Sepia Saturday - Grant and Gertrude Meyers

My mother wanted to know why I never post photos of our family for Sepia Saturday.  So, I looked for some reasonably photogenic relatives, because, believe me, not all of them are.

Allow me to introduce my maternal great-grandparents, Grant and Gertrude.  Gertrude's parents, Anna Charlotte Sederburg and Charles A.O. Billington were both born in Sweden around 1843.  They married in Ilinois in 1864, which is where Gertrude was born in 1880. Here she is at the age of about 22.

Gertrude's parents came to the United States just ahead of the Swedish mass emigration that started in the late 1860s due to a series of crop failures. During the period of 1867-1869,  approximately 60,000 Swedes emigrated to other countries, most often the United States. The wave of Swedish emigration continued until World War I.

Gertrude's family settled in Rock Island, Illinois, which is probably where she met her future husband, Grant Meyers. Grant was born in Illinois in 1877, to parents William and Martha, who were both originally from Pennsylvania. He was one of nine children, twelve if you count the three who died. The name was originally Meyer, but became Meyers somewhere along the line.

Grant and Gertrude settled in Morrill, Kansas, where Grant's occupation was listed as farmer in the 1910 Census. Here's a portrait of Grant and Gertrude from about 1906.

Be sure to check out Sepia Saturday for more great old photographs and memories.

Acoma Pueblo - New Mexico

The Acoma Pueblo is one of the oldest continuously inhabited communities in the United States. It  was built upon a sandstone mesa back in the 12th century, which proved to be effective for the defense of the pueblo. Unfortunately, it was not as effective in keeping out the Spanish conquistadors in 1598. There were nearly 2,000 inhabitants before the arrival of the Spaniards, but only about 250 survived the attacks. Miraculously, the pueblo traditions have survived and are still practiced by today's pueblo inhabitants.

Berlin, Germany - Railway Station

Often the area surrounding the railway station in any given city is gritty and unpleasant. However, in this view it looks like the ideal spot, clean, with plants on the balconies, and surrounded by thriving businesses and busy streets.

The railway station is, of course, the domed building on the left, which was constructed in the late 1870s. The building and underground tracks were expanded to accommodate S-Bahn and U-Bahn in later years.

At the beginning of the Cold War, this station was the hole in the Iron Curtain that allowed people from the east to escape to the west, at least until the Berlin Wall was built in 1961. At that time, the East German government also stopped the long-distance train connections. I arrived into this station from the west in 1980, and the surroundings were dismal.  In fact, most of East Berlin was fairly grim at that time. The stores, if they had anything, would have a lot of one or two things and nothing else. Many items in limited supply, such as toilet seats, could only be bought with western currency.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the west and east stations were connected again, and traffic resumed, however there had been very little maintenance on the east side. Between 1991 and 1999, the station was completely overhauled, at a cost of many millions of Deutsch Marks. In 2008, a memorial to the 10,000 Jewish children who were saved by the Refugee Children Movement and left through this station, was unveiled.

Here's the back of the postcard.