Another Treasure: Photo of My Husband’s Relatives, 1950

Last summer when I cleaned out a cupboard, I found some treasures. One treasure was a picture of my husband’s parents, paternal grandparents, aunt and uncle from the Marshall Democrat-News. The picture was republished in the January 24, 1989, edition of that local newspaper. I found it in an envelope from my husband’s great-aunt, so I assume someone sent it to her in 1989, and she passed it on to my husband and me at some later date.

From the Marshall Democrat-News, on January 24, 1989

The event depicted in the newspaper photo was a 1950 celebration of my husband’s grandfather’s long tenure at the Farmers Savings Bank. Wilbur Burton Hupp had been at the bank for fifty years as of the celebration, which meant he started in 1900. (He was born in 1880, meaning he was twenty when he started at the bank.) The 1989 Democrat-News clipping does not specify the date of the celebration in 1950.

In 1950, my husband had his first birthday, so I assume he was not invited to the celebration, though his adult relatives were.

Closeup of my husband’s grandparents, Dosha and Wilbur Hupp

I never met my husband’s paternal grandparents. They both died before I met my future husband. But I’ve heard a few stories. As the newspaper blurb states, his grandfather, Wilbur Burton Hupp, Sr., was president of the Farmers Savings Bank. He was tall and thin, like my husband. By the time my husband could remember, Wilbur, Sr., had no teeth—it impressed my husband as a child that his grandfather could chew steak and corn on the cob and everything else with just his gums. And he twisted his grandson’s ear when the boy misbehaved.

I know also that Wilbur Hupp, Sr., was one of the first people to drive from Marshall to Kansas City AND BACK (90 miles each way) in the same day. The story is always told with huge emphasis on the return trip. That momentous occurrence must have happened long before 1950, but I don’t know when.

I know even less about my husband’s paternal grandmother, Dosha Susan Rector Hupp. She was short. Maybe that’s why my tall husband doesn’t seem to mind that I am short (except when we are moving furniture together). She was a good cook. And she despaired of her two sons, who caused much havoc in Marshall growing up.

Wilbur and Dosha had three children—Wilbur Burton Hupp, Jr., Alfred Rector Hupp (my father-in-law), and Martha Hupp Obsorne. The two boys got into much trouble growing up—throwing pictures out of a neighbor’s attic window to the yard three stories below, almost drowning in a quarry, stashing ginger beer under their beds. The typical things young boys did in small-town America in the 1920s and ’30s.

As young men, they “liberated” a case of beer from the back of a truck driving in front of their car.

There’s a curve outside of Marshall I call “Hupp Corner,” that Wilbur, Jr., tried to prove could be taken at sixty miles per hour. It couldn’t then. But now it has been banked and can easily be rounded at that speed.

In 1950, only my in-laws were married. Wilbur, Jr., and Martha each married later in life. There are more stories about them, too, but I won’t go into those today.

Wilbur, Jr., worked in construction and other jobs. When our family drives to Marshall from Kansas City on the back roads, we pass a power substation or some such building that he was responsible for constructing.

Martha was a school librarian, first in Marshall, and later in Raytown, Missouri. She was much more sedate than her brothers, though some stories indicate she was more protected by her parents than she wanted to be.

I don’t know my husband’s father’s occupation in 1950, but he later managed a John Deere implement business in Platte City, Missouri, and after that returned to Marshall to work in the Farmers Savings Bank with his father. Ultimately, my father-in-law followed his father as President of the Farmers Savings Bank, the position he held when I met my future husband.

My husband’s parents circled on the left, his grandparents circled in the middle, and his aunt and uncle circled on the right

This is the only picture I’ve seen with Wilbur, Dosha, and their three children (plus my husband’s mother, Virginia Parks Hupp). It gives me a glimpse into life in Marshall many years ago—before I met my husband . . . and even before I was born. Being the president of a bank in a small town was to be one of the municipality’s leading citizens.

And tenure of the type Wilbur Hupp, Sr., held was something to be feted. Not only did his whole family (minus his infant grandson) turn out for the event, but many of the other leading citizens did as well.

That’s why this picture is a treasure. I can see the people who raised my husband, and I can remember the stories I’ve heard about them.

What old family pictures do you have that tell you something about your family before you were born?