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.
Picnic and Party
The tenth page of Sally’s photo album featured a collection of photos taken in and around 1921. The photos feature a picnic on the farm and a High School party.
Girls in the corn
Sally (third from left) and friends pose in the cornfield.
Pictured: Selma Cornelia Aschbrenner (third from left) and unidentified friends.
Location: Frederick A. Helmut Aschbrenner farm, Highway A, Town of Berlin, Marathon County, Wisconsin.
Date: circa 1921.
Girls and a dog and a tree
A group of girls pose between the trees and a dog joins them for the photo.
Pictured: Unidentified girls.
Location: Likely on the Frederick A. Helmut Aschbrenner farm, Highway A, Town of Berlin, Marathon County, Wisconsin.
Date: circa 1921.
Girls and a Woman
Sally poses with four friends around a woman. Is the woman in the middle, Sally’s mom, Alice? Could the other gals be cousins?
Pictured: Selma Cornelia Aschbrenner (back right) and unidentified girls and woman.
Location: Marathon County, Wisconsin.
Date: circa 1921.
Marshmallows
A group of children and teenagers enjoy roasted marshmallows.
Pictured: Unidentified children and teenagers.
Location: Likely on the Frederick A. Helmut Aschbrenner farm, Highway A, Town of Berlin, Marathon County, Wisconsin.
Date: circa 1921.
Sitting on the Hay Rake
An unidentified girl sits on the hay rake, without a horse attached.
[The hay rake] went across the field with the tines down and pulled had <sic> along until the operator wanted to “dump” it. The lever the gal has her right foot on would cause the tines to lift and release the load. Doing this at the same spot(s) across the field would put the hay in a more or less straight line for the loader to drive over and pick up and put on the hay rack/wagon.
Jim Krueger, January 2021
Pictured: Unidentified.
Location: Frederick A. Helmut Aschbrenner farm, Highway A, Town of Berlin, Marathon County, Wisconsin.
Date: circa 1921.
Wausau High School Party
The remaining five photos appear to all be from the same Wausau High School party. It’s likely these were from Sally’s Junior year in high school, the 1920-1921 school year. The party appears to have been at the high school. The kids are mostly all in costumes of different types.
Pictured: Unidentified Wausau High School classmates of Selma Cornelia Aschbrenner.
Location: Wausau High School, Wausau, 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
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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