(Also) Kin to a Corpus Christi Mayor!

Twelve years ago, I wrote about how I was kin (by marriage) to a Corpus Christi mayor - Abraham Albert Lichtenstein Jr., (of the Lichtenstein's department store family), who served from 1953 until his resignation in 1954.  Recently I learned that my husband, Mark Gresham, is related (also by marriage) to another Corpus Christi mayor - and he would get a kick out of this, since they served the City at the same time:

This is Jason Milus Luby (1929-2012), who was mayor of Corpus Christi from 1973 until he was forced to resign in 1978 when he made an unsuccessful run for Congress.  Mark started as Corpus Christi's Budget Director in April 1974, and he had a lot of interesting stories about Jason.  

Jason is in the center of the photo below, which comes from the Corpus Christi Public Libraries' Digital Archives, specifically La Retama's General Photograph Collection, with a description that reads, "Choke Canyon Dam Water Development Board.  Mayor Luby and four unidentified men.  The mayor holds a check.  A handwritten insert with the photo reads, 'City accepting check from Texas Water Development Board for second payment of loan for Choke Canyon.'"  I can tell you that the man in the darkest suit is R. Marvin Townsend, City Manager in Corpus Christi at the time.

So how is Mark related to Mayor Luby?  Well, Luby's wife was Elizabeth "Betty" Willene Lowman (1929-2024), pictured below.  The photo comes from the funeral home website ...

... where I also found a photograph that included her mother, Marguerite Maude Mew Lowman (1906-1996), pictured below.

Marguerite was the oldest child of Charles Arthur Mew Sr. (1884-1927), whose photograph below is from page 20 (image 26 here) of the 1919 La Gaviota yearbook of Corpus Christi High School, when he was serving as vice-president of the school board (and interestingly, while A. A. Lichtenstein, father of the Corpus Christi mayor I'm related to, was serving as president of the school board).

Charles was a younger half-brother of Benjamin George Mew Sr. (1879-1949), Mark's "Uncle Benny," who made him a belt and belt buckle when Mark was little.  The photo below, taken in 1919, is from page 137 (image 201 here) of the Journal of  Letters & History of George W. K. Mew by Judith Whipple, and it was probably provided to Whipple by ...

... Ben's wife, Mark's aunt, his mother's older sister, Ivis Moore Mew (1905-2004), who was one of the first (in 1930) graduates of the Spohn School of Nursing.  Ivis was a nurse in Corpus Christi and Duval County until 1963, when she moved back home to Marlow, Oklahoma, to take care of her aging parents while continuing her career.   

© Amanda Pape - 2026 - e-mail me!

Nineteen Years Ago Today - Texas Library Association Conference

Nineteen years ago, Mark went with me to the 2007 Texas Library Association Conference, held April 11-14 that year in San Antonio, Texas.  The only picture I have of the two of us together on this trip is this one, from the University of North Texas School of Library and Information Science (now the College of Information) Alumni dinner at the Tower of the Americas observation deck on April 12:

Above: Amanda Pape and Mark Gresham at the Tower of the Americas, San Antonio, Texas, April 12, 2007.  Photo by Poom Sunhachawi-Taylor, used with permission.

As I wrote in my (online)  LiveJournal, 

I had to work Tuesday night [April 10] and did not get home until 10:30 PM, so Breathless and I did not leave until 10 AM. ... The trip down (mostly on US 281) was lovely – lots of bluebonnets and other flowers. We met Mom and Dad for lunch in Marble Falls at the famous Blue Bonnet Café.

Breathless and I shared the Wednesday special, which was meat loaf. Not as good as my Mom’s, but pretty good. Shoulda gotten the pot roast that Dad had. Mom & Dad shared a piece of coconut pie (with whipped cream topping, as the meringues are HUGE at this restaurant), and Breathless and I shared a piece of peanut butter pie drizzled with chocolate sauce. Yum.

Above:  Geraldine Margaret Guokas Pape, Amanda Pape, Frederick Henry Pape, outside the Blue Bonnet Cafe in Marble Falls, Texas, April 11, 2007.  Photo by Mark Gresham / CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

We got into San Antonio about four, so we stopped by the convention center first (parking - $8 – ouch!) to pick up our badges and other registration material. Registration would close at 4 and the badge was needed to ride the shuttle bus to the Welcome Party at 6:30 PM at the San Antonio Museum of Art, built in the old Lone Star Brewery. This was VERY nice. It had a fiesta theme and of course Tex-Mex food – chips and queso sauce, taco shells to make your own with beans, beef, guacamole, and salsa, and real tamales in corn husks. Piñatas and other colorful decorations hung from the live oaks and pecan trees on the grounds, and you could eat there or in the courtyard. A string ensemble played in the latter, and a samba band was inside along with Mexican dulces (desserts). The best part was having the run of the museum – we were only able to spend time in parts of the American and Latin American collections, which were awesome. Definitely a place to revisit.

Between stopping by the convention center and the Welcome Party, we of course checked into our hotel, La Mansion Del Rio, and a room with a River Walk view.

I attended a lot of sessions the next day, April 12.  I'm not quite sure what Mark did all day, but I wrote in my LiveJournal,

From 11:30 to 2, we did some more trolling through the exhibits and had lunch at Casa Rio on the River Walk (more Mexican food ... we ate here because Breathless was STARVING and he gets cranky when he is hungry, and it was the first restaurant we came to while walking from the convention center).

And...

Breathless met me in the Exhibit Hall for the "Rush Hour" from 4-5 pm, when the exhibitors also foot the bill for some snacks. ... this year all I could find was Fritos and peanuts, but some very yummy fudge brownies and blonde brownies [aka blondies] too. We bought a few books ... [and went to the] Alumni Dinner ... at 6:30 PM.

On Friday the 13th, I think Mark mostly hung around the hotel, while I went to lots of conference sessions.  But ...

Breathless and I had lunch at a restaurant just off the River Walk, in Rivercenter Mall, called Steers & Beers. We shared a hamburger and fries that was actually quite good and reasonably priced. We wandered around the mall a bit, buying some new CDs.

We had dinner with Breathless’ son [Drew] and son’s girlfriend [now wife Carolyn] at Joe’s Crab Shack on the River Walk. Yeah, a chain, but said son loves king crab legs, and the mojitos come in little plastic garbage cans. It was starting to sprinkle as we left the restaurant and walked back to the hotel, and son & girlfriend got away just before a big thunderstorm cut loose.

The conference ended Saturday April 14 at noon.  

[We] went to eat at the restaurant in the hotel, Las Canarias. We ate outside under a bright yellow umbrella and shared a bowl of their signature squash blossom roasted corn huitlacoche soup with crème fraiche (very good!), and some so-so quesadillas. Then it was off to Canyon Lake.

We stayed at the Rockin’ MJ Ranch Bed & Breakfast [now called Moe and Jo's Haus], a place we had originally planned to stay during our Spring Break vacation in March before Breathless got sick. It’s on the north side of Canyon Lake, not far from the Marina of the same name where Breathless’ son has moored the 22’ Catalina sailboat Breathless and I used to sail 25+ years ago in Corpus Christi. The plan was to go sailing on Sunday.

However, said son [Drew] had taken the boat out a couple weeks before and busted the outboard motor. He told us Friday night that was in pieces in his apartment, but he should be able to get it fixed in time. Alas, he called us Saturday night and that did not happen. Probably just as well, as it was too windy to sail on Saturday afternoon, and there was no wind AT ALL on Sunday, so we’ll have to try another time.

We ate dinner at Papa-Docks at the marina; the food and the view were marvelous ... The B&B ... location was really pretty ... we walked up to the pens to look at the baby Boer goats the owners raise, and were treated to a golf-cart ride over some of the 200+ acres to the top of 1000-foot Mount Baldy, which had an impressive view of the lake. 

There was also a nice patch of bluebonnets ... :

Above: Amanda Pape by a patch of bluebonnets outside Moe and Jo's Haus at Canyon Lake, Texas, April 15, 2007.  Photo by Mark Gresham / CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

© Amanda Pape - 2026 - e-mail me!

Happy Easter - in 1968!

My family at Easter in 1968, which was April 15 that year, probably in the backyard of the home of my maternal grandmother, Sara Melzina Wolfe Guokas Archibald (1907-1997), at 1118 Bay Oaks in Houston, Texas.  Standing in back are my maternal aunt Sister Jean Marie Guokas (1930-2024), my mother Geraldine Margaret Guokas Pape (1928-2019), and my father Frederick Henry Pape (1929-2017).  In the middle are my sister Karen and me, and in front are my three youngest siblings, Mark, Brian, and Mary.  We girls are all wearing dresses Mom made for us.

© Amanda Pape - 2026 - e-mail me!

Nineteen Years Ago Today: A St. Patrick's Day Party

We were invited over to a neighbor's home along with another like-minded couple for drinks (cosmos and some wine) and snacks. Sheri was a former law librarian that hadn't been practicing for about ten years. She was about a year older than me. Her husband Ron retired around 2000 so I guessed he was about ten years older than her. Two dogs (very well behaved, Mark is pictured with one of them), no kids. The other couple were Ron and Nancy who were both in their 60s, married 45 years, with a couple grown kids and four grandkids. They operated a website development company out of their home. We all thought the same way, especially when it came to some of our homeowners association issues! (And those same issues still exist nineteen years later).  We were over there drinking, eating, and talking from 5 to 10:30 PM. 

Both couples moved away from the neighborhood.  Sheri died in 2011 at age 65 after a battle with cancer.  I learned just last year from her husband that Nancy has also died. 

© Amanda Pape - 2026 - e-mail me!

W. W. Browning House, Chappell Hill, Texas - 1936, c1971, 1977, 1983

Nineteen years ago today was a Saturday, the first full day of Spring Break with my employer, Tarleton State University, and I had a vacation planned for that week.  I wanted to show my husband Mark a couple of my favorite areas in the state, and we were also supposed to meet his son Drew at Canyon Lake to go sailing.  Unfortunately, it was cedar fever season, and Mark's allergies were really acting up, so we had to return home after our first night (in the Texas Hill Country) and cancel the rest of the vacation.

The last stop on our trip was going to be the Browning Plantation just outside Chappell Hill, in Washington, County, Texas, then being operated as a bed and breakfast.  I'm sorry we missed this, as I'd first seen this house in near ruins back in 1977, when it had just been purchased by the Browning Plantation Foundation, Inc., for restoration, and I wanted to see how it looked inside.

Here is some information on the history of the W. W. Browning House and Plantation, which is listed in the National Register of Historic Places (in January 1972), and is also a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark (in 1983).

The historic marker on the house reads as follows:  

A native of South Carolina, William Westcoat* Browning (1808-1871) moved to Texas in the 1850s with his wife, Elizabeth (Gilmer), and their children. This Greek Revival plantation home was built for them in 1856-58. The house is a fine example of the architectural style brought by early Texas planters from their former homes in the southern states. Outstanding features include the false graining on the interior woodwork, the widow's walk, and the two-story porches.

( * In other documents, the middle name is spelled Westcott.)

The original house had eight main rooms, four each on the first and second floors, each about 20 feet by 20 feet, with tall ceilings, four windows, and a fireplace, and they all opened onto a 16 foot by 44 foot central hall on each of the floors.  There was also a small room in the attic (or third floor) where one could access the widow's walk. 

The house was documented about 1936 as part of the nation's Historic American Buildings Survey, when it was owned by W. W. Browning's grandson, having stayed in the family since its construction 80 years before.  Architectural drawings available online include a site plan, floor plans, elevations (south, east, and west), cross sections, and various feature details.  The house was described as being in fair condition about the time it was surveyed, and was photographed by Harry L. Starnes:

Above:  1. Historic American Buildings Survey, Harry L. Starnes, Photographer, May 18, 1936 FRONT ELEVATION. - Colonel William W. Browning House, Farm Roads 1155 & 1371, Chappell Hill, Washington County, TX. Photo from Survey HABS TX-265.  From Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress (HABS No. TX-265; https://www.loc.gov/resource/hhh.tx0229.photos/?sp=1 accessed March 10, 2026).

Below:  2. Historic American Buildings Survey, Harry L. Starnes, Photographer, May 18, 1936 REAR ELEVATION. - Colonel William W. Browning House, Farm Roads 1155 & 1371, Chappell Hill, Washington County, TX. Photo from Survey HABS TX-265.  From Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress (HABS No. TX-265; https://www.loc.gov/resource/hhh.tx0229.photos/?sp=2 accessed March 10, 2026).

In 1971, the house was nominated for listing in the National Register of Historic Places.  Browning's great-grandson owned the house then, but it went out of the family shortly afterward.  Here are some photos from the nomination (where the house was described as being in deteriorated but unaltered condition on its original site), plus two other undated photos from Texas Historical Commission files that appear to be from about the same time (before June 23, 1971, when the nomination was submitted by the State of Texas).

Above:  Texas Historical Commission. [W.W. Browning House, {north elevation (front)}], photograph, date unknown {before 23 June 1971}; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth675223/: accessed March 10, 2026), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas Historical Commission.  This photograph also appears in the same source as the photo below, pages 9-10.

Below:  Texas Historical Commission. [W.W. Browning House, {south (rear) elevation}], photograph, date unknown {probably before 23 June 1971}; (https://atlas.thc.texas.gov/NR/pdfs/72001376/72001376.pdf, pages 11-12: accessed March 10, 2026).

Above:  Texas Historical Commission. [W.W. Browning House, {entrance way, north elevation (front)}], photograph, date unknown {before 23 June 1971}; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth672437/: accessed March 10, 2026), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas Historical Commission.  This photograph also appears in https://atlas.thc.texas.gov/NR/pdfs/72001376/72001376.pdf, pages 13-14: accessed March 10, 2026.

Below:  Texas Historical Commission. [W.W. Browning House, {entrance way, north elevation (front)}], photograph, date unknown {before 23 June 1971}; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth672223/: accessed March 10, 2026), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas Historical Commission.

Below:  Texas Historical Commission. [W.W. Browning House, {west side elevation}], photograph, date unknown {likely before 23 June 1971}; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth675223/: accessed March 10, 2026), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas Historical Commission. Note the pole supporting the porch roof on the right - it matches the same pole on the photo earlier in this post of the rear elevation.

In the summer of 1977, I was working as an interpretive park ranger at nearby Washington-on-the-Brazos State Historic Site (then part of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and managed by them until Septe,ber 1, 2019, when operational control was transferred to the Texas Historical Commission).  I spent a lot of my days off exploring other historic places nearby, primarily in Washington County.

One day in June, I drove a bit south to Chappell Hill, and stopped at the historic Farmers State Bank.  Unbeknownst to me at the time, the bank president, Nath Winfield Jr. (1925-2001), was also the town historian.  He and his wife Judy (1924-2009, who I also met that day), wrote All Our Yesterdays:  A Brief History of Chappell Hill (Texian Press: Waco, 1969), and Nath gave me an autographed copy.  He took me to a number of historic buildings in town - Stagecoach Inn, the Methodist Church, the J. R. Routt House, the Tunstall-Sledge House (Nath knew the owner, so I also got to see the inside), and the W. W. Browning House.  Below are two photos I took at the Browning House that day:

Above:  1856 Browning House front, Chappell Hill, Texas, June 1977 / Amanda Pape /       CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Below:  Nath Winfield Jr. by the staircase on the first floor inside the 1856 Browning House, Chappell Hill, Texas, June 1977 / Amanda Pape / CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Shortly after this, in December 1977, the house was acquired by the Browning Plantation Foundation Inc. (which I bet Nath was a member of), with the intention of restoring the house.  Originally they were going to use it as a museum, but it was sold to a private owner in 1980, who applied for a Texas historical marker in 1983 and submitted the photographs below.  Somewhere in the time frame, a one story addition was made on the east side of the house (where one of two single doors existed on the first floor), to add a kitchen (as the original kitchen had been a separate building).  Otherwise, though, it appears the restoration mostly followed the plans recorded about 1936 (although bathrooms were also added):

Above:  [W. W. Browning House Photograph #3 {north (front) elevation}], postcard, 1983; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth495146/: accessed March 10, 2026), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas Historical Commission.

Below:  [W. W. Browning House Photograph #1 {south (rear) elevation}], postcard, 1983; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth495147/: accessed March 10, 2026), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas Historical Commission.

Above:  [W. W. Browning House Photograph #4 {west (side) elevation}], postcard, 1983; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth495024/: accessed March 10, 2026), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas Historical Commission.

Below:  [W. W. Browning House Photograph #2 {east (side) elevation}], postcard, 1983; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth495047/: accessed March 10, 2026), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas Historical Commission.

The house has changed hands a few more times since then, but was no longer operated as a bed and breakfast after September 2007 - which was why we never had the opportunity to go back.  The $3 million, 5 bedroom, 5.5 bath, 5,288 square foot home is not on the market, but some photos can be viewed on realtors' sites.

Interestingly, the owner of the property from 1980 to 1997 allowed his son-in-law to build the two-mile live steam model Browning Railroad on the property, which operated from January 1988 to January 1998.  Fitting, because W. W. Browning was an organizer and stockholder of the Washington County Railroad.  That was sold to the Houston and Texas Central Railroad in 1869, which eventually became part of the Southern Pacific Railroad, who ultimately abandoned the former Washington County Railroad in 1961-62.

© Amanda Pape - 2026 - e-mail me!

Nineteen Years Ago Today - Valentine's Day, 2007

Here's what I wrote inside the Valentine's Day card I gave Mark in 2007.  I can't show the rest of the card because it's a little too suggestive.

Dearest Mark,

It has been an incredible year -- hard to believe it all started (back up) a little over  a year ago. It's been THE BEST year (so far!) for me, and it's all because of you. It's like a dream come true, having you back in my life, owning a beautiful home together, sleeping with you EVERY night, and kissing you whenever and wherever I want! I am so lucky to have you to take care of me, share your stories, and make me feel like the most beautiful and desirable woman on earth.

© Amanda Pape - 2026 - e-mail me!

Nineteen Years Ago: Jewel's Sunflower

Today is the birthday of Mark's youngest sister, June Marie Gresham Crane, and that reminded me that I've been meaning to write about this picture:

 

This (bad) photograph is of a print of an oil painting by our brother-in-law, June's husband Gregory Crane.  It's called Jewel's Sunflower and is of a sunflower that Mark's mom (Jewel) used to grow in her backyard in Bremerton (where June and Greg both grew up).  In late July 2006, I wrote to June:

I would like to surprise Mark for his birthday next month.  He said Greg did a painting or print once called "Jewel's Sunflowers."  I think he would like to have a print of that as it reminds him of your mother.  Are prints of that still available?  How would I go about getting one?

June explained that "Jewel's Sunflower is an oil painting and was never made into a print.  There are a couple of things that we can do if you want a reproduction of that image."  She went on to explain:

Just a note about Greg's images.  If you have been to his website you will see that his images aren't strictly literal.  They are much more emotional than that.  So the image of the sunflower may not be what you are expecting. It was painted after mom died, so it's very much full of all his feelings for her and how her death affected all of us. We have had a lot of people wanting to buy that painting but we could never part with it. I guess what I am trying to say is that it's not  a pretty picture of a sunflower, it's really more than that. I hope this makes sense.

I replied,

I did look at Greg's images on the website so I know they are not strictly literal interpretations.  Mark mentioned "Jewel's Sunflower" specifically so I figured he has seen the image and that is what he wants, probably for the very reasons you mentioned, to remember your mom.  That is good enough for me to buy it sight unseen. 

At that time, the image was not on Greg's website.  It is now, I think added after the process June and Greg went through to get a good image of it, and then a print (a little smaller than the original 17" wide by 25" high) made for us on a really nice quality watercolor paper.  

For various reasons, it took a while to get the print, and it did not arrive in time for Mark's August birthday, but we did have it by late October 2006.  In early December 2006, I wrote to June:

I've been meaning to tell you for some time that the print has been framed and is now in a place of honor on our mantle.  Mark picked out a really nice frame that goes with the wood in the floor, and the shop did a really nice job matting it - the beveled edge and a line cut around the perimeter show the yellow of the petals of the flower.  It's hard to describe; I've attached a (not-so-good) picture.

That's the picture at the beginning of this post.  Jewel Moore Gresham, Mark's and June's mother (Greg's and my mother-in-law, who I never met), died in November 1994 at the age of 80.  Greg may have based his painting on a drawing by the same name that he did with India ink on paper in 1982, that was part of an August 2016 show.

We later moved the painting to our bedroom, hung where we could see it from the bed.

© Amanda Pape - 2026 - e-mail me!

Finding Baltimore Lithuanian Records in the Catholic Heritage Archive

I have a number of Lithuanian immigrant relatives who settled in Baltimore, and I am also a leader in a Facebook-based group that is adding Lithuanian emigrants to Geni using information from census, naturalization, civil vital, and Catholic Church record datasets.  

Catholic Church records for Baltimore and surrounding areas in the Archdiocese are available at the Catholic Heritage Archive.

Naturalizations in particular give you much of the information you need to find the Catholic Church records.  Here is an example that I'll use in this post:

Joseph Budelis and his wife Magdalen were married in Sugar Notch, Pennsylvania, but their five children were all born in Baltimore.  Here is what I did to find the available baptism records.

First, a little background:  The first Lithuanian Roman Catholic parish in Baltimore was St. John the Baptist, established in 1888.  The congregation worshiped in three different buildings until 1917, when the Archbishop of Baltimore transferred the historic St. Alphonsus Liguori Catholic Church, a former German parish established in 1845, to the Lithuanian parish.

The Catholic Heritage Archive is a partnership of the Archdioceses of Baltimore and Philadelphia with Findmypast.  The records are freely available for anyone to view - you don't have to have a paid account with Findmypast.  You do, however, need to use (or set up) a free account with Findmypast to access the records.

That free Findmypast account also gives you the ability to use Findmypast to search -and sometimes that works.  You *can* see the search results, and you *can* view images of the records (but not their transcriptions) even without a paid account.  However, I am a firm believer in providing links to ALL possible sources, so I will be writing about two ways to find the records - especially since searching using just Findmypast does not always work.

Here are the record sets pertaining to Baltimore Catholic parishes in Findmypast:  

Here's an example of a search I did for the Budelis children in the Baptisms record set.  First, I searched for the last name Budelis, checking the box for "Include name variants."  There were no relevant results.  Then I tried a wild card search, last name "Bud*" - no need to check the box with that search.  

There were 142 results, with a promising one on the fourth page.  Magdalenam is a Latin variant of Magdalen, the birth and baptism years were 1917, the church was St. Alphonsus Liguori, and the father's first name was Josephi, a Latin variant of Joseph.  So I clicked on the icon to view the image.  It's at the bottom of page 319 of one of the baptism registers.  The mother's first name and the date of birth match up.  Note also that her record includes some information about her marriage:

I wasn't having any luck finding her brothers using the Findmypast search.  So I decided to switch directly to the records at the Archdiocese of Baltimore link on the Catholic Heritage Archive - because Findmypast wouldn't let me maneuver to other pages in the record set, and that is what I needed to do next.

Once you go to the link in the paragraph above, you need to choose a parish.  If a search in FindMyPast indicated a particular parish, go to that one.  If you are looking without doing a FindMyPast search first, you'll want to start with the parish with the most Lithuanians.

 You don't want to chose St. John the Baptist records.  You will get the records for a St. John the Baptist parish (primarily Italian) that took over the Lithuanians' third location before they moved into St. Alphonsus and adopted that name.

So choose St. Alphonsus Liguori - but be aware that the older records for the German congregation are mixed in with the Lithuanian parish records.  There are 20 record sets for this church - nine of which contain baptisms - and many have overlapping dates.

I have determined that the following record sets pertain to the Lithuanian parish:

Event Type                        Image Count    Year Range*

Baptisms                                166                1894-1907

Baptisms                                219                1907-1919 

Baptisms & Marriages**        70                 1890-1893

Burials                                     52                 1895-1958 

Marriages***                         151                1891-1920 

Marriages***                         147                1894-1920 

* The year range includes the index, which includes records that have not yet been digitized and/or released.

** Most of the records in this set are in Lithuanian, handwritten, and very hard to read (except for some baptisms at the end).  There are also lists of parishioners.

***  These two record sets are near duplicates of each other.  The internal handwritten index is more thorough in the one with the 151-page count, so I would try that one first.

Another clue that you've got the right book is that the first page of most (not all) of them identifies it as "formerly St. John the Baptist" and/or "Lithuanian Parish" and looks similar to this:

This particular record set, Baptisms 1907-1919, should include the first three children of Joseph and Magdalen Budelis.  There's an internal handwritten index, so I scrolled to the two pages of Bs, which were on images 3 and 4 out of 219 total.

Sure enough, it had Magdalena indexed under Budkeviciu, but it also had her brothers Joseph and Leonard:

 

Note that the last name for Joseph was originally spelled Butkevicius, and later as Boudelis - that's why he didn't come up in my searches on Findmypast.  Here is Joseph on page 259 of the baptism form book, the second one on the page - note that the date of birth, May 6, 1915, matches that on his father's naturalization petition:

Leonard's baptism record is currently not available.  The index says it's on page 373, but the records online only go through page 371 - so close!

And here is a link to Magdalena's baptism record in the Catholic Heritage Archive.  Please, when you are entering data in sites like Geni, include ALL the possible sources to view the original record.

If Magdalena's brothers had not been in the index?  Then I would have scrolled to pages with baptisms after the dates of birth listed in the naturalization, and found them that way.  Internal handwritten indexes - if they even exist - are often not complete, so don't assume a baptism (or marriage, or death/burial) isn't in a register just because the name is not in the internal index.

I have found records for other Lithuanian emigrants in Baltimore in other parishes - this is where the search function in Findmypast is helpful.  

© Amanda Pape - 2026 - e-mail me!

Nineteen Years Ago Today: Twelfth Night, 2007

This is a post copied from my old LiveJournal from Saturday, January 6, 2007:

Jan. 6th, 2007 04:25 pm

Twelfth Night

( Bling-bling )

Breathless gave me some nice stuff for Christmas and Epiphany:

[From left to right in the photo above]

[1] a silver necklace with malachite and painted jasper, and matching malachite earrings. We go back a long way on malachite (the first piece of jewelry he gave me 25 or so years ago was a malachite and silver ring), but the painted jasper was new. It's called that because the striations can look like they are painted onto the stone.

[2] Another gift is a good example of that. [3] He also gave me a necklace of mother of pearl and tiger's eye.

Current Location: home
Current Mood: jubilant
Current Music: Alison Krauss + Union Station "New Favorite" album

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Some of the links above take you to better photos of these pieces.  Mark took this one of me wearing his Christmas Eve gift (the malachite and painted jasper) along with my son Eric on January 2, 2007, just before I took Eric to the airport to fly back to Washington.

I also wore it when I (finally) got my driver's license updated to our address - so this was on my license until the 2018 renewal.

© Amanda Pape - 2026 - e-mail me!

Nineteen Years Ago Today - Christmas Eve in 2006

It's Christmas Eve 2025 as I write this, and seems to be a good time to post it, although I probably gave this to Mark much earlier.  I still have this ornament on my tree:

And of course there was a little gift card to go with it, and of course he kept it:

This is the post about his gift that inspired this ornament:  https://abt-unk.blogspot.com/2025/03/march-25-2006-another-early-birthday.html

I wrote the following about Christmas Eve 2006 in my online journal:

Christmas Eve was very nice. We opened our gifts since we were going to be gone all the next day. We gave Eric* an MP3 player (Creative Zen 1GB), Napster gift card, and an extra set of Skullcandy ear buds, plus a couple little things (like a Tervis mug with our county courthouse emblem). We'll be going out shopping later this week, for some new (size 16) shoes, among other things.

I got Breathless all sorts of little stuff, some of which were things I wanted too, like a rain chain. I gave him his big gift back in November, a model ship** he wanted from the Blue Moon Gallery in Grapevine.

Breathless got me a beautiful necklace of silver and malachite [and painted jasper] with matching earrings,*** and a black Coach leather bag. Breathless got me a brown leather Coach bag about 25 years ago that I'd kept and used mainly for special occasions over the years, but I've been using it daily for nearly a year now, so it is nice to have an alternate.

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* My son Eric was visiting for the holidays.  We went to Austin on Christmas Day to visit my family there, his grandparents and my siblings, his aunts and uncles, and his cousins.  Today I'll just be seeing my siblings.

**  The link to the photo of the ship (which is also pictured in my last post) reminded me that one of my other gifts to him was a base for an old clock that had belonged to his father, which you can also see in the photo.  I still have all of these, and I'm still using the rain chain, although it's been moved to the left of where it is in this photo from 2019:

*** More about this necklace in a future post.

© Amanda Pape - 2025 - e-mail me!