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Thursday, April 30, 2020

Treasure Chest Thursday: A Letter to Richard Pape from the Department of Agriculture, November 1917

Abby, one of the current owners of the house my great-grandfather, John Pape (1851-1945), built and lived in from at least 1882 to at least 1925, at 1043 Sherman Avenue in Evanston, Illinois, contacted me a couple months ago, and she told me she'd found a few items related to our family in the house. 

This is the last of four items she sent me.  It's a letter written to Otto Richard "Dick" Joseph Pape (1898-1972), my great uncle, from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, responding to Richard's query on farm tractors.  It was dated November 12, 1917 - Richard had just turned 19.

What's of most interest to me, though, is that it was addressed to Richard in Galva, Illinois.  Galva is a small town near the western border of Illinois, about 175 miles east and south of the rest of Richard's family in Evanston.   Why was Richard in Galva?



Fortunately, Galva has some of the early Galva News available online through the Galva Public Library.  I did a search for "Pape," and the first hit was from page 5 of the April 19, 1917 edition, indicating in the Saxon area news that "Dick Pape, of Evanston, has returned to work for Hiram Murchison again this summer."




Saxon was a small community about nine miles east of Galva.  Only a cemetery remains there today.  Click the image of the map below to make it larger.



The spot marked with a green-and-white marker that's between Galva and Saxon is the Black Hawk College East Campus.  It is built on the former homestead of the grandparents of Hiram Nance Murchison (1880-1960), who farmed the land from his marriage in 1905 until retiring, moving to Galva in 1947, and selling the property.

How Murchison came to hire Dick Pape is still a mystery.  As referred to in the April 1917 article, Dick apparently had spent an earlier summer in the area.  I could not find any reference specifically to Dick, but there was a mention in the Saxon section of the June 28, 1916, Galva News (page 5) to "Mrs. Pape, of Evanston, visited at Hiram Murchison's over Sunday, returning to her home Tuesday."



The Mrs. Pape is most likely Dick's mother, my great-grandmother Gertrude Kramer Pape (1859-1919), but it could also be his aunt Catherine Hoffman Pape (1860-1927) or his cousin Hugo Aloysius Pape's wife Josephine Didier Pape (1880-1960), or it could even have been a misprint and been referring to one of Dick's three older sisters, Miss Clara or Martha or Rhea Pape.

There was one other reference to Dick Pape that I could find, in the Saxon section on page 4 of the July 12, 1917, Galva News:  "David Johnson and Dick Pape spent the week-end in Chicago."  Note there's also a David Johnson mentioned in the June 28, 1916 clip pictured above, "riding in a fine new car."




As far as I can tell, this is David Oscar Johnson (1881-1964), who was a first cousin to Hiram Murchison (their mothers were sisters).  Johnson lived across the road from the Murchisons and was still single in 1916 and 1917.

How did Dick end up down here?  That's the piece of the story that is still missing.  I also wonder if this has anything to do with Dick winding up in New Leipzig, Grant County, North Dakota, the following year.  His World War I draft registration card places him there, as a farmer, on September 12, 1918, and he was still there, operating his own farm, when the 1920 Census was taken on January 9.  However, Dick was apparently back at the Sherman Avenue house in Evanston by 1925, and it must be sometime around then that the November 1917 letter that Abby found got left behind.


© Amanda Pape - 2020 - e-mail me!

3 comments:

  1. This was a pretty neat find....and wonderful that Abby found it (where?) and tracked you down (how?)!!!

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  2. Shelley FrizelisMay 7, 2020 at 5:06 PM

    Ok, I got sucked down the rabbit hole and read through other bits of your blog :-) So I know the where these documents were found....but still curious as to how....were they redoing the attic? I just think it's pretty cool to find little surprises like this and to top it off that the current owner reached out to you! I happened upon your blog while doing some research on the Lithuanian Nativity BVM catholic church in Marquette Park, Chicago. What is your tie to this church? My husband grew up in that church and attended "Saturday School" across the street. Family lore is that my husband's relative was (one of?) the architect who designed this church. His 95 yo daughter just passed away and I'm tasked with going through her things and found some old photos and other artifacts of his.

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    1. Hi Shelley! Thanks so much for commenting! Yes, Abby and her husband were removing some dormers in the attic when they came across this document and three others I've written about (including a couple letters torn in pieces that were in the insulation). Abby says she has a couple more things, so I hope she'll soon send me either the items or images so I can research and write about them too!

      My connection to Nativity BVM is a Lithuanian immigrant relative (first cousin twice removed) and his family, who were members there by June 1966 (his daughter was married there) and were living nearby at that point. Prior to that they were members of St. George on Lituanica Avenue (now gone), and lived in various places closer to that church. I really wish we'd had time to go inside Nativity BVM when we visited Chicago in August 2017!

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