The Chris Moeller Archives

The Moeller Family Album

My father has posted some of our historic family pictures online. They're on a website in which you can order prints, forcing me to have to purchase the ones that I want. It's a pretty slick little scam he's got going. You won't see me or my siblings in any of the pictures. Most of them date back 50 years and more. They're all posted here, 118 of them so far, but I want to draw your attention to twelve of the best. It's as much American history as it is Moeller family history. Embellished text appears in italics.


This is a fantastic picture of my grandfather, Elmer Moeller, taken sometime during the late teens. We see him seated atop a horse in front of the country house that I would grow up in six and seven decades later. The house is still located on a gravel road between Newhall and Atkins, Iowa. The horse was Sir Barton, which Johnny Loftus rode to victory in the Derby in 1919.

This is the 1895 wedding photo of my great-grandparents, Peter and Anna Moeller, both first-generation German-Americans. While serving time in federal prison in 1921, Peter was, for a brief time, a jailhouse confidante to imprisoned anarchist Bartolomeo Vanzetti. Peter had been convicted under the Sedition Act of 1918 after repeatedly shouting in a public square his contention that then-First Lady Florence Harding possessed "a wide carriage."

Here's Grandpa Elmer again, this time in full military regalia around the time of the Great War. The children of the predominantly-German American communities of Benton County, Iowa were routinely paraded before cameras and newspapermen to help provide a cover of patriotism for the illicit shipments of grain and pork that were being transported back to the kaiser.

These are my grandparents, Elmer and Alice, on their wedding day in Cedar Rapids in 1940. The homes that appear to the right in the photo are no longer there, but in their place today stands a monument to the world's largest human pyramid, constructed for the benefit of the Guinness people by a drunken couples-league softball team in 1981.

In this one, we see my great-aunt Marie (Moeller) Skersick (on the far-right) in a snapshot taken with friends along a beach in California. Second from right in the photo is Hollywood starlet of the era, Dorothy Lamour, best-remembered as the female lead in the series of Bing Crosby/Bob Hope "Road to..." films of the 1940s. Lamour was "loaned out" by Paramount Studios to RKO to appear in this photo.

Here are my grandparents once again, along with Grandpa's brother and his wife, at the Continental Hotel in Chicago. The place has been emptied out behind them due to a bawdy stage performance by a very middle-aged and drunken Mae West and her "imperial guard" of muscular young male actors.

Here we have Elmer on the Moeller farm sometime during the '50s with some of his livestock. His controversial plan to breed cows with pigs drew a highly-publicized visit from the Dutch agricultural emissary in 1952, but caused him nothing but ridicule over the years from rural neighbors. Locals stuck him with the unwelcome nickname "Farmer Moonbeam."

This is an aerial view of the Moeller estate before the farm buildings were torn down during those tumultuous 1960s when it seemed everything was being burned. The snapshot was taken in '63 by a Cuban U-2 spy plane investigating American techniques for rural "grove-clearing."

Here's young Thomas, or Tom-- my Dad-- dressed as Peter Pan. One can only presume that this is a Halloween picture, but how often is one able to wear short sleeves outdoors in Iowa on October 31st?

Here's Elmer, "bull"fighting in Mexico the year I was born. Facing the impending birth of twin grandsons, Grandpa had a rather pronounced mid-life crisis. No pictures survive of his attempt in '74 to replicate Steve McQueen's motorcycle jump in "The Great Escape."

This is my great-aunt Rose with her surviving siblings on the occasion of her 100th birthday celebration in 1998. The shot was taken just before Willard Scott passed out in the three-bean salad.

And finally, here's a candid and marvelous image of my great-grandfather Peter while on a family trip out west in the early '30s. He's dreaming of a futuristic world of blogs, television festivals, and the moment long after his death in which they steal his life story and make a movie about it called "There Will Be Blood." Or perhaps he's recalling something that Vanzetti confessed to him behind bars.

posted by CM @ 3:39 PM