Faces of Long Ago..........

 

Standing on the corner, holding his hat, and spending time with his wife while having the photo taken. The photo comes from a big velvet photo album that was rescued from a rundown house in Osceola, Iowa.

I am thinking this is the same guy with the uniform of a Mason. It is a studio shot also.  I don't understand the Christian crosses on the sleeves and hat but the whole outfit is actually a standard suit with all the added accessories, making it look like a fancy coat. Maybe it is a different lodge that he belonged to as I know there were many of them in which whole families would join.

A young man sports a great mustache in a photo taken at the same photographers.

So this is not the same guy and  he is older.  The thing that I find fascinating is that it may be the same kind of tie. The attached earlobe of this guy makes him not related to the guy above him.  The above guy could have married into the family of this family.  I don't know if I will ever know.

I have lost my way from men with facial hair.  I will stop with this guy with his wife.  I do think he is the same guy as the first two photos at the top as his mustache and beard are so similar and this photo too was from the same album.  Judging from the age of the house in which this album was rescued, I think the time could be in the late 1800's. There was one calling card with a woman's name of Jackson.  I know that it is a long shot as the woman could be a sister to the women in the picture or a sister of the guy with the beard. I have yet to get to a web site to find out this family's name and the history of the people who lived there.  I see on other web sites that people like to use findagrave.com in this country and one can find out a lot about people by searching through the records of all those buried in cemeteries. I need to take one of the names from the album and seek out those buried in the Osceola cemetery.

Those who like to see the different postings from the Sepia Saturday group just click here to go to the main site.

This Old House.............

The things that I like about a house is the exterior decoration. I know that they come in many shapes and sizes and the older the house in most cases means there is more character to the house.  My 109 year old house sucked me in for the buy because of the bay window.  It is far more decorated than the rest of the house but it does give it a special look to make the old farmhouse a styled house special.  In the background you can see a guys 1970's ranch style kitchen addition on a very old house that doesn't match the beauty of my bay window.

 

A four square styled farm house was built by my grandpa Burgus in the early 1900's.  The house still stands but was moved from it original site north of Murray, Iowa to a small town of Lorimor, Iowa. 

As an addition to the above house, here is the photo of my Grandpa and Grandma who built and lived in the house with their 10 children.  They are mostly grown here and my grandparents moved to a smaller house probably 20 years later after it was built.  They sold the farm and moved to another, in which they lost in the depression.

A diversion  from the theme is this house that must have been a church or a school and now is a personal residence.  It would cost a lot of money to restore it and I bet that they are doing it a little at a time.  This building sits in Maine.  It is on Mt. Dessert island near Bar Harbor, Maine.

An old house that had been abandoned for years.  It sat in the town of Osceola, Iowa. It had the appearance of a common house but the interior showed a lot of loving carpentry work.  The kitchen had many built in cupboards. The parlor had hand made paneling, each piece lovingly fitting together to make a wall full of 1800's paneling. The wrap around porch was probably well used.  The two chimneys tell me that the kitchen stove used the left chimney and the other end of the house was heated by wood burners. The house is gone now but the large tree is still standing.

My grandmother Burgus stands in front of the single story house in Murray, Iowa.   I can date this photo as my oldest brother was born in 1940.  The window is full of flowers and cactus and still was when I came around in the 50's.

The house still stands with the bay window that  held my grandmothers plants. It still has it's fancy porch with decorations. This was the last house that my grandparents lived in while the second house from the top was their first. The moved to two different farm houses before they came to live in town.

My maternal grandmother lived a block away from the house above, yes in Murray, Iowa.  My mom lived here with my Grandmother Brooks after graduating from high school and during her years of teaching country school. I have many family pictures taken from in front of this house. My Uncle Kenny stands in front of the house.  My reposted blog of last weeks Sepia Saturday shows on the first photo my two oldest brothers, when they were very young sitting outside on the ground in front of the porch.

The house still stands today also but one owner decided to tear off the second story and turned it into a 1950's Cape Cod looking house.

Check out others who are participating in Sepia Saturday by clicking here.

My Family......

The Sepia Saturday bloggers are celebrating the fact that they are still being on board after 199 posted blog weeks. To remember the past as well as to honor it, we have continued to post pictures and words for everyone to enjoy.

This is a reposted blog from the year 2010.  I joined the Sepia Saturday group in February of 2010.  It is entitled "My Family..." which is a posting of everyone before I was born.

My older brothers doing their thing in the front yard.

Ronald James Burgus looks into the camera while his younger brother Rex Thomas Burgus checks out the person taking the photo.  While my dad was in the service in Washington D.C. and then in Europe, these guys and mom lived with Grandma Brown, mom's mother.  This is in Murray, Iowa and I suspect the year is 1945.  Ron would be 16 months older and I think he looks close to being four years old here. The house in which they are sitting still stands today, except some time after they lived there the owner removed the second story and made it look like a ranch house.

Back row: Zella Marie Brown Burgus, Dwight Burgus and Jesse Thomas Burgus

Front row: Rex and Ron Burgus

After dad returned from the war,  Dwight Lee  was born in Feb. 1947.  At first my dad worked as a mechanic, repairing tractors.  He then made his move to become a farmer.  They rented a farm in which dad would give up half of the crop for the rent. This photo is taken out on that farm, south of Murray, near a little town called Hopeville.  Someday I will blog about Hopeville. 

Click on the picture and enjoy the chicken in the background. One also can see the photographer and friend is in the picture by checking out the shadow.

 Dwight, Rex, the border collie, and Ron

This photo was taken out on the rented farm in 1949 or 50. It was south of Murray, Iowa. I was born in 1950 and I think Dwight looks almost three here. I could have been born by then but I really didn't remember living on that farm except for a few times when I was three years old. One story I have heard from the family about the dog was that he was so protective of his family and no one else was welcomed on the property. A border collie is such a loyal dog and he was lost when we moved to a new farm in 1953.

Today Ron owns a printing company in Mesa, Arizona and Rex co-owns with two partners a company that make trailers for recreation vehicles in California.  Dwight started his working life as a construction worker, working as a contractor for building companies in Mesa, Arizona.  As his addictions continued in his life he demoted himself to being a drywall installer and then a part time carpenter. He had to start living with my parents back in Osceola, Iowa in his later years.  My father died in 2000, age 82 and my mom passed away in 2008, age 89 years, three months after her death my brother Dwight died. He was 61 years old.

As I create these blogs I find it difficult to edit and cut them to a reasonable size.  Of course I know so much more about this era and I can't begin to touch it.  And yet it is satisfying to put it down and to share it.  The photos do speak volumes and that is what makes Sepia Saturday so fulfilling. If I am weak in spirit on the day that I write, the photos help me save face.  I do so enjoy being a part of this process and have grown so much in my ability to observe and to express the past world around me. 

 Click above

Click on the icon above and visit all of the ones who participate in Sepia Saturday.  They too are reposting on this day.  It will be a special blog from their past blogs.  It is a classic selection of our best of our best. Thanks for stopping by today. 

A Quandry.........

The entire facebook group from Murray, Iowa are all in a tizzy.  What they thought that it was, isn't. An older photo of a drugstore on main street of Murray was identified as the Coleman's Drug Store.  It does look a little bit like it but it isn't,  The great nephew of the owner of that store says it is not his uncles place of business.  I actually think it is the store across the street, Power's Drug.  There were actually two drug stores, no pharmacists worked in either store, while I was in high school.  The 60's was the era that they both were in business and one of them could have originally looked like this.  I remember they both had back doors to the store rooms. One of them had built in shelves with sliding glass doors that would hold asprin and other cold medicines.  Laxatives and lotions for bee bites and things like that lined the shelves.

There is a guy sitting there with his suitcase which tells me he is waiting for a train. The woman in the back must be cleaning the tables.  The window at the back would have gone to the alley which makes it the other drugstore.  Both places of business did have swirling seats at the counter when I was young and those could have been added later of course.

All in all it is a fun photo.  It is a piece of history that has been captured in time.  What time we don't know but it looks like all of those kind of business back in the early 1900's.  The fun part will be if the folks my age will eventually have a person speak up and tell us the real identity of the business in Murray, Iowa.

Check out the other bloggers who participate in Sepia Saturday by clicking here.  You will enjoy visiting them from all over the world.

Murray, Iowa.........

Murray, Iowa was incorporated in 1880.  Its largest population was 876 people during the 1920s.  It has shrunk in size throughout the years and now is back up to around 700 people. Murray was my hometown even though I actually was from the farm.  My ancestors met and married each other surround this town and Germans and Brits connected to created large families.  Burgus, Abernathy, Turner, Reis are a few of the names I have in my family tree from around Murray.  These were all from my dad's side as my mom's side came from the Lorimor, Iowa.

The location of the tracks are still the same today as the Amtrak now runs on these tracks. The tracks go all the way to California.  The depot is long gone.  Even so the history of the building has so many stories of people who were killed on this exact location.  Older people would walk along the crossing next the building and would look the one way but not see the train coming from the other direction.   I actually had a distant cousin that was killed on this track probably 50 years ago.  I know all that seems to be confusing as I too think that they should hear a train coming.  I do know during my youth an older lady was hit there but she was probably not knowing where she was and what to look for while outside or should I say confused.

The train station was torn down in the late 60's. The grainery in the background is also gone. The whole set up was for shipping of grain and also was the mail train. A person could post a card in Murray in the morning and the person in the next town could receive it.  They could then reply to the card and send it back to Murray in the afternoon on a returning train.

I am familiar with this main street as it was all standing when I was growing up in the area.  The corner fron building became the post office in later years.  It looks like it could be a barber shop in the photo. A grocery store sat next to it.  The post office is still there today and the grocery store closed a few years back.  The next two sets of buildings are not standing now.  I am assuming fire took them out.

This building always fascinated me.  It sat empty most of my life as a youth.  I never really noticed that the lodge was above the store until I saw this photo.  I always seemed like a large building to me and I never understood why they couldn't keep business going it. I do know it would be hard in a small town.

My uncle Carl owned the building in the foreground. The photo was taken I believe in the late sixties.  The major section of the buildings between the two buildings burned down in 1967. It had a movie theater there plus an empty store and a closed drug store. If you wanted to find the building in the top photo you can't as this building was added on the main street later after the photo was taken.

 Uncle Carl bought the building before I was born in the late 40's.  The first door was an entrance to a fancy barber shop with two barbers running the place.  The next set of windows shows where my Uncle and Aunt lived in an apartment.  They lived basically on main street with Venetian blinds separating them from the people walk down the street.  I remember my Aunt Pauline watching every move of everyone going by that set of windows.  The next set of windows  and door had another barber shop and then a laundromat.  The whole building originally was a dealership for  Model T's and the windows were display areas for cars.  The building was large with the garage being in the back of it.  I remember a cafe originally was in the place of the laundromat.

Memory lane today for me as I have borrowed these photos from a friend on facebook.  I have one more photo that will be a blog in itself to come in the future.

Thanks for stopping in and visit others who are blogging on SEPIA SATURDAY today.  Just click here to visit blogs from all over the world.

Living The Past........

A sepia photo of the Sidney Rodeo in Sidney, Iowa.  I lived in Sidney four years starting out as a very young inexperienced teacher.  Sidney sits on the bottom southwest corner of the pretending to be an Iowa town even though it wished it was in Nebraska or Missouri.  Sidney is a long ways from Des Moines but is very close to Council Bluffs, Iowa and Omaha, Nebraska.  As a matter of fact Kansas City, Missouri and also the part of the city in Kansas is a close distance.

I have lived in Minnesota in the summers for many years and been at home on the farm in southern Iowa most of my growing up years and I find each experience leaving memories of such different ways of life.  While living in Sidney I was in an upstairs apartment of an old Victorian house.  Out the back west window you could see the hill that was steep and deep.  The town was built on top of a semi bluff hill even though the bluffs along the Missouri River were a few miles west.  The whole bluff scene of traveling up and down them was memorable.

 I also lived near the geese and duck migration and the thousands of birds flew overhead at night as well as landed over in the swampy river bottoms to the west. I taught in a school once a week west of Sidney, in Percival.  It was a small town with its small school still standing.  The floods of a couple years back has almost wiped out the entire town now. Cowboy decorations and western themes are everywhere in the town even though it is an Iowan town.  The court house in this county seat town was originally blown up during the Civil War and the present one was built to replace the original one.  I don't quite understand why being so close to the Mason Dixon line.  I am assuming they knew that the Sidney people were Iowans and  were probably antislavery citizens even though they really were almost Missourians.

The rodeo itself has evolved from its once branding season, roundup time and breaking of wild horses.  Today it is a regulated and many ruled sport. Sidney is one of the recognized rodeos where barebackers can come and gain points in their national score.  When they add to there point scores throughout the year they finally tally it all up to see who was the best cowboy for the year.  The town itself centered its four seasons around the rodeo.  They make a lot of money from it as well as follow a town tradition of parades and festival time.  The high school band was named the Sidney Cowboy Rodeo Band.  They wore their red and white costumes and brimming white cowboy hats in all of their marching events.  They practiced marching and playing with great vigor and zeal.

I see from research that the marching band is now called the Sidney Pride Marching Band and they do competitions during the year.  I bet the cowboy hats return to their heads when the rodeo season comes around.






Others around this world are creating blogs for SEPIA SATURDAY.  You can visit the many great blogs by clicking here to see what others have on their blogs today.

Thanks for stopping by my post.

School's of the Past.........

Iowa was covered with country schools less than 55 years ago.  I don't remember enough of the details to state facts but country schools would be positioned throughout townships.  I think that the school  had an acre of land and there was one teacher who managed the building and the kids. I believed they were placed often enough around the area that a student could walk to school even if it was two miles or more.


 My mom was a country school teacher until she married in 1940.  All ages attended the school and some kids who reached a certain age would just quit going to school even if they were passing.  Farm boys would stay home to help with the field work.  Eighth grade was the last grade one could attend in a country school.

The photo above comes from a facebook page that belongs to Bill Fleming, a former Murray High graduate.  After completing country school, students could go to a town school as long as the parents could find a way for them to get there. Busing did become available but then that did shut down country schools. Bill's photo shows the country school of Troy number 7. He didn't really say that he was in the photo but he must be there.  It was a school that was north of a school that my brothers attended Troy number 9, ( I am guessing the number). By the early 50's the country schools were closing because buses were traveling around picking up kids for the Murray school. I do remember country school auctions where they would sell out everything inside the building.

I can identify  three of the members of the photo from Troy Number 7. as my brother's ex-wife is the tallest girl in front, Janet, dark curly hair, and her brother, Max is behind her.  The young man with glasses Monty was also in one of my bothers classes in later years of high school.

In 1953 my parents bought a farm a few miles away from where their three sons then went to country school.  They moved into an area where they were required to go to the Murray public school and they were bussed from our home.  The first few years the dirt road that we lived on made it impossible for buses to reach the house in rainy season. Dad took them with a tractor, neighbor took them on her Fordson tractor and some times the neighbor girl road her horse along with the tractor out to a gravel road to meet a bus.   I started kindergarten when the road was still dirt but by first grade and new gravel road was built. I do remember riding on that Fordson tractor hood out to the gravel road.

Above is a 1947 photo of the Woodward High School study hall room filled with students and staff.
One of the girls in this photo did eventually become the study hall monitor in this very room when she was in her 50's. This is the school district that worked for 31 years and am still part time working as a substitute teacher.
 
The room has the entire high school seated at desks plus teachers posed for an all school picture.  The buildings illustration shows the same four windows on the top left side of the building.  The year is 1947,  It is amazing that the entire four grades of high school are in this photo.
It is the high school study hall room that took up the entire width of the building.  You could look out the east or west windows to check the weather as well as the south side too. I worked a study hall one period a day in that room back in the 1980's. My one oldest son had study hall in that room up until 1992.

This other photo is also taken in 1947 at the Woodward High School.  It is taken in one of the classrooms on the northwest end of the building.  Notice how high the ceilings are and also the paneling. I at first thought that this was on a stage but I notice one can see the ceiling.  It is a photo of the cast for a school play. The room is on the main floor of the building and the panels are covering the wall because the windows were all removed when a gym addition was added to the west of the building. I am sure that behind the panels one could have found four bricked in windows.  Knowing the way the building was created that the piano had to be taken up a half flight of stairs to be put in this room.

The building itself didn't stand 100 years as a new building was put into its place in 1993.  The structure seemed creaky but I don't believe that it would have ever fallen down.  History in the United States seems to show that we tear things down readily to update facilities rather than remodel and recreate the present old structures. The building was a 1906 building and was removed in less than 80 years.

I wished I had more time to blog history as it is fascinating to me.  I learn so much from many of my Sepia Saturday blogger friends from all over the world.  If you want to check out other historic posts from all over the world, click here to see the many participates on Sepia Saturday.