love the site
im a 1980 grad of central dallas looking for former class mates
thanks
martin stracke
iowafan1961@yahoo.com

Jeff Ulin's Website: http://www.lakesidephotography.net/

Name:       Donna Welch Brown
email:        dwelchbrown@yahoo.com

My Father's family is from Minburn Iowa and am looking for any pictures, stories or relatives left in Minburn. My Grandfather's name was Claude Welch. Please email me with any information or pics that you would like to share. Thanks,

Donna

Name:    Glen Brandvold
email:     glen4394@msn.com

Found a clipping - date unknown but guess 50's - about Mr. & Mrs. Harry Elder 50th wedding anniversary.  My grampa S. J. Elder may be his brother.  Seeking info.

Hi Lynn,

Was I surprised when I was surfing the web and typed in Minburn, Iowa. Up comes Minburn and all the info I could want. When I clicked on 2003 Parade -- lo and behold there was our son Larry Siglin and his Dad's 1939 F20 tractor. Was fun to see all the floats. We hope to be back for the 4th this year and am looking forward to seeing the parade again. We used to be in almost every year with either horses, ponies or tractors. One year we won best costume for all the grandkids in red striped shirts riding in Grandpa's pony hitch wagon. The grandkids in that parade are all grown. Trent Andrews, Tony Andrews and Lindsay Walden. Time flies. See you the Fourth!!!

Pat Siglin

No Name Given

I typed in 'Minburn, Iowa A Small Town With A Big Heart'.  It is a great web site, and, living 2000 miles away, it is really nice to see so many familiar names and events in the site.

If anyone would like me to post reunion info -- send me an e-mail -- I'll be happy to post your information.

Lynn
lynn@deziningwebz.com

Name:      KITTIE CRAWFORD (Hilpipre)
email:       KITTIE_CRAWFORD_2@MSN.COM

I was so tickled while on the net to find a picture of my cousin Mark Hilpipre and the town of Minburn, Iowa which we visited throughout our childhood. Living in Utah, no one has heard of Minburn, Iowa. Now in my favorites!!!

Maryse Cuypers
marysec@tiscali.be

I live in Belgium and have been a senior at Central Dallas in 1979. I'm trying to get in touch with any student of that year and Marjorie Joslin as well, as she has been one of my teachers.

Name:      Marilyn deNeuf
email:       mdeneuf@aol.com

I found your web site through inquiries regarding Warren Allen Smith.  I have been unable to access his web site, and he does not answer my e-mails.  Does anyone know about him?  He was my English Honors teacher at New Canaan (CT) High School.

Name: Wendy Ranta (Thornburg)
email: Stormy0804@aol.com

I am looking for some historical pictures of Minburn to add to my genealogy. My dad was born in his grandma Chaney's home that has since been replace by the Rail Road Silos. But any photos would be great. Some of my Dallas County names I am researching are Thornburg, Chaney and Harrison to name a few. Anyone with interesting stories please e-mail me.

THANK YOU BIG TIME

Name:      Heather Hill Walter
email:       hwalter711@earthlink.net

Hi Lynn - I just wanted to tell you how much I enjoy checking in on your website.  You continue to do a great job with it, and it helps me to continue to feel some connection to the community I still think of as "home". Thanks for all your efforts!

Name:  Howard Reed

I am becoming sentimental in my old age and have really enjoyed reading the feedback portion of the web-site. I have been gone for 22 years and have no idea what is happening up there now but I have many fond memories of the places described in the articles. Keep up the good work. I'll keep coming back.

Name: Betsy

Love the Minburn site.

I was excited to find Nancy's feedback. Hope to hear from her. My great grandmother was Rachael Elzina Kimrey who's tombstone is in the Kimrey cemetery. I'd love to know more about the Kimrey's who started the cemetery.

Name:       Davey Lee Ehrke
email:        bbmomx2@msn.com

You have a very nice website for such a small community. We were driving on the Hwy 169 and were surprised to see an old abandoned school in a lump of trees and corn field. Top of the building has Consolidated Schools on it. Was wondering if anyone knew anything about this school, and/or where I could find more historical information. Thanks. Have a great day!

Name:     Warren Allen Smith
email:       wasm@mac.com

Melissa Jandl mentions the Charlet family, which I remember but am unsure if they lived in town or in the country. . . . Yes, there was a preacher by the name of Wholsapple. Also Paul McDade was there in the 1930s, followed by  William Warren. The reason in the 1920s that my parents, Ruth and Harry C. Smith (manager of the Brown Grain Elevator), switched from the "other" church to the Methodist was that it had had a schism. That church's denomination was the same one once belonged to by Ronald Reagan (who bought a Nash in a Des Moines showroom the same day my dad bought a less-expensive Lafayette. . . . For 25 cents when I was in high school), I was paid by Ed Hill to take him to Perry for his weekly haircut. Clarence Hill once told me found the Frank and Jesse James group bathing in the river, and they bought provisions because they weren't recognized as being robbers. The FEEDBACK page is great, not just for those of us who are 82.  See my website at http://wasm.us

Name:          Melissa Jandl
email:           melissa_jandl@yahoo.com

I just recently came across this website while looking for family history.  It looks great!  I lived in Minburn for quite some time, as my family (the Charlet's) have lived there since the 1890's and still live there today.  I think it would be interesting to post some historical stories, along with a larger variety of pictures.  Especially at the 4th of July and other activities.  It's great to be able to see what's going in town when we are not there visiting.  Keep up the good work!!

Name:  Donna Welch-Brown
email:  QueenbeezMomma@aol.com

Hello to all:
Just found the Minburn website as I have been doing some ancestry research. My Grandfather Claude L Welch lived there with his parents Eugene and Hattie and his siblings Emery, Lucy, Edna and Earl. As well as my grandfather, John Welch.........I'm very interested if anyone has anything to share with me on having remembered my family. My grandfather, Claude died when I was 4, but I remember his clearly...As I was the only granddaughter out of all the grandsons, u can imagine the bond we had.

Take Care and hope to hear from someone........

Donna

I can't remember the first minister of the church, but I am recalling an early one named Holsapple.

Jean Wright

I was wondering if you had any information on the church (6th & Chestnut, Minburn) that is for sale. I have spoken to the realtor and looked inside the church. I would like to know the minister's name that last ran the church, and and links to its history would be appreciated.

My wife went to Minburn school and we are considering buying the old church to convert to a home, but want to get the outside of the building back to it's former glory. We are trying to get info on the structural condition, any major problems, where the originals windows went, who owns the furniture inside, etc etc.

Kind regards
Nigel Chapman

For several decades, I've edited a Minburn High School newsletter called THE PINHOOKER.  If you graduated from MHS and are not receiving a copy, I'll add you to the list if you request it.

If the Minburn homepage could handle such a task, adding the PINHOOK NEWSLETTER since its inception would help document Minburn's history over the years. All graduates have supplied memories that could be of academic interest to future historians of the area.  Unfortunately because of a fire, I do not have all copies--some do, however.  Obituaries have always been included, memories of Tileyard Hill, memories of Virgil Untied's being killed by bank robbers, invaluable memories written by Clarence Hill, etc.

Finally, if I may do a little horn-tooting, I'm the only graduate of MHS to be listed in "Who's Who in the World." 

Warren Allen Smith
(Son of Ruth Smith and the elevator manager of Clark Brown Grain Co., Harry Clark Smith)
31 Jane Street (10-D), New York, NY 10014 <http://wasm.ws>

Just recently found the Minburn Web page and I love it.  I certainly enjoyed reading about the Kimrey Cemetery.  My fifth grade teacher was Anna Shirley who lived in that area.  She used to take us out there to the timber to look for wild flowers and I certainly wish I had paid more attention to her!  I will write more later as I am one who lived  for many years in Minburn and was very interested in the history.  My mother was Lillian Wicks, who was postmaster there in 30's to 1954.  She was a Voas, and they settled out west of the Elmwood Cemetery.

Jean Wright
djeanwright@aol.com

Hi Lynn,  Nice job on the web site.  I can send news of Minburn all over now!!  Thanks for doing it.

I do have some old pictures.  Maybe next Jan or Feb I can share some with you.  Am working on a scrapbook of my father's life now and keep running on to stories, old pictures, clippings, mementos, etc.  Have a picture of my Grandfather Hill  taken in the 1800's in the Minburn Band.  All young men of course.  Maybe someone would recognize some of them. Found a beautiful one of the old Methodist church in the winter.  A picture of my grandparents in a one horse open sleigh taken about 1900.  Some of my Dad's H.S. class and H.S. He graduated in 1926 from Minburn.  Some old horse pictures, my Great grandparents who lived just south of town, etc.

Right now I am pretty well occupied working on this scrapbook.  Pictures and clippings, boxes, etc. all over the house!! Will need to clean up before the holidays if I don't get done!! then will get it out again in January  when there aren't so many pressing things.

Keep up the good work. 

Marjorie Joslin

I really enjoyed seeing the piece about my great great grandfather's cemetery.  We used to play there as kids, climb the back fence and walk down the old stagecoach road to the Raccoon River.  The old road ended up around Modlin's cabin up on top.  I don't know who owns that now - I think the Renshaw's bought it years ago.  But the trees at the cemetery were always so interesting.  We tried to get them to grow from seeds but never could.  There are none like them in the area.  We always thought the settlers must have had them with them and planted them there to remember their loved ones.  The headstone buried in the tree for "Jenny" was always my favorite as a child. 

Thanks for putting this out where people can see it.  It's a neat place - so incredibly quiet.  People don't understand why its there, though, unless they know about the old stagecoach trail too. 

Now I feel old!

Thanks again.

Nancy Christie
Oviedo, Florida
nlc@duda.com

Dear Nancy,

We are very interested in learning more about the Stagecoach Road, and if you have any further information, I would certainly appreciate having it.

I live in the small house just north of the Kimrey Cemetery (same house that the Shirley's lived in).  My mom (Janice Renshaw) bought several acres just west of us, next to the Kimrey Cemetery.  Marilyn (Shirley) Miller and her husband put a house on the corner just north of us.  The Hornsby's put a house in just south of us.

I called my mom to ask her more about the old Stagecoach Road, and she suggested that I ask Marilyn (Shirley) Miller or Norma Hornsby (who grew up in the area).

It is obvious that those trees are beautiful and unique, and I love them, too. It never occurred to me that they are the only ones around -- one would think that similar trees would have grown from the seeds.  I tried to take pictures of those big trees for the website, but I had to take them from far away, and I felt I lost the effect of how large and beautiful they are.

Please let me know if I can use your story on the site and please give me any other information you can.

Thank you for writing.

Lynn

Hi Lynn:

So nice to hear back from you.  Michelle Modlin might know more about the stagecoach road too.  We used to walk it down to the river as kids.  My Grandma Lola (Weddle) Kimrey used to tell me that when she was a young girl there was a rock with Frank and Jesse James' initials carved in it down by the river along the stagecoach road.  But when the river channel changed, the rock was lost.  The reason the stagecoach road is probably nonexistent now is because in the 1970's (I well remember as I lived down along the river then) kids were running dirt bikes up and down that area doing "hill climbing".  Unfortunately their hill climbing resulted in gully washouts of the hills.  Deer trails run naturally along the hills and don't destroy the natural lay of the land, but the motorcycles destroyed all that.  Now that I am older, I appreciate what things like that can do to fragile ecosystems.

The Minburn Centennial book is interesting reading, although it states that the Hills were the first settlers in the Minburn area -- in reality it was the Kimrey family.  That was always a bone that bothered my father. 

Before Dad died - we had spent some time together down at the Historical Building in Des Moines looking in the microfiche files containing the old census records (1880 stuff).  He was fascinated and many times would be in tears from what he would see - lots of memories for him from the things his parents told him. 

My Grandma Lola wrote a fairly big story/book outlining what it was like living in Oklahoma and Iowa and her life - it's very neat reading.

She was a very good writer and could have written professionally with the proper schooling, but she was a farm wife and it was a different time.  My sister Connie Tow, who lives in Waukee, has a copy of it at her house if you ever want to read it.

Something else that would be extremely interesting to me is the skating show pictures.  Jackie Snyder had all the old pictures and I don't know whatever happened to them all.  We only have a few in our family.  My mom actually had kept one of my old costumes when I was 4.  I had a part with one of the Welch girls, and we skated to the song "Me and my Shadow".  We actually were on the Mary Jane Chinn t.v. show (channel 8 as I recall), and in the old pictures of us standing together - if you can find an old program - my skate kept slipping out from underneath me.  We were having the pictures taken inside the Legion Hall, and there was a tile floor then.  Dee Thompson (my dad's cousin) put a penny underneath the wheel of my skate so it wouldn't slide out from underneath me - can't believe I still remember that!   A skating show book would generate a tremendous amount of interest with us baby boomers who skated year after year in that show.  Lots of fond memories there - gorgeous costumes - a different time of life again. 

Oh - one other suggestion for your web page (which is such a delight) can you caption pictures of people so I know who they are?  Faces are so familiar - but names escape me now - I've been away from Minburn a long time.

I won't bend your ear anymore - and yes - you may use my e-mails if you wish.

Best.

Nancy Christie
Oviedo, FL  32765
nlc@duda.com

Hello,  I KNOW it's not right to bother you with small stuff, but is there a Harlan Hunter living in Minburn?  I know his Mom, Helen King Hunter is buried there (1979).  He's a cousin and I've been beating the bushes trying to think of how to find him---or any of  Roy Harold Hunter or Gaye Head King's families.  Gaye died in '73 and is buried there also.

I'm in AZ so this is the only means I have of searching.  Thanks a bunch,

Dianna Downing Nading
VirgDi@aol.com