Morning Thoughts: Two Brothers

My mind takes me in strange directions. I’ve been reading, this week, White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America, by Nancy Isenberg. She talks about indentured servants in early America and how they were treated. This started my thinking about a family legend passed to me by my father. According to him, his grandfather had another son, in addition to my grandfather. I guess the other son was quite bright, and according to the legend, the old man “sold” my grandfather in indenture, to a neighboring farmer for money to “get the other son an education.” It was a practice perhaps brought from Germany by Great-Grandpa von Tungeln.

I believe the other son was my great-uncle George Henry von Tungeln Ph.D. Following is an account of his life with Maud, his wife.

“Dr. George von Tungeln was an early pioneer of rural sociology, and served as Chair of the Rural Sociology Section of the American Sociological Society. By 1932, Dr. Von Tungeln was Head of the sociology section of the Department of Economics and Sociology at Iowa State College, and had gained national prominence for his work. Maude also furthered her study at Ames and in 1929 became the 12th recipient of an MS degree in Sociology at Iowa State University.

George died suddenly and unexpectedly of a heart attack in 1944 at 61 years of age as he was completing his thirty-first year as a member of the Iowa State College faculty. In 1969, Maude established an Iowa State University scholarship in honor of her husband, which is now called The George Henry and Maude Drew Von Tungeln Scholarship. Maude died in 1973 in Santa Barbara California at 91 years of age. It is believed that Maude and George had no children because there were no children listed in census reports.”

From what I can find, George received a B. of Philosophy from Central Wesleyan College, a Master’s from Northwestern, and his PhD from Harvard.

Granddad? Well, apparently, he received some money from the deal as well, for after he married and began a family, he had money to invest in a future. He ultimately narrowed his choices, according to my father, between purchasing timberland in Arkansas or a flour mill in St. Paul, MN. One can guess the option chosen. After eight children and a tragically unhappy marriage, he led a lonely and strange life before his final passing in 1963.

I’ll talk more about Great Uncle George later. Today, allow me to leave with one quote from an academic paper he published in 1920, A Rural Social Survey of Lone Tree Township ClayCounty Iowa. He wrote:

“Normal life comes into this world with a nature that hungers after the beautiful and abhors the ugly. What is to be expected when as this life develops amidst surroundings it is being taught to call and think of as Home there is always more of the ugly than of the beautiful? That is no doubt one of the sources of rural problems.”

Yeah, he could have used a comma or two, but I sure wish I could have known him.

Legend has it that Granddaddy "Von"
was always bitter toward his brother.