A 94 year old "Love Letter" found...

For the last 3 days, we have been busy moving an old garage from one spot on the property, to another. That was going to be the blog post, but something more exciting happened. As we were sifting through a garage full of boxes and buckets and bags of things, we came across an old, metal, 5 gallon bucket type container. Inside this old, old, dirty bucket was piles and piles of old, old pictures.

 And, in the cluster of old pictures, I found this "Love Letter" written in 1920 from the previous owners of this old house "Clarence Burket," to his wife (or soon to be wife) "Julia Sally Nemeth" who, in January of 1920, was living at 525 West Indiana Ave., in South Bend Indiana...

I photo copied all of the pages so I wouldn't damage them scanning them into the computer -

Then, I scanned them in (that's why they're black & white) and if you can muddle your way through the letter as I did last night, I promise - it will make you smile~!

We realized last night looking through all of the photo's that they built the first block wall around the yard in 1960. One of the 1960 pics has a wire fence and one has the block wall in the pic...

Then, the block wall blew over in a big wind storm and they re-layed it for a second time in 1962, with footers and end walls that year *wink*

And, we still have and still use the old Massey Ferguson tractor in the pic~

There are pictures of weddings and new births, pictures of living and of the dead...

The old barrel mugs the old boys are drinking from in the top middle pics are still in the cellar and so are a lot of other things in the pics... 

There was an old pheasant in the cellar that was missing his head 

(I made the Man-Child toss him about a month ago, cause he freaked me out) 

There are pics of the pheasant in the menagerie too - he was from California. Wonder in what state his head went missing?

Clearence Burket grew up on the outskirts of South Bend, Indiana in the early 1900's. He used to tell the 'Man-Child' stories about his childhood and youth. His family was very, very poor and they had 3 cherished possessions. A house, a large barn and a beautiful team of horses that helped them earn a living.

This is my favorite picture of the bunch - the matched "Team" of horses with Clarence's father holding the reigns. 

And, below it, a pic of Clarence holding one of the horses while his brother was mounted upon it.

He told a story to the 'Man-Child' about the first year he was made to earn a living to help his father. They used the team of horses and a wagon to haul gravel from a rock pit close to their home to construction projects in the area. They got paid $1 for every load (and they shoveled the gravel into the wagons themselves...)

Anyway, one day, Clarence was making good time and instead of delivering his usual 3 loads of gravel, he made an extra trip and on his 4th delivery, they got mad at him, called him greedy and fired his fathers team and wagon. 

He never did tell the end of the story, the 'Man-Child' said...

There are lots and lots of old pictures spanning from the early 1900's, to about 1978 (the best we can tell)

A lot to see in the span of 2 people's lives...

The pictures tell their own stories, unfortunately, we don't know what most of the stories are...

The pictures are from Indiana, Wisconsin, California and finally end up in Utah~~~

They are history, as well as pictures of living through nearly a century in time...

They will remain with the old house so long as we own it and the history of the old house documented as we go along...

It's not every day you find 100 years of living hidden out somewhere in a garage full of boxes~!

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