Sizer Family--some history and some photos
Sizer is a made up name...not as simple as Smith or Jones or Doe...the popular aliases but a made up name all the same. It seems that a Frenchman by the name of Antoine De Socieur (or alternately De Zocieur) settled in Massachusetts in 1724 and the town clerk, at his behest, recorded his name as Sizer. His son William Sizer is recorded as having served in the Revolutionary War and was also tried for counterfeiting and was acquitted.
My father's great-uncle Nelson Sizer wrote the definitive textbook on Phrenology which at some point in the 19th century was a popular "science" of reading the bumps on a person's head to determine character and mental capacity. I found this site which provides a thorough explanation of phrenology.
My father, Leonard Sizer, was born in 1913 in Council Bluffs, Iowa. He attended a number of seminaries following a desire to be a minister tho he later changed professions and became a rural sociologist doing his teaching and research at West Virginia University. He retired as Professor Emeritus in 1979. He served as a chaplain in the US Army during World War II and was stationed on the island of Amchitka in theAleutian Islands off the coast of Alaska where he ministered to the West Virginia 201st National Guard who were there to defend the area from the Japanese. The Japanese did make a move on the Aleutians, tho with hindsight, it appears to have been a ploy to dilute the resources of the US Navy following the losses at Pearl Harbor.
My father, front row, 3rd from left My father about 1935
2nd grade class
My father in the Army, with friend on Amchitka and with his brother Jack and sister Marie