And So It Is Told….

                 My great grandfather Jesse O Burgess

 

                                   The Chosen                      

 

We are the chosen.  In each family there is one who seems called to find the ancestors.  To put flesh on their bones and make them live again. To tell the family story and to feel that somehow they know and approve.  Doing genealogy is not a cold gathering of facts but, instead, breathing life into all who have gone before.  We are the story tellers of our tribe.  All tribes have one.  We have been called, as it were, by our genes. Those who have gone before cry out to us: Tell our story.  So, we do.  In finding them, we somehow find ourselves.  How many graves have I stood before and cried?  I have lost count.  Hoe many times have I told my ancestors, “You have a wonderful family; you would be proud of us”. How many times have I walked up to a grave and felt somehow there was love there for me? I cannot say. It goes beyond documenting facts. It goes to who I am, and why I do the things I do. It goes to seeing a cemetery about to be lost forever to weeds and indifference and saying – I can’t let this happen!  The bones are bones of my bones and flesh of my flesh.  It goes to doing something about it.  It goes to our pride in what our ancestors were able to accomplish.  How they contributed to what we are today. It goes to respecting their hardships and losses, their never giving in or up, their resoluteness to go on and build a life fort heir family.  It goes to deep pride that the fathers fought and some died to make and keep us a nation.  It goes to a deep and immense understanding that they were doing it for us. It is of equal pride and love that our mothers struggled to give us birth, without them we could not exist, and so w love each one, as far back as we can reach.  That we might be born who we are.  So, as a scribe called,  I tell the story of my family.  It is up to that one called in the next generation to answer the call and take my place in the long line of family storytellers. That is why I do family genealogy, and that is what calls those young and old to step up and restore memory or greet those who we had never known before…

 

by Della M. Cummings Wright; rewritten by her granddaughter Dell Jo Ann McGinnis Johnson; edited and reworded by Ton Dunn, 1943."

A Long Time Ago….

My cousin was looking thru some old things of her mom’s and found this receipt from my great grand uncle.  He was a home decorator and contractor.  This is a receipt from a home he remolded in 1922…

Can you imagine????  Working for 85 cents an hour?????  Look at the phone number!  Work was hard then just like it is now.

My Aunt Goldie, the woman who kept this never threw anything away, and I am so thankful that she didn’t!  She also wanted future generations to know the connection and so she wrote this on the back;;;

Charles Reinhard was William’s brother and my great grandfather.  And she tried to put a little something like this on all of the items she kept.  Thank you Aunt Goldie, for thinking of all of us!

I am going to see if this family has descendants in Eau Claire or elsewhere so I can share it with them!

Happy New Year!  

A Victorian Christmas

 

I have no photos of my parents as children at Christmas, in fact I have no baby photos of my Mom at all….my grandparents were too poor to have any real photos of any of their children as babies.  It makes me sad as the maternal grandparents were very well off….but such is life.

My Dad’s Dad was a Barber…enough said about their income….but I do own a few of him as a baby, just not at the holidays.

This is a photo of Severin “Socky” Westlund at Christmas in 1915.  This was taken at my great grandparents hose.  They were Zachrias and Mary Severson.  Socky is just 7 years old…. I wish I could see more of these!

I just love the walls and that photo on the wall….wonder where that ended up?  His toys are behind him and he looks way too serious for a boy of 7. 

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to still have these great vintage toys?

I remember Socky very well and with a lot of  love, he was a wonderful, kind, soft spoken man with a great sense of humor!  I just wish I had been interested in the family before he passed….again, if you have family members that you can talk to…do it!!!!!  You only get that chance  for those wonderful stories and tidbits while they are with us…

Merry Christmas to all and to all a goodnight…as Santa would say…:)

 

Sandy

The Meaning of Memorial Day

I have always know that Memorial Day is a day to remember those who died during an American war, but I did some checking and found out how it started…..

The day was originally know as “Decoration Day” because the day was dedicated to the Civil War dead, when mourners would decorate the gravesites.

The holiday was first widely observed May 30, 1868, when 5000 people helped decorate the gravesites of 20,000 Union and Confederate solders buried at Arlington National Cemetery. After World War 1, the observance was widened to honor the fallen from all American wars- and in 1971 Congress declared Memorial Day a national holiday.

Please try to remember the real meaning of this day when you are with your loved ones and take a moment this weekend to really be thankful to all those who have died for our way of life!

Images all courtesy of Google

Jessie Emilia Emma Reinhard

I would like to introduce you to a very special lady….Her name was “Aunt Jesse”, I only knew her as that as I was just a child….Aunt Jessie was my maternal grandmother’s sister.  There were three Reinhard sisters:

The baby in the middle is my grandmother Josephine ( born in 1891) , the child on the left is Mae Lillian “Mamie” and the oldest on the right is Jessie. 

The family story is that Jesse got Scarlet Fever as a child and her fever went too high and she came out of it mentally “different”.   She lived with her parents Charles and Amelia Reinhard her whole life, and when they both passed within 48 hours of each other she came to live at my grandparents house.  She never got past about 10 years of age….so to me a 8 or 9 year old she seemed perfectly normal!   She loved puzzles, she did hundreds of them and they were all in my grandparents attic. .  My grandmother was rough on her sometimes or so it seemed to me as a youngster,  and I would get cross at Grandma, I hated it when I thought she was being mean.  Now as an adult I understand what a sacrifice my grandparents made in taking her in, and how it was like having a forever child.

In the few photos I have of Jesse as a child, she has a somewhat different look on her face, but she was never excluded from anything! That was not the normal for mentally challenged children in the early 1900’s and I applaud my great grandparents for not putting her away, like so many children were that were afflicted mentally in some form or another in that time era.

Above photo, L to R, Jessie, Mamie and Josephine.

This wonderful photo is at a Halloween Party, Jessie is the beautiful women in the white right in the middle, The woman sitting down on the far right is my grandmother.

 

 

Jessie is in the far right.

 

The photo that means the most to me is this one……

This is how I remember my sweet Aunt Jessie….always with one of those very worn, very soft aprons on and that sweet smile…..

Jessie outlived both of my grandparents and ended up in a nursing home in Eau Claire, she lived to the ripe old age of 82.  Having very little of life’s stresses,  Jessie was able to outlive all of her family. I don’t know if that was a good thing or not, but it was how it happened.   As long as Jessie had her coloring books, crayons and puzzles her world was good…. I miss her a great deal some days…..

My Storeroom surprise

My husband and I decided it was time to clean out out storeroom once more!  I am such a little hoarder, and sometimes I just have to get rid some of it! 

One of the last items we got to find,  under all sorts of bins and boxes was My Dad’s World War Two storage locker, in the top were the original stuffed Care Bears of my youngest sons nursery from 16 years ago ( see what I mean about being a bit of a hoarder?)  but I was taken aback some when I lifted the tray…..

I was so shocked to see my Dad’s uniform and jacket!

This was most likely his dress uniform for the National Guard,  he was in the Guard before WWII for a short time ( The Horse Calvary) and once the war was over up into the 1960’s until he got a medical discharge for Diabetes. I am sure that was a very hard day for my Dad.

I would like to know what the patch is, perhaps artillery???? I will have to ask some of the vets in my park here. There were tiny holes all through the pants and jacket…

There were no insects in my storage room, but I am sure somewhere along the line from Ohio to here, there was something munching on them!

This is my Dad on the left and his friend from Eau Claire, Laurnie Miles on the right, they were buddies forever!

Check out this rifle, my brother still has it….we think this is in Alaska….

What just really touched me though, was the items in the white bag…..

A wonderful pillow sham that My dad must have got my Mom, …. it is silky and the fringe is beautiful, what a wonderful souvenir from that time in their lives!

I have to figure out how to get out the wrinkles, I want to put in a pillow form and have it on my guest bed….it was my folks bedroom suite.

He started basic in Louisiana at this Camp Beauregard and ended up towards the end of the war in Alaska….. and of course you have to get a souvenir from there!!!!

Now the issue is…..what do I do with this uniform????? I have no where to put it, I thought I would take come good photos, take all of the patches and buttons and such off and dispose of it properly…..it’s hard to think of doing that, but it is the logical thing to do. Does anyone know of the proper way to dispose of old uniforms, can you just thrown them away???? That really feels wrong!

I could see my Dad watching me opening that army chest, arms crossed over his chest, with a grin on his face, and my Mom standing behind him with that sweet smile of hers….forever young…..:):)

Thanks for coming by….:)

On this Veterans Day I honor my Dad

On this very special day I want to honor my Dad….

Charles Robert Burgess was born July 23, 1922 in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.  It was a small town and he always lived in the same home on the same street.

My Dad was a very Proud American.  My Aunt Rosemary told me he stretched the truth a little bit about his age to get into the Army National Guard before the war.  He had told me that at some point he was a member of the Horse Calvary.    I wish I had listened a little better as he would often talk about those days in the Guard.  Not so much about WWII.  Even though he was very lucky and never had to go overseas, it was still a hard time for him.

When it came time, he enlisted, they did not have to ask him twice to serve in World War II.  He wanted to become an Army pilot, and went thru a lot of testing and waiting until he could try out.  They found out as they were doing his physical that his depth perception was very poor.  That was the end of that dream.  My Mom told me even though it was hard for him to accept, she was pretty happy he wasn’t going to be a pilot!  He was in Louisiana for his basic training and then was in Colorado, California, Alaska and ended up at Ft. Sill in Lawton, Oklahoma at the end of the war. 

When my folks passed I found more than one box of letters my Dad had written his family during the war…he tried to write so often, but found he had little he could share. So much was considered confidential info back then!   The letters spoke of his love of his family home and country and of course my Mom Loie, also the incredible loneliness a 19 year old boy felt being away from home for the first time ever.  I remember more than reading about  once my Grandma sending him cakes thru the mail, how they ever got there and were edible is beyond me! 

 

 

I have gone thru them and put them in chronological order. He would sign each and everyone of them the same way….

( Your loving son, Charles  Love to you all.  Don’t worry.)

After the war, my Dad continued his service with the National Guard until he was medically discharged in the 60’s due to being diagnosed with Diabetes.  I have vivid memories of the Armory in Lakewood, Ohio and when he would go to Summer Camp a Jeep would come to pick him up, to a little girl that was so exciting! 

I miss you Dad, and I am so proud to have you be my father!