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Thursday, December 30, 2021

Treasure Chest Thursday: Old World Metal Art Ornaments

A couple of the prettiest Christmas ornaments in my collection are these two brass "Old World Metal Art" 1979 dated ornaments, by Kristin Kjorlaug Inc. (originally Kristin Company).   These must have been among the very first ornaments I bought for myself, for my first Christmas tree in Corpus Christi, Texas, in 1979.  The first is a snowflake; the second is called "the little Mary."






I still have the original sleeve one of the ornaments came in, along with the original documents.  Here are some of the images from the pages, which tell a little about the company.




I found some examples of different snowflake designs from later years for sale online.  I don't remember what I paid for these in 1979, but now they seem to sell for about $8.50 each.




"The little Mary" was apparently designed by another artist called Pat Greer.  I was unable to find much information about her.  However, I found a lot of information about Kristin Korlaug herself on her granddaughter's website.  Here is what she wrote:

Kristin Kjorlaug was the artist name of my dear Norwegian grandmother. In 1884 her grandfather brought the name Kjorlaug from Norway to America. Kristin was a Norwegian name that she adored. Not only did she sign her artwork with this name, but she also named her brass art company The Kristin Company in 1972— a company where my grandfather, an engineer, chemically etched her artwork on brass sheets, then clipped and polished them to sell as ornaments. They ran this company together until 1987. 

Based on this information, other hints I found on the granddaughter's Facebook page, and the Edina, Minnesota location of the company, I determined that the original Kristin Kjorlaug was Dorothy Ann Kjorlaug Cummings, 1923-2011.  Her husband was former Honeywell aeronautical engineer Kimball Curtis Cummings Sr., 1921-2020.


© Amanda Pape - 2021 - e-mail me!

Thursday, December 23, 2021

Treasure Chest Thursday: Marine Animal Ornaments

In December 1993, my son Eric's third-grade class was working on a project on marine animals.  I remember Eric doing lots of research on narwhals and hermit crabs.

As it was Christmastime in Lynnwood, Washington (where we lived at the time), I was popping in at Wight's Home and Garden store to see their "Wonderland of Christmas" display of about 35 trees, each decorated with a different theme.  And of course, the ornaments were for sale.  I got many ornaments at Wight's in the years we lived in Lynnwood (1990-1995), as we'd put up a pretty big tree.  I'd typically scout out the trees and come back and get ornaments in the after-Christmas sale.

I must have found these ornaments on some wildlife-themed tree.  I bought them (even though they weren't on sale) just in case Eric and his class needed them for the project.  At the end of it, they were planning a display of their findings, with all the parents invited.  I don't think any of the ornaments were used for that, but for many years after, they hung on our tree.


Above:  The seven ornaments on a tree.  
Below:  Bald eagle - okay, so it's not a marine animal, but it does eat them.



Above and below - whales, I think.  Maybe the one above is a gray whale, and the ones below might be blue whales



Pretty sure these are a salmon (above) and a sea lion (below).



A shark (above) and a manatee (below).



© Amanda Pape - 2021 - e-mail me!

Thursday, December 16, 2021

Treasure Chest Thursday: Seattle Ornaments

I have WAY more Christmas tree ornaments now than I will ever need, given that I don't put up a large tree any more, and also inherited a number of ornaments from my mother.  So I thought I would write about the stories behind a few of the more interesting ones, before passing them on to the offspring.

The ones I'm writing about today are from the offspring's birth state of Washington.  The Seattle area, where the offspring grew up, is well known for the Puget Sound ferries - so of course I have a couple ferry boat ornaments, both made of wood.  This one even has little cars on it:



This one looks more like the Washington State Ferries, with the color scheme used in the time I lived up there (late 1984 to January 2006):



It was a gift from a coworker, Cheryl Robinson, who was a registered nurse who worked a couple mornings or afternoons per week at multiple schools within the Edmonds School District.  Therefore, I'm not sure if she gave this to me during the period I was working at Terrace Park K-8 (Christmas 1997 or 1998) or at Hazelwood Elementary (Christmas 2001, 2002, or 2003).



We also acquired a couple Seattle Seahawks ornaments over the years.  It's nice to see that the logo on the helmet is still used by the team today.



© Amanda Pape - 2021 - e-mail me!

Thursday, December 9, 2021

Treasure Chest Thursday: Mt. St. Helens Ash Glass Ornaments

I have WAY more Christmas tree ornaments now than I will ever need, given that I don't put up a large tree any more, and also inherited a number of ornaments from my mother.  So I thought I would write about the stories behind a few of the more interesting ones, before passing them on to the offspring.

The ones I'm writing about today are from the offspring's birth state of Washington.  When I moved there on November 1, 1984, glass ornaments, made from ash from the May 18, 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington, were very popular.

Here is the first one, from Evergreen Art and Design in Chehalis.  (My photos don't do the ornaments justice.)  It has about a ten-inch circumference and a three-plus-inch diameter.



I store it in the original wooden box it came in, which was made by D&D Box in Rochester, Washington.



I also still have this descriptive card inside.



It reads:  "Mount St. Helens erupted May 18, 1980 giving mankind another example of the power of Mother Nature. Millions of tons of volcanic ash were thrown into the air, blanketing several states. This ash contained 64.2% silica, the basic ingredient of glass, plus numerous trace elements including alumina, iron, calcium, silver, and gold.

This ornament comes to you from Hank Claycamp's Evergreen Art and Design in Chehalis, Washington. Working just an ashfall away from the volcano, artisans fashion each handblown piece from a unique blend of man's ingenuity and nature's bounty. The glassworks also produces a variety of paperweights, vases, lamps, bells, bowls, honey jars, jewelry, and custom designs."



Unfortunately, although I found listings at auction sites for similar ornaments made as early as 1982 and as late as 1985, neither Evergreen Art and Design nor D&D Box seem to be in business today.

Here is the other ornament, from Glass Eye Studio in Seattle:



As the descriptive card notes, "handblown glass insures individual creation - no two pieces are exactly alike."




Apparently, the Glass Eye Studio has run out of Mt. St. Helens ash and no longer makes the ornaments, but a few can still be found online.



© Amanda Pape - 2021 - e-mail me!

Wednesday, December 1, 2021

Happy 12th Blogiversary to ME!


Twelve Drummers Drumming, from the 12 Days of Christmas animated light display at the Moody Gardens Festival of Lights, Galveston, Texas, January 3, 2015.


© Amanda Pape - 2021 - e-mail me!

Tuesday, November 30, 2021

Remembering Mom: It's Been Two Years


Geraldine Margaret Guokas Pape, October 19, 1928 - November 30, 2019


It's been two years now since I lost my mom, and I miss her.  I really like this photo of her from May 2, 2009, in Burnet, Texas.  Breathless and I drove down to meet Mom and Dad for lunch there, something we tried to do (in either Burnet or Lampasas, sometimes Marble Falls) every six to eight weeks.  We then went to the nearby Hamilton Creek Park to visit a while longer, before they drove back to Fredericksburg and we returned home.


© Amanda Pape - 2021 - e-mail me!

Thursday, November 25, 2021

Check Registers and Home Budgets



Some of the boxes I brought home from my parents' duplex in Austin (after my parents' move to an assisted living facility in October 2017 and my father's death just a few weeks later) contained a number of notebooks, as well as 106 check registers.  

The registers were dated from February, 1958, which was when my parents moved back to Houston, Texas (where Mom was born and they met) from Chicago, Illinois (where Dad was born), through November 2014.  Any registers after that time would have been in Dad's financial files, which my lawyer/accountant younger sister (the executor of their estates) needed to keep.

I'd knew I'd want to take a look at these old notebooks and registers at some point, and I finally got around to doing so a few months ago, when I needed to sort through much of the things I'd brought back to decide what to keep and what could go.  I decided these could go - but not until I went through all of them and made notes. I ended up with 29 pages of them!  I also pulled a few registers and notebook pages as samples to keep.

The first check in the first register (most recorded in Mom's handwriting) was dated February 24, 1958, and was made out to John B. Murphy, MD, for a doctor visit and shots (smallpox and polio) for me on January 27.  The check was for $10.  Later that year, Murphy became chairman of the pediatrics department at St. Francis Hospital in Evanston, Illinois, where I was born.  



Mom had saved the doctor's orders from my various well-baby visits in a separate place, and here is the one that corresponds to check #1.  The doctor made notes of all the vaccinations I had received at that point, since we were moving to Houston:




The notebooks began in January 1963 and went monthly through August 2016, and are all in Mom's handwriting.  In the last three years, they became messy, incomplete, and sporadic as time went on and Mom's frontotemporal degeneration manifested and worsened.  

Most of the time, Mom just used spiral notebooks for these records, mostly from her alma mater, Incarnate Word Academy in Houston (where her sister, my aunt Sister Jean Marie (Jo Ann) Guokas, was principal from 1964-1978).  A few years, she used a Simplex Home Budget Guide, but I don't think she liked its formatting (I didn't!).

In the early years, the records were very much a budget, as illustrated by the January 1963 page below.  Money was tight - my parents had four children at that point.  


A couple interesting observations about this page.  Note that my parents paid a poll tax that month.  They did so in January 1964 and January 1965 as well, but the poll tax was declared unconstitutional on February 9, 1966.

K.C. was Knights of Columbus - probably an annual membership for my dad.  My parents budgeted money to donate to the United Fund and to the Catholic Church.  Humble is Exxon today and that would be their automobile gasoline.  Mading's was a pharmacy, and Dr. Hubert L. Reid was our pediatrician.  Foley's, Nieman Marcus, Battlestein's, and Suniland Furniture were all stores where my parents had credit cards, and I'm guessing these were their monthly payments on their accounts (since the actual always matches the estimate).  

Also note that there's a charge for kindergarten, even though I attended a public school (Ridgecrest Elementary in the Spring Branch Independent School District).  School districts were not required to offer at least half-day kindergarten for free until May 30, 1995.  Interestingly, the next year my year-younger sister and I went to school at our St. Jerome Catholic Church parish school, she in kindergarten and me in first grade, and I found no record of my parents paying tuition for either of us.  It's possible that tuition was included in their church contributions, or that one of my grandparents paid it.

I could write lots more about things I found in these registers and notebooks, but I'll close with this torn piece of paper I found tucked in one of the notebooks.  Mom apparently tallied the tuition she and Dad paid 1964-1979 to St. Francis de Sales Catholic School for first (second in my case) through eighth grades for me and my four siblings.  As you can see, monthly tuition (especially when four of us were enrolled at the same time) was not all that high.  The grand total for our educations at just this one school for 15 years was just under $6,400.00.




In a future post, I'll write about Catholic high school tuition and state university tuition and required fees.   I'm thankful today that my parents invested so much in my education - I received an outstanding one through Houston-area Catholic schools.


© Amanda Pape - 2021 - e-mail me!

Tuesday, November 16, 2021

Remembering Nani


My maternal grandmother, Sara Melzina Wolfe Guokas Archibald (1907-1997), died 24 years ago on this date.  It's one of the many negative events that makes November a month that I would rather be "NO-remember."

The still image above is from a 16mm film taken by my step-grandfather Wallace Franklin "Archie" Archibald (1896-1970) on August 29, 1960.  My younger sister Karen is on the left, and I am on the right.  Nani, my grandmother, is holding my newborn brother Mark.  The film was made in Houston, Texas - I think, because of the rocking chair (which looks like my dad's), that it was at our home at the time. 7913 Cedel.

I recently had fifteen 16mm films (each ranging from 15-20 minutes long) from July 1958 to August 1965 digitized, as well as ten Hi8 videotapes from May 31, 1993 through March 1, 2003 (each about two hours long).  They were digitized, for FREE (well, except for the cost of postage to send them, and a 1TB portable drive for the digitized files), in the Texas Archive of the Moving Image Film Roundup, where I submitted them on Halloween in 2020


© Amanda Pape - 2021 - e-mail me!

Monday, November 8, 2021

Honor Roll - Presidio County, Texas

In honor of the upcoming Veterans Day and for The Honor Roll Project, I decided to transcribe the Presidio County Honor Roll in Marfa, Texas.  Here's how it looked when we visited Marfa in June, 2021.  Presidio County then had (and still has) the best COVID vaccination rate in the state.  




One side of the monument has a beautiful eagle emblem, and the following engraved:
In reverent and enduring memory of all Americans who fought for a new world of freedom and peace.

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.  John 15:13

Dedicated July 4, 1960
Marfa History Club



Here is the other side of the monument, with the Honor Roll listings.



And here are the listing of the names for each war:


World War I:  Albert L. Curry - Carroll Farmer - Owen Sheilds - Lucius F. Hurley - Obie Walker



World War II:  Andres Aguilar - Reuben F. Allen - Salome G. Alvarado - Adolfo R. Baeza, Jr. - Diego Baeza - William H. Browning - Robert E. Colquitt - Joseph Deanda - Alejandro S. DeLeon - Frank A. Depuglio - Finis O. Donaldson - Benjamin F. Edwards - Robert E. Evans - Joseph H. Gardner - Henry W. Garnett - Roy Griffith - Alonzo Hernandez - S. C. Hernandez - Ogden Holloway - Russell N. Hyatt - Alberto P. Jimenez - Jose R. Jimenez - Ephraim F. King, Jr. - Dolores Levario - Delfin B. Lopez - Jesus Lujan - Jose P. Madrid - Benjamin R. Medley - John G. Minniece - Joe Morales - James C. Morrow - Roberto Munoz - Manuel Rodruguez - George E. Roman - John R. Simpson - R. L. Stevenson, Jr. - Jesus A. Tavarez - Joe G. Turner - Claudio Valenzuela



Korean ConflictCecil Estrada - Frank Salgado, Jr. - Dawn J. Stovall - Eduardo T. Tenorio

Vietnam Conflict:  Elijio Gonzales, Jr. - Juan Mario Mendias - Joe Henry Samaniego - Fred V. Jurado


Below is the south corner of the Presidio County Courthouse.  The Honor Roll monument can be seen in the lower left corner of the photograph/


This post is also part of the November 2021 Genealogy Blog Party.


© Amanda Pape - 2021 - e-mail me!

Saturday, November 6, 2021

Sympathy Saturday: It's Been Four Years



Frederick Henry Pape, February 4, 1929 - November 6, 2017, with unknown man


This image is from a Kodachrome slide I found, among others from Korea (1952-53) and of Pape family in Chicago (1953-1956), in a paper bag in my parents' study after he died rather suddenly three years ago today.  There are no markings on the slide to indicate place or date.  

However, I am pretty sure it was taken in Houston, Texas, outside 4632 Norhill Boulevard about 1953-1955.  

The date is based on Dad appearing to be wearing the same clothes as in another photo, also from a Kodachrome slide, taken sometime between 1953 and 1955 inclusive.

The location was determined with a guess.  My mother, Geraldine Margaret Guokas Pape, 1928-2019, was living at 4632 Norhill from at least 1951 (based on a city directory listing) until my parents married in September 1954.  It was the home of her mother, Sara Melzina Wolfe Guokas Archibald (1907-1997) and stepfather, Wallace Frankline "Archie" Archibald (1896-1970), from at least 1951 to at least 1955 (also based on city directories).

Notice the reddish brick house at the end of the street?  That's 1039 Le Green Street, at the corner of Le Green and Norhill, and it has distinctive brick arches on the front porch that helped me match it up with the 1950s view in the picture.



Dad and maybe George Kaiser - September 1954?


I'm not sure who the other man in the photo is.  He might be George Joseph Kaiser Jr. (1928-2006), a classmate of Dad's at Loyola Academy and Loyola University who also lived down the street (2415 W. Lunt in November 1946) in Chicago.  He was Dad's best man at my parents' September 1954 wedding.  This photo could have been taken just before that event.  Below are George and Dad at the wedding.



Best man George Kaiser Jr. and groom Fred Pape at Fred's wedding, 11 September 1954


I wish I'd found these slides sooner, so I could have asked Mom and Dad about them.  It's been four years now since I lost my dad, and I miss him.


© Amanda Pape - 2021 - e-mail me!

Sunday, October 31, 2021

Halloween - 60 Years Ago!



Still image from a 16mm film taken by my step-grandfather Wallace Franklin "Archie" Archibald (1896-1970) on Halloween in 1961.  My younger sister Karen and I are witches.  I'm pretty sure Mom made our costumes, including the wigs.  

I recently had fifteen 16mm films (each ranging from 15-20 minutes long) from July 1958 to August 1965 digitized, as well as ten Hi8 videotapes from May 31, 1993 through March 1, 2003 (each about two hours long).  They were digitized, for FREE (well, except for the cost of postage to send them, and a 1TB portable drive for the digitized files), in the Texas Archive of the Moving Image Film Roundup, where I submitted them on Halloween in 2020


© Amanda Pape - 2021 - e-mail me!

Sunday, October 24, 2021

John Pape's 1851 Baptism Record from Germany

Back on October 15, 2021, I participated in the 2021 Genealogy Lock-In hosted by
the Genealogy Center of the Waco-McLennan County [Texas] Library, the Texas State Genealogical Society, the Genealogy Network of Texas, and the Central Texas Genealogical Society.  This all-day, one-day-only, all-virtual event featured eight pre-recorded sessions, including some by well-known genealogy speakers.

For me, though, the best session was "So, You’ve Found Your German Town of Origin, Now What?" by Teresa Steinkamp McMillin.  Given that I have birth dates and places for many of my German ancestors, this was of great interest to me.  Just having the indexed information wasn't enough - I really wanted to see the original records.  

Her session walked through using the online Meyer’s Gazetteer to verify the town name and identify religious and governmental jurisdictions that might have vital records.  For example, here is the entry for one of the two Bödefelds (note that you can click on all images in this post to view them in a larger size):




You can also view a historic map of the area. The one I've pictured is for the other Bödefeld, and has the toggle turned on to mark the Catholic parishes (yellow C marker).




Teresa then spoke about, and demonstrated, some of the records available online.  One that she spoke about that I had not heard of before was Matricula Online, which has "church registers (mostly books of birth, marriage and death) from various European countries (currently Austria, Germany, Poland, Serbia and Slovenia)."  And luckily for me, such books from the Archdiocese of Paderborn, where my relatives are from, have recently been added to the site.

You can use the Map or Search for Places functions on Matricula to enter your town of origin, and find the name of (and a link to) the Catholic parish records for it.



This will bring up the available registers.  There are 106 currently available for Sts. Kosmas und Damian parish in Bödefeld, so you can use a slider on the date range column to narrow down the field:



Teresa explained what some of the German words mean.  Taufen are baptisms, Trauungen are marriages, and Sterbefälle are deaths.  A Namenregister is an index.

So I used the Namenregister Taufen that covered 1826-1858 and found the page indexing the baptisms for surnames beginning with P.  Here is the relevant snip from that index page:



The first Johann Pape is an older brother to my John Pape, who was born in 1849 and died the following year.  My John Pape is the second Johann.  The 473 refers to the page number in the baptisms register covering 1826-1858, and the 45 indicates it was the 45th baptism in that year (1851).  Anton is the oldest (born 1854) of John's three younger brothers.

So next I went to the Taufen for 1826-1858 and navigated to page 473.  And there was my great-grandfather!  Here is the left half of the page, and the following image is the right half.




What got me especially excited, though, was the information that I've outline in red boxes.  I could see dates and names of John's first two wives, Elisabeth Dameris and Gertrud Kramer (who is my great-grandmother).  The latter was particularly thrilling, because prior to this, I had no information on when and where John and Gertrud married.  The family story was that John went back to Germany to find a bride after Elisabeth and their two daughters died in Chicago in 1886 and 1887.  All I knew was that John and Gertrud were back in the United States by August 1889, when their first child Clara Pape was born.

I posted these images on Facebook, and asked for translations of information in the red boxes.  Here is the translation for the image above, about Elisabeth Dameris:

"married since 27 Nov 1879 with Elisabeth Dameris from Schmall____ (possibly Schmallenberg: https://www.meyersgaz.org/place/20727066)
addition: Elisabeth Dameris was 'Lehrerin dahier' = teacher here."

Elisabeth was in fact from Schmallenberg, and I have now found her baptism record there.   I also found the marriage record for Elisabeth and John in the Sts. Kosmas und Damian parish registers in Bödefeld.


Here is the image of the right half of John Pape's baptism record:



And here is the translation of the information in the red box, about Gertrud Kramer:

"and has emigrated to America with his second wife, Gertrud Kramer, born in Wennemen (https://www.meyersgaz.org/place/21116023), Catholic church 9 Jan 1859 and married in Düsseldorf 9 Oct 1888 and then emigrated to America 13 Oct 1888.
Addition: Gertrud Kramer was also a 'Lehrerin von hier' = teacher from here."


Can you see why I was so excited?!  I knew Gertrude was baptized in nearby Calle (I've now found her baptism record), but I did not know she was actually born in Wennemen.  I now also have a date and place for John's and Gertrude's marriage.  Although the records for churches in Düsseldorf are not online, the incredibly helpful parish pastor did include a record of John's and Gertrude's marriage in the Sts. Kosmas und Damian parish registers in Bödefeld.

I've spent most of the past week doing additional searches for family members in Matricula Online, and filled more holes in my family tree!


© Amanda Pape - 2021 - e-mail me!