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September 1937. "The Herman Gerling family near Wheelock, North Dakota. The daughter lost her arm four years ago." Medium format acetate negative by Russell Lee for the Farm Security Administration. View full size.
The 1940 US Census finds them in Truax, ND. Herman is then 59, his wife Tirazah is 39, Gertrude is 14 and John is 3. Herman owns the farm and values it at $200 but claims that it provided no income that year but he had income from other sources. Their 19 year old son James seems to have moved out, he's last seen in the 1930 Census. Gertrude died in 2001 and appears never to have been married. I can't find a public family tree, but it looks like someone is doing research on them and correcting transcription errors in documents. Fingerprints on the public record left by amateur genealogists are too often the only indication that there are people left who care.
It seems someone dug into the Gerling family history and wrote about it:
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