George J. Burghart (1902-1990) was born to John and Anna Haefner Burghart who immigrated from Russia and settled in North Topeka, Kansas with other German Catholics from the Volga region. George Burghart and Mable Ellen Perry (Perreault) married in 1929. In 1935, their first child, Mary Ellen, was born with developmental disabilities that required full-time care. Mable’s parents, William and Mary (Girard) Perry and her sister, Grace Perry, helped to care for Mary Ellen, who died at age 11 in 1946.

George and Mable Burghart's second child, Barbara Burghart (1939-2023), was born in 1939 and attended Assumption School and Hayden High School. She remained in Topeka, Kansas to attend Washburn University where she was a member of the Delta Gamma sorority and excelled in art classes under George Tillotson. In 1959, she transferred to Rosary College in River Forest, Illinois to be near a boyfriend, Mike McGee, who went to school at Notre Dame.

After graduating in 1961, Burghart returned to Topeka and worked for the Public Welfare Department. She transferred to San Francisco in 1963 where she married a coworker, Thomas Job, in 1965. Burghart, now Barbara Job, kept journals and took photographss of their 1968-70 journey through Europe and North Africa in a Volkswagen bus.

When the couple divorced in 1975, Burghart rekindled a relationship with Myron Greenman. Myron Greenman (1931-2000) was born to Fannie (Applebaum) and Issac Lee Greenman, the youngest of five children in Champaign, Illinois. He attended the University of Illinois, receiving his bachelor’s degree in 1952. He served in the Army in the Korean War from which he was honorably discharged in 1954. After traveling throughout Europe, he pursued a literary career in New York City. He got his Master’s degree in 1971 from the University of California at San Francisco and taught Literature and earned a doctorate in 1980 from the University of California, Santa Cruz. The romantic relationship between Greenman and Burghart ended in 1980, but they remained lifelong friends.

Burghart lived in England at a friend’s house from 1984-85, returning to help her mother who had cancer. Mable Ellen (Perry) Burghart died in 1987. Burghart's father, George Burghart, and aunt, Grace Perry, died in 1990.

That same year, Burghart gained financial security working as an accountant at a high-end San Francisco divorce lawyer firm, Shapiro Thorn Incorporated. Her relationship with John Gorgone also began that year, and though they separated in 1996, Burghart remained close with members of his family for the rest of her life.

It was around this time that Myron Greenman’s health deteriorated. Burghart handled Greenman’s finances and secured his placement in a Jewish home as he dealt with Alzheimer’s Disease, dying in 2000.

In 2007, Burghart’s artistic focus changed from drawing to photography. Upon retirement in 2011, she began working on creative writing. Burghart self-published What’s Left: A memoir in prose, poetry and photographs in 2020 and Still Lives, Mannequins: Reflections on Identity in 2022. Dealing with Lyme Disease and Parkinson’s Disease, Barbara Burghart died in June 2023.