The house on the hill, big pine tree.......

My father bought this house on South Kossuth street in Osceola, Iowa.  It had been abandoned more years than I can guess. The property was willed to the Presbyterian Church in town and there it sat.
My dad had retired from farming and moved to town and decided to build a house.  He found this property and the rest was history.  In 1978 he build a ranch house on this site.  Thankfully he did not take the historic tree.

I have many things that my dad had pulled out of that upstairs. A couple of photo albums and loose photos like the one above.  I have a couple of things that will help me to identify the owners as there was a diary left in the house and some of the pictures have names on them. Very few have full last names but I really have not had time to work on it. 

This being a history blog and a non family history blog, I wanted to share this photo.  It reminds me of the early paintings done by Manet or Degas.  I like the clarity of the photo and the clothing.  I am assuming that these are some of the inhabitants of the house as the photographer was Swearingen of Osceola, Iowa.   I may not have the name correct as the S could be a T or an L.  I have watched a blogger friend in Minnesota dance around these old photos until she found out great details.  I will start dancing but at a later date.  I am thinking that this was taken in the middle 1800's or early 1900's.  Thanks for stopping in today.
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Faces in Iowa......week 27

Anyone who read this blog earlier today, I have had to go in and change it, correct it, as a first cousin of mine had most of the answers as to who they all were.

Grandpa and Grandma Burgus on a visit to Pearl and Mabel Henderson's.

This bundled up bunch is a recent discovery in a box of old photos. I don't know everyone but I date this photo in the early 1930's.  My Aunt Amye is in the foreground center with the belt. She was born in 1915.  I don't even know why the photo was taken as if there had been a special event.

I can see my Aunt Ruby, my dad's sister, on the left side with glasses.  On the right side, the man with the double breasted coat, is her husband Frank Henderson. Frank and Ruby Henderson had two children, first cousins to me, John Henderson and Joan Henderson Callison. They are not in this photo as I don't think they were born yet.

Most of the people in the photo are not my relatives but it is a photo of my grandparents visiting their daughter's, my Aunt Ruby, in-laws.  The women to the left of my Aunt is her mother in-law,  Mabel Henderson. Pearl Henderson, my Aunt's father-in-law is the man in back third man from the right. My Aunt Pauline Burgus and Uncle Carl Burgus is in the photo and one other man who is not identified.  The man on the far right is a man named Harmon Blanchard holding his daughter Helen.  Not a relative of mine but my aunt's in-laws. The little girl in front is an unknown. She could be an aunt to me, but it is not certain.

To help in the identity of my grandparents I cropped out a close view of Grandpa Charles Thomas Burgus and Grandma Grace Elizabeth Turner Burgus.  They had moved from a farm south of Murray and bought this house in Murray.

Editors correction.....

In this location was a picture of a house that I thought was the same house as seen above. I removed it as it was wrong. My first cousin Joan, the daughter of the Aunt Ruby I mentioned above corrected my insights and guess on the picture.  It turns out that the majority of the photo is of my Aunt Ruby's in-laws with a few of her brothers and sister-in-laws on my Burgus side of the family.  The house was located south of Murray, in the country, a few miles and was owned by my Aunt Ruby's in-laws.   They lost the house to the depression and had to move to another farm that they owned. This was very common at that time when you owned more than the times could allow you to afford.

To continue with my faces of Iowa theme, I wanted you to see this Daily Vacation Bible School class. It was my mom's class and she proudly writes on the back that they all had perfect attendance. It was taken in 1948 in front of the church's parsonage with the church build on the right.  My brother Rex would have been six years old and I believe he is the blond guy in bib overalls, second from the left. All of these  people are about 68 years old now.

Another earlier shot of rural Iowa would have been taken maybe ten to twenty years earlier.  I at first thought this was my mom's class that she taught in country school but the age of the photo may make it actually the age of her or her brothers in school which would have been in the 1925s or later. You can see the coal shed or out house in the background.

One last photo of my brother Ron squeezed in onto the lap of our cousin Jerry Ramsey. From my research of the ages of cousins, Jerry was  four years older than Ron, so it would make them one and five years old. The photo is taken in the town of Murray about four houses west of the Burgus's home.

This is my other Grandma Brooks home, mom's side of the family, in which Jerry's family rented the upstairs.  Because Jerry's parents Leonard and Amye Burgus Ramsey lived upstairs, my mom was introduced to my dad Jesse Burgus, Amye's brother.

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Sepia Saturday #26

I found another photo of my Uncle Kenny.  He always looks so cool in his photos.  He really was around way before James Dean.  That farm that this is taken at is a familiar background to a lot of my photos of that era.  I don't know where it is but I will ask my Uncle when I see him.  He is 93 years old now and lives in Murray, Iowa.  The place looks a lot junky and they were poor even though they have automobiles.  I don't have any way to date this photo but I bet car people can date the car for me.

I keep finding photos for the first time in my life and it is exciting. I am the young one in this photo. My mom lost a child right after I was born, so photos of me were very few and far between. I bet there are a dozen in existence and all of them are blurry. The photo says that it was taken at the Ray Woods farm. I cleared up the photo a little with photoshop so the two guys on the right look better than the original.  I didn't come out of the fog.

By my age in the photo I am assuming this is 1951. I was born in March of 1950 and this looks like a year later.  It is taken on the farm where my Dad was renting the land.  If it is 1951 that makes the first guy, Ron, in the hat, at the age of 10.  My brother Rex is probably 9 who is holding me.  My brother Dwight would be 4 in this picture.

My mom liked to tell the story that since my folks were share cropping to pay their rent. The landowners Ray Woods and wife said that Larry was also half their boy too.

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Two eras and two mysteries.......

This first photo was a postcard photo that was labeled Marie Brown, Lewiston, Illinois.  My mother has written on the postcard saying that it is my Grandfather Leroy Brown.  The girl is an unknown to me.  All written history says that my grandfather and his brother were the only children born before their dad, my great grandfather had died.  Leroy was 3 years old at the time.  His mother remarried and he and his brother became half brothers to a family with the last names of Driver. My mother said on the side of the postcard that the Marie Brown was her namesake as my mom had Marie as her middle name.  It makes me wonder if she died young as I have never heard of anything about her ever.

I have work to do to find out if it could have been Leroy's niece, his older brother's daughter. I know nothing about that brother. but it would have been the only way she could have had the last name of Brown.  In the photo my grandfather looks very young and is still living in Illinois.  It is said that when that family left Illinois that they moved to one of the Dakota's where they experienced a drought.  So they traveled to Iowa.  I can date the photo at about 1880's as my Grandfather married my Grandmother in 1913.   Leroy died in 1937.

A bonus picture from American culture.  I don't know who is in the photo.  I suspect it is two of my Great Uncle Lee Wheeler's kids.  He had one boy and three girls. What I like is the little girl with all her dolls and the little boy with all his Roy Rogers attire and banjo.  The photo says January 1948.  I too will work on this one to find out who it actually is. I really think they are Madison County relatives, cousins.

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The John and Iva connection.

Today's blog is a little review of what I have written about before but the pictures are not the same.  My grandmother was Mabel Wheeler Brown.  Her husband Leroy Brown died in 1937.  The above picture is a few years later after his death as she is pictured here with my mom Zella Brown on the left.  I think it is probably 1939 as my mom was probably still living with Mabel as they are standing in front of their house in Murray. Mom was teaching country school near there at the time. That house sits on the exact opposite end of the block of where my Grandma and Grandpa Burgus lived for a few years later.
In the back row on the left is Kenneth Brown and beside him is his brother Marvin Brown.  In the front on the lright is Fern Brown, Marvin's wife.  Fern die of TB probably ten years later, leaving Marvin with four kids to raise by himself.  So they are my Uncle Kenny who is still alive and Uncle Marvin and Aunt Fern, who are not alive.   Grandma died in 1973 and mom died in 2008.

In the early 40's my Grandmother remarried to Oscar Brooks pictured above.  That made her total lineup of names to be Mabel Zella Wheeler, Brown, Brooks.  I knew her as Grandma Brooks all of my life.  He was a farmer who share owned his land with his son.  Oscar was a widower of a wife for many years just as my Grandmother was a widow from a marriage of 20 some years.
The marriage itself was a marriage of necessity.  My Grandmother did learn to like him, maybe love him, but she needed to be supported.  He needed the company and a wife.  They were married over 23 years until his death in 1963.

Oscar was my step grandfather but he was the only grandfather that I ever knew.  He would sit in his rocking chair and watch baseball games on the tv and lean over and spit his chewing tobacco spit into a tall can on the side of his chair.  He did like kids to a certain degree but he was a gruff man.  He didn't give my grandmother money to spend so she raised chickens and sold eggs to have spending money.  She sew all of her clothes and worked hard as a farmers wife.

As a little journey off the beaten path, here is another connection to my family.  Oscar had a sister named Iva.  She is the one of the John and Iva that became close grandparents too me also.  They were living in an early century home and we would visit them often.  John and Iva really liked my mom and our family. Their kids all lived out of state.  They are the ones who gave me so many antique things.  I have furniture, stone jars,  metal cans and antique toys that came from them  They were avid readers and had been teachers, even tough John made his living as a farmer.  They are pictured above with a set of their grandchildren who live somewhere in the Western states.  They didn't have a tv until their last few years of marriage.  They loved watching Bonanza. They live South of a town called Hopeville, Iowa about three miles. Hopeville is a blog in itself.

The gave me a love of history as they were living historians.  They lost a son in the second war.  They loved to travel and as you can see in the photo they had a 1957 Ford Fairlane.  It was a two door hardtop and was almost pink in color.  They would travel out west and share their stories of the places they visited and the unusual experiences that they would encounter.  People who follow my Larry's Creative Zone, know that I mention the John and Iva connection.  I am always posting something that has the connection to them.  I am still in contact with one of their sons, Loren Horton, who is retired and lives in Iowa City with his wife.  He is just as interesting as his parents as he was one of the main directors of the Iowa Historical Administration for quite a few years.

As I continue to blog the family stories, I can see that I need to write down all the dates of deaths and births in one location.  I was very frustrated to know that I did have those dates on other photos but I didn't want to dig for them.  It will become a discipline eventually to do the right thing when I discover things, and write them down.

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As a footnote to my last week's blog, my cousin pointed out that the classroom photo had to be taken inside of a larger town school.  It shows tall ceilings and doorways to hallways.  It could have been taken there in Osceola in one of their older school buildings or even from the Murray school.  It was a good observation made by my Cousin Joan.

No answers, just questions.........

The photo I share here is a totally unidentified, unknown and probably never will be identified.  My father tore down a house that had been vacant for 26 years.  Inside was found various things that the last of the family did not remove. A Victorian styled upright piano, cupboards full of kitchen things, a couple of trunks with various abandoned personal items.  Among the discarded was this photo of a country school scene of somewhere here in the United States.  When you gaze at the different faces, you wonder what countries that there families had migrated from to the United States.  This classroom is far older that the era that my mom taught which was in 1938.   I am not good a dating these things but I am sure that it is closer to being in the 20's or earlier.

There is one teacher in the back of the room and a picture of some building on the back chalk board.  I also like the number 10 on the other board.

I do have some of the names of the family that lived in this house and someday I will research them.  In the kitchen was found a diary by one of the women that lived there with some names.  I also have two old photo albums with a few names inside.

Another mysterious picture that I have here is a car filled with two passengers and others that you can see through the windows.  I am thinking this is my Uncle Kenny whom I blogged about earlier.  I just saw him this week and he is in his early 90's.  The woman in the back seat closest to us looks like my mom, but it could be my grandmother.  I thought it was a picture of interest to share.

This photo has some people in it that I know.  My Dad Jesse T. Burgus is the man sneaking up on th two boys.  I am thinking that the older boy is my oldest brother Ron J. Bugus.  The younger one is unknown to me.  The little girl is a cousin of mine but again I don't have any idea at this point. I had two older Uncles of the family that had daughters and I am thinking that it could be one of their daughters.
I have a first cousin who will help me out with these as time goes by and I will return and edit my Sepia Saturday.

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Uncle Carl, Aunt Pauline, and son Keith.......

Uncle Carl Owen Burgus born December 29, 1904 in Murray, Iowa.  He is my dad's second to the oldest brother who was 15 years older than my dad.  Carl had many different careers from farming, to business owner of an implement store.  He and his wife took a trek out to Colorado to find a future, but ended up back at Murray, Iowa, where he owned  a large building on main street. A larger part of the building had been a dealership for Ford Model T's.  When he bought it he lived in a part of it and rented the rest out to different businesses.  His last endeavor was to open a laundry mat on main street.

Carl was married to Pauline Combs and they had one son.  She was from the Des Moines area. I think her parents died when she was young, and she had relatives who lived in Murray.  I believe that couple was all she claimed to have.  Pauline spent the large part of her life battling arthritis. She spent her last years in a wheel chair.  I can't date the above photo but it is at the big Burgus family reunion of my Great Grandfather Charles Burgus and his brothers and sisters families.  None of the 14 were still alive at that time but the different families would fill the park and bring lots of food to fill long tables.

There only son was born in 1928.  His name was Keith Burgus.  He is our one noted tragic story in our family as he drowned in a lake, near Thayer, Iowa.  He tried to swim across the lake from side to side and did not make it. One of the sad things about Keith's death was that he rode his bike to Thayer Lake with some friends that day and his parents didn't know that he had gone there.

He died on July 20, 1944 at the age of 16.  I was not born until six years later so all that I knew was the casual comments made by my parents about the time he drowned.  I understand that his being an only child and 16 made him a little bit head strong and that he may not have taken warnings or direction about the things he would be doing in life.

I found this photo among my parents things and was surprised to see it. I actually thought there was only one single picture of him. The only picture that I had ever remembered taken of  him was one that Carl and Pauline had sitting on their bookcase in their apartment.  He is wearing a leather jacket and is standing and holding onto his bicycle.  It was a little bit haunting to see it there, not ever to have known him and to know the circumstances behind his death.  I would love to have a copy of that photo but all relatives on that side of the family are now gone.  I will have to ask the cousins to see if it is out there.


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