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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Faces, the early Sixties in Murray, Iowa...........Week 30

Ronald James Burgus, 1941- , my brother who lives in Mesa, Arizona was a 60's kind of guy.  I want to share the high school faces of Murray, Iowa today, starting really back in 1957 going to my brother's class in 1959, their Junior year. They all will be graduating the next year in May of 1960.

Because it is my older brother's class, I kept an eye on all of them and watched them while I was growing up.  My brother is in the top row and a first cousin of mine, Gerald Brown, is on the right of the second row.  Of all my cousins, I feel he was the one who inherited the facial features of my Grandpa Leroy Brown.

Last names names of of few would be Brown, Edwards, Files, Creese, Bustad, Dinham, Bettis, Crittenden, Mathis, Gonseth, Dugger, Jones, Hughs, and Mills.

First names at the time were like Ray, Tim, Merril, Gerald, Barbara, Arlene, Tom, Karen, Linda, Nancy, and Carolee.

Of the history of these members of the  class of 1960, I don't know now so much about them.  I know of three of them that are not alive. One of them is still a close friend to my brother, Ray Files, and the one on the bottom right corner lives in a town near here.

Did you notice the influence of Elvis Presley on this class or maybe James Dean? The three sponsors are all gone now, as the one on the far top left was Mr. Kirby, who actually returned and retired in Murray, Iowa.

A bonus set of pictures are the one here of my brother Rex Thomas Burgus, 1942- , and this could be a photo of him in '58 or '59. He was a sports buff all four years in high school and you can tell that from his tan.  Below was his high school sweetheart. Janet Dugger.

This is a picture of Janet in her homecoming escort dress her freshmen year in high school.  The dress style was typical for quite a few more years into the middle sixties.  Janet did become Rex's wife for 25 years, and they had 3 children while living in California.  They are the statistics of divorce of some high school sweethearts even though some are still very much married today.  Both are still in California today living separate lives. Rex remarried and has two high school girls yet today.

My brother Ron married the year out of his 3 year stint in the service to Julieann Liggitt and they have three grown children today with two grandchildren. He still owns a printing business in Mesa and his one son helps to run it.
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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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