That magazine was the source I was suggesting.
An expansion on what pnegyesi shared about Verkins, from one of his grandchildren:
"Robert H. Verkins was my grandfather, I lived across the back yard from Bob & Elsie growing up.
The story goes: Henry was a blacksmith by day and musician by night, training all three children to play multiple instruments such as clarinet, trumpet, trombone, piano, & violin. I was handed down stories of them playing in various weddings and other parties throughout the southern Minnesota river valley area. That is how Robert met Elsie, and I suppose the same for his siblings. He became fairly well off acquiring much rental real estate. I also have Henry's and Louise's original marriage certificate.
Both Robert and Sylvester served in WWI.
Olga married Roy Zimdars in Winona.
Sylvester married and went to live in Manitowoc, WI having a son Daniel who married Marion and lived in Milwaukee. (I think) I know they are dead now but I did get some info from her at one time.
Robert Henry Verkins married Elsie Bertha Papenfuss in Red Wing, MN in Feb 1920. A few years later he was diagnosed with Tuberculosis, incurable in those days. He claimed he contracted it overseas but never got compensated. He was advised to move to a higher climate. They moved to Colorado Springs and took an outdoor job driving a milk wagon. Elsie was in the hospital having Wayne Robert Verkins April 3, 1925 when Robert was run over by his own team of horses and wound up at the same hospital. The crash of the stock market took their house he built so they came back to Minnesota. A small inheritance from Henry gave them a chance to buy an old church at auction to be torn down. As they lived in a home made camper they had used lumber to build an apartment building at 2876 Highway 88 in Minneapolis. Robert was a jack of all trades plus inventor. The depression left my grandparents the ability to make a lot out of very little. He built motor scooters, invented and patented push button radios among other things. They built a fine house re-using lumber and the nails they pulled from it. He hand crafted the cabinets and woodwork. Robert died of a massive heart attack the day after shoveling snow on December 17, 1968. Elsie died on September 17, 1987, they are buried in Hillside Cemetery across highway 88 from the Saint Anthony shopping center. Wayne is also there next to them, he died June 1994 of the same lympho cancer as Elsie.
Bob & Elsie built a second apartment house in 1955 and in 1960 divided a parcel of land for only child Wayne Robert Verkins and his growing family, which I was the firstborn, Lorinda Marie Verkins".
