By Terri Jo Ryan

Tribune-Herald staff writer

In preparing to write her memoirs, Crawford resident Marillyn Nystrom, 79, came across the kinds of family lore that make genealogists grin from ear to ear.

Besides her daddy’s report cards and her grandparents’ wedding certificate (misspellings and all) she also ran across the lengthy September 1900 newspaper report of their nuptials.

With breathless ardor and purplest of prose, the anonymous society writer wrote about “one of the prettiest home weddings of the season,” going into much detail about the floral arrangements, the bridal wardrobe, the menu highlights and the musical entertainment (ragtime and “some of that soulful Mexican music which is always so acceptable, especially to people who have traveled in Montezuma land”).

The wedding took place at the McCulloch House, now one of Waco’s famed house museums, at 407 Columbus Ave. The bride — Lotta Belle McCulloch (1880-1928) — was the niece of the home’s owner, merchant and former mayor Champe Carter McCulloch, who purchased the house in 1872. Her parents were Mr. and Mrs. George McCulloch.

Lotta “joined heart and hand” with Clayton W. Burdsal (1875-1937), a photographer who found her to be his favorite subject. Although they lived for a time in Wichita, Kan., they came back to Central Texas to raise their family.

Son William Lannie “Jack” Burdsal (1901-1993) showed artistic tendencies at an early age. By 9, he was a landscape painter, and in his teens started as a sign painter for some of Waco’s most prominent businesses: hand-lettering signs for department stores like Goldstein-Miguel’s, Sanger Bros. and Monnig’s, as well as designing their shop windows; and painting for firms like Borden’s Milk, Jones Fine Bread Co. and Rainbo Bread.

He met his future wife, Josephine Urban Burdsal (1901-1995), when she was a ticket-taker at the old Waco Hippodrome and he painted the backdrops there for stage productions and vaudeville shows.

Nystrom’s memoirs, My Story: My Life and Times, arrived from the printers on Tuesday, just in time for Christmas gift-giving to all her kin, she said.

tjryan@wacotrib.com

757-5746