Saturday, February 11, 2012

Two Degrees of Separation

This week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun by Randy Seaver is:
Using your ancestral lines, how far back in time can you go with two degrees of separation?  That means “you knew an ancestor, who knew another ancestor.”  When was that second ancestor born?

 I can go back to great-great-grandfathers on both sides, born in 1845 and 1847, via my grandmothers, AND I have the photos to prove my grandmothers actually knew (and remember) their grandfathers (and weren't just held by them as babies, or born while they were still alive):

Above left is me with my dad, Fred Pape, and his mother, my Nana, Elizabeth Massmann Pape (1903-2000), taken in August 1983. Above right are Elizabeth (seated right) and my grandfather Paul Robert Pape (1896-1970, standing second from left) on their wedding day, September 3, 1924.  My great-grandmother Elizabeth Dienes Massmann (1876-1946) is also seated, and the other gentlemen standing are my great-grandfathers John Pape (1851-1945) and Frederick Massmann (1876-1948), and my great-great-grandfather, Nana's grandfather, Carl Massmann (1847-1929).

Above left are my maternal grandmother, "Nani," Sara Wolfe Guokas Archibald (1907-1997), me and my son Eric, and my mother, Geraldine Guokas Pape, in December 1987.  In the photo above right, which was probably taken in 1916, Sara is seated at the lower left.  Her paternal grandfather, Joseph William Wolfe (1845-1918), is seated above and to the right.  His son, my great-grandfather and Sara's father, Louis Henry Wolfe (1872-1929), is seated just above Sara.  The boy seated between the two men is Sara's older brother Lloyd (1906-1993)  - I have no idea who the boy in the background is!  Seated next to Sara are her sisters Neva Marie (1912-1995) and Edith (1910-2006).

My great-grandmother Addilee Shelton Wolfe (1890-1977), "Big Nani," died when I was 20, and was at a number of family gatherings, most evidenced in home movies, although the only photograph I have of the two of us is the one at left, taken in 1958, where she is holding me.  My mother is to the left and Nani is to the right.  Big Nani surely knew her grandmother, the elusive Leah Lucy Pickering (or Pickens) Barton Spikes (1835-1903), as they both lived in Winn Parish in 1900, but I have no proof.

© Amanda Pape - 2012 - click here to e-mail me.

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