No wedding portrait of George Hiram Thoma and Anna Leota Fenton is known to exist. When they married on 23 March 1902, George was twenty-one years old while Leota had just celebrated her twenty-second birthday.¹

And in fact, while photographs of their children abound, the earliest photograph yet uncovered of George and Leota together was taken twenty-six years later.

Another, a sharper yet more serious snapshot, was taken perhaps a decade or more after that.

George and Leota had spent their first few years of marriage together not as Mr. and Mrs. Thoma, but as Mr. and Mrs. Neilson, before abruptly discarding this mysterious alias.

They had moved no less than half a dozen times within their first quarter-century together, first as newlyweds from Ashton, Iowa to Center, Nebraska, then to Sioux City, Iowa, then to Bassett, Nebraska, then to Decatur, Nebraska, then to Scribner, Nebraska, and finally back to Sioux City.

They had taken risks and faced failure as aspiring homesteaders and entrepreneurs.

But they had succeeded in raising four children together: Fenton, Fern, Norma, and Betty.

After years of effort to find a place to call home, they settled into a comfortable life together in Sioux City surrounded by their children and grandchildren.

They are remembered as “super grandparents” and as good, kind, fun-loving people who celebrated more than sixty years of marriage together.²

(Just not all of them were spent as Mr. and Mrs. Thoma.)

Copyright © 2019 Melanie Frick. All Rights Reserved.

---

SOURCES
¹ Osceola County, Iowa, marriage of George A. Neilson [George H. Thoma] and Leota Fenton, 23 March 1902; Recorder’s Office, Sibley.
² Linda McGlynn to Melanie Frick, e-mail, 2004, Personal Correspondence, Thoma Family, Frick Research Files; privately held by Frick, and Brian Adam, conversation with Melanie Frick, 2004. Linda and Brian are direct descendants of George Hiram and Anna Leota (Fenton) Thoma.