Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories - Christmas Lights

It's the annual Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories!  I've participated the past six years (2009 through 2014), and this year, the prompts and their sequence are the same as the last two years.  Due to some pressing needs to get some other projects done (like gift books for my parents made out of the previous years' blog posts), I'm going to link to the appropriate post from 2014 (which also links to older posts, when applicable) in the prompt title, and add a relevant photo.

The prompt for December 4 – Christmas Lights

Some of the light sequence set to the music of "The Twelve Days of Christmas" at the 

Festival of Lights at Moody Gardens in Galveston, Texas, January 3, 2015

The Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories (ACCM) allows you to share your family’s holiday history twenty-four different ways during December! Learn more at http://adventcalendar.geneabloggers.com.


© Amanda Pape - 2015 - click here to e-mail me.

Friday's Faces From the Past: Charles Guokas Jr. in Galveston, 1926

Below left is my maternal grandfather, Charles Peter Guokas Jr. (1903-1967).  A note on the back of the picture says it was taken in Galveston, Texas, in 1926.  That was the year my grandparents got married and honeymooned at the Hotel Galvez.  This picture is taken along the Galveston Seawall (built in 1904), and I believe the building you can see in the background is the Hotel Galvez.

In the collage above, the top photo is an enlargement of the building in the photograph of my grandfather, and the bottom photo is an enlargement of the same area from the roof of the Hotel Galvez in the photo below that I took in January 2012.  The photo was taken from the top of the Seawall, across Seawall Boulevard from the hotel.  The angle isn't quite the same (since the photo of my grandfather was taken from the bottom of the Seawall), but I think it's the same building.  My grandmother, Sara Melzina Wolfe Guokas Archibald (1907-1997), might very well have taken this photograph of her newlywed husband during their honeymoon.

© Amanda Pape - 2013 - click here to e-mail me.

Sentimental Sunday: Louis Henry Wolfe family, about 1911

This photograph is of my maternal great-grandfather, Louis Henry Wolfe (1872-1929), and my maternal great-grandmother, Addilee Tennessee Shelton Wolfe Odom Harris (1890-1977), and the three oldest of their four children.  Lloyd L. Wolfe (1906-1993) is at the far left; my grandmother, Sara Melzina Wolfe Guokas Archibald (1907-1997), is standing; and the baby is Edith Elizabeth Wolfe Smith Murff Brown Gould Knox (1910-2006).  Edith was born in December, so the photograph was probably taken in 1911.

On the 1910 census, the family was living in Shreveport, Louisiana, and Edith was born in Louisiana.  However, Louis Wolfe appears in the Morrison & Fourmy Directory of The City of Houston for 1912, and given that listings seem to run about a year behind, they probably moved to Houston in 1911.  The family is wearing beach clothing, so it's likely the photo was taken in a coastal city, probably Galveston because of the seawall in the background.  I think that is a painted backdrop behind the family, however, as the waves don't look real, nor does the ship nor the building on the piers over the water.

The building might be painted to look like the Breakers Bath House.  The 1906 original was destroyed in the 1909 hurricane, but rebuilt in 1909.  I found some similar images online of real photo postcards that are stamped "Taken at Galveston Beach at the Breakers Bath Houses* by L. Tobler, Photographer" 

*Some images instead said the Murdoch Bath House, originally constructed in 1901 and also destroyed in the 1909 storm.  Murdoch's was rebuilt in 1911. Both bathhouses, as well as the Surf Bath House (built 1908 and only damaged in 1909), were lost in the 1915 Storm. Murdoch’s reappeared once again in 1916, was severely damaged in Hurricane Carla (1961), demolished, rebuilt, destroyed again by Hurricane Ike in 2008, and rebuilt again in 2009.  Murdoch's is at 2215 Seawall Boulevard, while Breakers was at 2315 Seawall, basically next door, so the photographer could have easily worked at both locations.  More photographs and information about the bath houses can be found at the Galveston Historical Foundation website.

The photographer Louis Tobler was born in Russia in July 1866, and immigrated to the United States in 1879, according to Catching Shadows: A Directory of 19th-Century Texas Photographers by David Haynes (page 111).  I found a listing for him in the 1911 Galveston City Directory:  "photographer Breakers bath house;" in the 1921 directory, his photography address is Murdoch's bath house.  The 1945 Galveston City Directory shows him as a photographer at 2215 Seawall Blvd (Murdoch's); although he died August 8, 1944.

© Amanda Pape - 2013 - click here to e-mail me.

First Ward Cubs, Houston, Texas, 1922-1923

Two interesting pictures in my mother's collection are from a football team her father, my grandfather, Charles Peter Guokas Jr. (1903-1967, pictured above), was a member of around 1922 and 1923.  The name of the team (below) was First Ward Cubs.  We didn't know much about the pictures beyond that.

The week before last, I was in Houston for the Texas Library Association annual conference, and I used that opportunity to do some research at the Houston Public Library, specifically at the Clayton Library for Genealogical Research, and the Houston Metropolitan Research Center.  One of the databases the library subscribes to (that you can only access with a library card, within the library) is the Access NewspaperARCHIVE.  I've encountered this database before in Internet searches, but it requires a fee to use, so I was excited to find it in the library.  I entered the last name Guokas and turned up over 50 articles!

Three of the articles were from the 1923 Galveston [TX] Daily News, December 1, 2, and 8.  The articles talk about a game between the Galveston Hurricanes and Houston's First Ward Cubs, "who claim the 145 pound amateur championship of Houston." The "Cubs at all times, win or lose, play a clean game of football, never having been cautioned by the referee as to unnecessary roughness, etc."

"The Cub football team is composed of young men between the ages of 16 and 20 years.  All of them are well known in Houston amateur sports."  Apparently their record going into this game was 2-2-1, where "the games the Cubs lost were won by much heavier teams."  They had "a large following of loyal rooters and supporters."

My mother and I were amused to see that her father/my grandfather, who played left halfback, was known as "Goat" Guokas on this team.  He was described as "a good broken field runner and once he gets by the secondary defense it takes a fast man to overtake him."  He and the rest of the backfield "appeared on the local gridiron before and showed speed and driving power" and "are a hard combination to beat at their own weight."

I also thought it was quite interesting that the team practiced at night, probably because the men all had jobs or school during the day.  "The ball has a coating of white calcimine, which enables the back field men to handle the ball with ease on moonless nights."  I didn't find an article that indicated who won this game.

I turned up one more article of interest in the same newspaper (at right), from the May 2, 1921 edition.  It refers to a baseball game between the Alvin [TX] Jasmine Buds and the "Patterson & Crawford Nine" of Houston.  Patterson & Crawford was apparently a company that, in 1922, had a location on Main Street in Houston "handling Diamond and Goodrich tires and tubes," according to page 748 of Automobile Topics, Volume 67.  A Guokas was apparently a catcher for the team, although this could also have been my grandfather's first cousin, Adam Lawrence Guokas (1901-1966).


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

Wordless Wednesday: Hotel Galvez Urn, 1926 and 2012

The photo above is of a planter urn outside the north entrance of the Hotel Galvez in Galveston, Texas, taken on January 8, 2012.  It's the same as the urn in the photos below of my grandparents, Sara Melzina Wolfe and Charles Peter Guokas Jr., on their honeymoon in Galveston in late July, 1926.
(close-up above right)
© Amanda Pape - 2012 - click here to e-mail me.

Wordless Wednesday: Hotel Galvez, Galveston, Texas - built 1911

View of the Hotel Galvez from the seawall in Galveston, Texas, January 8, 2012.  My maternal grandparents spent their honeymoon here in July 1926.  Stay tuned for a future post on how I figured that out.

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

Wordless Wednesday: Marriage of Charles Peter Guokas Jr. & Sara Melzina Wolfe

On this day, July 10, 85 years ago in 1926, my maternal grandparents, Charles Peter Guokas, Jr., and Sara Melzina Wolfe, were married in Houston, Texas.  The photograph is from their honeymoon in Galveston, Texas.

© Amanda Pape - 2011 - click here to e-mail me.