemy territory in front of the lines.  He crossed the Remagen bridge when a breakthrough was created on enemy lines. There have been moments of thought that my dad could have instead not survived that time period in the war.  Thousands of soldiers died from many countries just in that one very long battle.  My brothers would have been still around today.  The next two boys Dwight and myself could never have been. 

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