havocandmayhem.com

Some more Journal Your Christmas pages I have the 24th done except for editing the photos, so I am as caught up as I have been all month.

This is my Great Grandfather William Wetzel. I don’t have an exact date for this photo but he was born in 1882 & looks less than 2 years old in the photo. I love the dress and lace collar. This was taken back when little boys & girls both wore the same style clothing until they were age 3 or so. I suspect it had something to do with ease of changing diapers and being potty trained. I also love the boots & tiny cane he has been given as a prop. But what I love best is his resemblance to Mayhem

We think this is a wedding photo. The couple on the right are my grandparents Gertrude & Leo. The couple on the left are Helen & Richard. According to a wedding announcement in the paper those were the names of their attendants. It was a very small wedding on April 17, 1933. It was so small it was not common knowledge. Because it was the Depression, there was little money. Nan went back to live with her parents and Pap went back to live with his parents until they could afford a place of their own. That would take almost two years. They moved in together and formally announced their wedding 1935. The other couple also had married in that time.

This  handsome young man is my great grandfather William Wetzel. He was born in 1881 and died a few months before I was born in 1967. This photo was taken in approx 1902-05. William married  Anna Klotz, whose scans I have already posted, around 1905. They had  four children. He was a printer by trade and operated his own shop in Elm Grove for many years and then worked for other printing firms in the area.

This is Sister Mary Caroline, born Rose Wetzel. She is my great great grandfather’s older sister. She joined the Order of St Francis in 1890. This photo was taken about 10 years later.  I don’t know anything else about her. 

The photo today is from 1903 This is The Family House. Though actually the family didn’t own it until 1942. My maternal grandmother bought this house while my grandfather was off in the Pacific fighting the Japanese. Apparently it was an incredibly good deal & she wrote to ask him if they should spend their savings on it. But mail took weeks to travel to and from people in the military and my grandmother had to act without hearing from him. It was a 4 square style home, cinderblock with siding. 5 rooms, one bathroom, and a crawl space under it. It was maybe about 800 sq feet. When the war ended and my grandfather came home the first thing he did was elevate the house and dig out a full basement. Due the house layout he had to put in probably the steepest set of stairs I have ever encountered. My cousins and I, to this day, have never ventured down them without a parent shouting after us “Be careful those are steep!” And we say it to our own children every time as well....

I have a ton, or at least a very huge pile, of old photos that need scanning. And by old I mean old. Really. Like before 1900 old. I have photos starting from somewhere in the early 1890s & running up through the early 1990s, with large concentrations of photos in 1930-45 and 1967-75. Some of these photos have stories behind them, some of them I only know a little about and some of them are of people whose names I don’t even know but can guess. I’m going to start posting some of them here on Saturdays & sharing what I do know about them. Maybe through the magic of the internet someone out there can tell me more. These are the first: This young girl is my great grandmother. Her name was Anna Klotz. That is her family in the first photo. Her parents are Balzer & Minnie. She had 6 brothers! I don’t know any of their names or what happened to them. I'm not sure if just her father was from Germany, or both her parents or if maybe it was her father’s pare...