Six generations here

by Marjorie L. McLellan

"Across the first half of this century, Wisconsin dairy farmer Alex Krueger turned the camera's lens on his farm, his children, the rural environs, and the networks of kin that framed all their lives. Later, other members of the Krueger clan took up the camera. Their photographs and family stories comprise a unique record not only of who the Kruegers were but also of how they sought to be remembered." "As Pomeranian immigrants in the mid-nineteenth century, the Kruegers struggled to get by while accumulating the capital to purchase a substantial farm. By the turn of the century they had achieved a life of middle-class comfort in the midst of the rigorous demands of dairy farming. Over the generations, they reshaped customs and language, traditions and aspirations to meet the needs of the present. When necessary, they broke with the past by changing churches and, in order to sustain the family enterprise, by embracing scientific farming, government extension programs, marketing coops, a