Early on in my life.....

Larry Dean b. 1950

As the only child left living in the state,  I find myself shuffling through the remains of my parents things.  As I shift and sort photos and try to organize them, this 60 year old  man sees images of myself staring back at me.

I was a child who was born a year before the child, that died at birth.  It affected the number of photos taken of me and as I see a few coming through a couple years later after that loss.  I can see my parents are healing a little and getting on with their lives those few years later.  I remember my mom telling others that she sat and cried over her lost child and rocked me.

In the photo above, I am probably maybe 2 years old.  I am standing outside of the home of a farm my parents were  renting.  We moved to another farm that they bought during winter in 1953.

 Dwight Lee b. 1947 d. 2008  and Larry Dean b. 1950

I have two older brothers and they were always photographed together.  Ron and Rex can be seen as the prewar babies growing up together.  Dwight and I are the postwar babies and we two can be seen together in the pictures. This photo was taken the same day as the one at the top.

As I sort through things, I have tended to withdraw some of my younger self away from this process and just be about doing the business.  It does jolt you back when you pick up a new image of the past that takes you back to the time and place.  In many ways Sepia Saturday is all about remembering the families that we are following, but also it is a time to reflect on where we too fit in on this very large family tree. Our own lives carry the biggest set of memories and the lives of the past help us to know how we became a part of this very big family.

Thanks so much to all of you who have become my following.  I do appreciate your interest in the blog and it's process.  I hope to make new friends here, but most of all I hope it inspires you to start charting your past for others to see.

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Great grandparents Charles and Elizabeth Burgus

My great grandparents Charles and Elizabeth (Ries) Burgus. This photo is taken from the 1968 Murray, Iowa Centennial Book. I tried to bring it up to a better quality but this is it. There are other photos out there among my cousins and maybe I will get a copy from them someday. They had 14 children as seen below.  

A photo of their tombstones is in the blog two weeks past.

The above photo is of the 14 children shown with their mother Elizabeth Burgus.  My grandfather Charles is in the back row and he was apparently named after his father, my great grandfather Charles Burgus. He is not in the photo so he must be deceased when the photo was taken. He died in 1898 so this dates this photo some time after that.  Great grandmother Elizabeth died in 1911.

Charles b. 1832, d. 1898 and Elizabeth Ries Burgus b. 1847, d. 1911,  parents of:

Christian Frederick b 1 Nov 1865 m Emma Corbin
Anna Maria b 19 Sept 1867 m William Neidt
Margaret b 22 Dec 1868 m Fred Spellerberg
Catherine b 24 Oct 1870 m Oscar Klein
John b 5 Nov 1872 m Alice Bingham
Henry b 5 Dec 1872 m Laura Dick  John & Henry were twins
Charles Thomas b 28 Sept 1874 m Grace Turner (my grandparents)
Elizabeth b 7April 1876 m Brady Wetzel
Louis b  Have this date at home but am doing this at the library
William b 25 Oct 1879 m Winnie Stephjenson
Mary b 7 Sept 7, 1881 m Arile Jeffers
Matilda b 24 Feb 1883 M Frank Morgan
Ernest Leland b 1 Feb 1887 m Nelle Glee
Clara Jaunita b 25 Jun 1889 m John Devine

I just realized that these would all be my Great Uncle and Aunts.

Charles Thomas Burgus born 1874, died 1949

 I am reposting the wedding photo of Charles to Grace Elizabeth Turner Burgus to tie this lineage altogether. They had 10 children which included my dad Jesse Thomas Burgus born 1918, died 2000.

This is getting to be long but I should be posting the family of 10, but it is in a previous posting. If you are curious as to what 10 family members look like click here. I have posted a lot of different photos of them when they were younger.

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A new found photo, postcard......

I received this from my Cousin Bob Brown a few weeks ago.  I was so surprised to see it as I didn't know that it even existed.  It is a very high quality photo of my Grandfather LeRoy Martin Brown and Grandmother Mabel Zella Wheeler Brown.  It is their wedding photo and I have the portrait form of it in a frame.  It is seen on the sidebar of this blog.


My mom had always had the framed wedding photo and I hadn't thought about it before but when my grandfather passed away in 1937 my mom was still in high school.  A few years later she was married and my grandmother remarried.  I assume that my grandmother didn't think she could hang her first wedding photo in her house when she remarried so she gave it to her daughter for safe keeping.

I really like the clarity of the photo and how you can see all the details of the shoes and clothing. I wasn't able to do that with my oval framed photo.

The photo is actually a postcard.  I recognized my Grandmother's handwriting on the back.  She was good to share the dates so I could verify my records.  As a footnote to all of this, I have the wedding dress and bow and bracelet that is shown in the photo.  My oldest niece Stacia has the necklace as my mom gave it to her many years ago.

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Three generations......

Buried at the Union Cemetery, in the country in Union County, Iowa are my  Great Grandparents Charles Burgus, d. 1898, and Elizabeth Ries Burgus. b.1847, d.1911.  I think it is interesting that they died 13 years apart and that the same stone has been given different treatment with the writing of information. I want to visit this cemetery sometime as Charles Burgus has some writing below his name that I want to know.  The two of them had 13 children.  My dad Jesse T. Burgus is standing in the photo, the third generation of those buried there.

One of the 13 children was a son named Charles Thomas Burgus.  That confused me when I was young as the great grandfather and grandfather had the very same name.  He was the chosen one to be named after his dad.  My grandmother's standing in the photo in her wedding dress.  She was Grace Elizabeth Turner Burgus.  The photo is coming from a locally published centennial book of Murray, Iowa made in 1968.  It is a low resolution publication and I can't bring the photo into a sharper form with my photoshop.

I can't screw up the dates on this one as it is sandblasted into granite.  They are buried on top of the hill at the Murray, Iowa Cemetery.  Grace Burgus had parents with the name of Turner, and her mother was an Abernathy.  I have found some interesting reading among my parents things about  Abernathy's as they helped to settle Idaho before it was a state and they lived among the native American Indians. They lived in Slurbie Valley somewhere in Idaho.

Sepia Saturday has helped me to touch the tip of the iceberg.  I have here writings that my parents have received from various relatives and old photos of people that I don't know.  It is just a beginning as I have to get a structured way of recording this started.  I have a few more years to get on it and time will be that I can really dig in to it all.  I have heard verbal tales about Ries', Abernathy's, Turner's, and of course the distant Burgus's.  It makes so much more sense that it ever has before but I do want to take control of it all. But, I still have piles to go and promises to keep. My apologizes to Robert Frost.

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Teasing Ivalea

Instead of showing a very old sepia photo, I have a poor quality color photo of the 60's.  The photo is a good one showing my Grandmother Mabel Brooks with her brothers and their wives.  My grandmother is the second from the right in this photo.  The interesting thing for me of this photo is the prank that is going on while they are posed.  On the right side is Ivalea Wheeler.  She was married to my great Uncle Elva Wheeler and you can see his bald head behind her and he is holding the cigarette.  Behind him is one that I can't identify who his tapping Ivalea on the head with some object, artificial flower or something like that.  As you can see she is turning around wondering who is doing that to her.

The story goes further than this as she is the one who had such flowery language.  At that time in her life she would cuss a blue streak casually in almost any conversation.  I can imagine the hells and damns that are coming out of her mouth right then as someone bonks her on the head. Cussing wasn't unusual once in a while from a few of them but most of that bunch didn't really make it a daily practice. She was the perfect one to tease to get a great reaction. The woman who played Carol Burnett's mother in the tv show "Mama" would be that same character. Later in life, Ivalea mellowed out and was an avid creator of quilts.

On the left, in the front row is Ellen and her husband Weaver Wheeler.  They lived in Iowa Falls, Iowa. The next row back is Lee and his wife Esther Wheeler who farmed in the Macksburg, Iowa area.  I am assuming the guy in the very back on the left is Elga Wheeler and I am assuming his wife is the one not shown standing behind my grandmother. The guy doing the teasing is unknown to me right now but maybe it will come to me later.

Here is the same bunch much earlier in their years.   Elga, Elva, Mabel, Weaver and Lee Wheeler.  One brother also lived in the Des Moines area and left the group behind.  I bet someone can date that car for me and I will know the year.

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Great Grandma Driver........

Late 1920's

The longer the time passes while doing Sepia Saturday, the more I am finding photos of Great Grandmother Carrie Maxson Brown Driver. She was talked a lot about by my mom and also my Grandmother who was her daughter in law. She first married my Great Grandfather William Brown. When he died she remarried a Thomas Jefferson Driver.
I want to do a very thorough blog about her but not today. I just want to share this photo. She is the woman holding a child and pointing to the camera person, probably trying to get the little girl to look toward the camera. Carrie Driver had two sets of family and the second set had the the two daughters which are probably in the picture with their husbands and children. One daughter is not really in sight in the photo The daughters names were Ida and Florence. If I count out the husbands there is an extra guy who must be one of the three sons, either Glen, William or Jesse.

E. T. Sevier

My brother was visiting our Uncle Kenny in Murray, Iowa and he had a portable scanner. Instead of dumpster diving he was doing large photo box diving. He scanned a lot of new ones for us to see of my mom's side of the family. He also scanned some non relatives. The guy above looks like he graduated from high school and he is an unknown, not our family lineage. He could be someone's neighbor's grandson or nephew.  It is a fancy folder presentation and I can not make out the photographer's name embossed on the front. It looks like Gulander. The name Sevier is a French name.

Vettie's Older Son

Another wonderful old photo which is probably a non relative. This is Vettie's older son as it is written on the back. My Aunt Sylvia was from Czechoslovakia and the name of Vettie doesn't seem German or British. I have visited with cousin Bob her son and he doesn't know the origin of it.  I believe this is one of my most favorite old photos of all that I have seen so far.

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The house that Charles built..........

Charles Thomas Burgus, younger

Charles Thomas Burgus, older, died in 1949

I found this photo among my parents things and it is the house that my Grandfather Charles Burgus built. It stood northwest of Murray and was built in the early 1900's. Their first child was born in 1902 so it had to have been built years after that. I don't know that much about the place. They had ten children and they sold it and moved to another farm nearer Murray. The main reason, I was told by family members, was to move closer to town so the older girls could go to high school there. My grandfather actually bought two different farms after he had sold the one on which this house was built.

I have many questions about the place as my grandfather had 12 brothers and sisters and I wonder if any of them help him to build it. I wonder if his own dad, my great grandfather was alive and helped with the job. I really can't believe that he would move out of it but I guess when they moved the older children were moving out and they would be able to go to a smaller house. A lot of these questions will go unanswered as all ten of the children are gone now. The house itself was a traditional style that was built back then but also it reminds me of the ones Sears and Roebuck sold in kit form.


I don't know the date of this photo but it is later in time and newer than the photo above it. This photograph looks like it came from a Kodak camera owned by one of the family.

My first cousin Joan tells me that the house has been moved into the town of Lorimor. I will either have to get in contact with friends in Lorimor, or go over there myself to see if I can find it.

Another task that I realized that I must do is locate some dates of birth and deaths of my Burgus grandparents and great grandparents. I have found so much out about my mom's side this past two weeks that it is overwhelming. I am glad to discover the family tree and it just makes you become more anxious to find more.

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