A History in Brick

We went out to the old family farm.  It is abandoned now, a couple of years after the last batchelor uncle departed the place for a nursing facility.  Predictably he did not last long there, our family has strong ties to home.

This is where our tribe set up housekeeping when they left Germany in 1858.

Of course in true pioneer fashion they started out in a log cabin-actually had to flee the Sioux Uprising in 1863-but they built this fine brick home in:

Apparently they left this one brick unpainted all those years...

Over time various members of the clan have scratched their initials in the rather soft brick.  Here is my brother, Frederick James W. pointing to his 1966 entry:

And here is the fine handiwork of my father, Frederick Henry W. circa early 1930s.  The smaller A.W. beneath is presumably my uncle Art.

And the earliest identifiable work, my grandfather Frederick Wilhelm W.  Much deteriorated and covered with some awful paint, it bears a faint 1900 date.

And lastly an undated and unhelpfully brief monogram:

We were out on a working trip, but I was tempted to suggest to my son or my nephew that they add another generation to the wall.  But as the old place is likely to be razed in the next couple of years it hardly seemed appropriate.