Selma Cornelia Aschbrenner, known as Sally, grew up in Marathon County, Wisconsin. As an adult she spent a short time working in Washington D.C. before returning to Wausau to marry and raise a family. This series of posts takes us page by page through the photo album of her teen years and young adulthood. She was an active and vibrant gal. These photos show her doing things she could no long do when her mobility became limited in the following decades.
She collected photographs. Lots and lots of photographs. She took most of them and posed in many. This series gives us a glimpse of Sally’s young life, through her own pictures.
Friends and Animals
The ninth page of Sally’s photo album featured a collection of photos taken in and around 1921.
Flowers in the wood pile
These unidentified women are enjoying a bouquet of flowers while standing in a wood pile.
Pictured: Unidentified.
Location: Marathon County, Wisconsin.
Date: circa 1921.
Girls with flowers on a log
Sally and two friends are holding bouquets and sitting on a log in the woods.
Pictured: Selma Cornelia Aschbrenner (far left) and two unidentified friends.
Location: Marathon County, Wisconsin.
Date: circa 1921.
Cereal Mills Co. on the river.
Two friends stand in front of the raging river. The Cereal Mills company is in the background.
Pictured: Unidentified.
Location: Wausau, Marathon County, Wisconsin.
Date: circa 1921.
Freddy in the corn
Freddy Aschbrenner stands in the corn on the Aschbrenner farm.
Pictured: Frederick Carl Aschbrenner.
Location: Frederick A. Helmut Aschbrenner farm, Highway A, Town of Berlin, Marathon County, Wisconsin.
Date: circa 1921.
Sally on horseback
Sally poses while on horseback in front of her parents’ farm house.
Pictured: Selma Cornelia Aschbrenner.
Location: Frederick A. Helmut Aschbrenner farm, Highway A, Town of Berlin, Marathon County, Wisconsin.
Date: circa 1921.
Sally with a dairy cow
Sally poses on the farm with a dairy cow who is not cooperating for the photo.
Pictured: Selma Cornelia Aschbrenner.
Location: Frederick A. Helmut Aschbrenner farm, Highway A, Town of Berlin, Marathon County, Wisconsin.
Date: circa 1921.
Sally and friends
Sally, second from right, appears to be looking at her cell phone as she sits outside with friends. Wait, they didn’t have cell phones in the 1920s!
Pictured: Unidentified friends and Selma Cornelia Aschbrenner (second from right).
Location: Marathon County, Wisconsin.
Date: circa 1921.
Wienie roast
Sally and her friend, Ethel Luedke are enjoying a picnic. They each have a hot dog on a stick. Ethel holds a sandwich and Sally swigs from a bottle of soda pop. This may have been a favorite activity since we saw them roasting wieners on the previous page of the album too. And here there are, doing it again on a different day.
Pictured: Ethel H. Luedtke and Selma Cornelia Aschbrenner.
Location: Marathon County, Wisconsin.
Date: circa 1921.
Many thanks to Uncle Chuck Krueger for gifting Sally’s photo albums to me. I suppose I’m the only one who is obsessed enough with family history to spend hours and hours doing something with them. Of course, I thought I should find a way to share.
I didn’t join the Krueger family soon enough to meet Sally. She died 15 May 1983, just two weeks after I started dating her grandson (now my husband). I’m sad that I missed getting to know her. I’m glad that she left a legacy of photos that help me see a side of her that maybe even her own family didn’t get to see.
Many of the faces and places in the photographs are not labeled. If you can help identify someone or someplace, correct any mistake I may have made, or otherwise add to the story, please contact me, for example by submitting a comment. Thanks.
Who is Who?
Fred and Alice Aschbrenner family
Sally Aschbrenner, the subject of this series of posts, was the daughter of Alice Rosalie Fehlhaber and Frederick A. Helmut Aschbrenner. She had one brother named Freddy.
Three-generation pedigree chart
Ethel Helen Luedtke
Ethel Helen Luedtke was born on 15 Sep 1904 in Wisconsin as the first child of William Luedtke and Rose C. Pasnecker. She had two siblings, namely: Arthur C., and Mable Mina. In 1905, Ethel and family lived in Stettin, Marathon, Wisconsin. But, by the time of the 1910 Federal Census, they were living in Ward 7, Wausau, Marathon, Wisconsin.
When she was 21, Ethel married Adrain B. Dawson on 12 Jul 1926 in Broward, Florida.
Adrain B. Dawson and Ethel H. Luedtke had the following children:
- Adrian B. Dawson was born in North Carolina.
- Richard E Dawson was born in Florida.
By 1930, the family lived in Miami, Miami-Dade, Florida. She was a resident of Miami for the rest of her life. She raised her family and worked as a teacher.
Ethel died on 28 Sep 1982 in Miami-Dade, Florida, at age 78.
The Aschbrenner Family
- Publication date: February 2022
- Pages: 728
- Formats:
- This books explores Aschbrenner family history. Friedrich August Aschbrenner had a son, named Friedrich Samuel Aschbrenner, who immigrated to Marathon County, Wisconsin. This book traces thousands of descendants of the immigrant. Detailed biographies are provided for the families of our direct line from Friedrich Samuel Aschbrenner through Frederick Wilhelm Aschbrenner and Frederick August Helmut Aschbrenner to Selma Cornelia Aschbrenner.
- Winner of the Wisconsin Historical Society 2023 Board of Curators Genealogy/Family History Book Award.
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