Wordless Wednesday: Eric Graduates from New College of Florida!

Bachelor of Arts in History and Mathematics, May 20, 2011, including a thesis on Civil War battle strategy, on the bayfront in Sarasota.  I'm so proud of my son!

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

52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History: Talented Tuesday : Writing Winnings

The prompt for Week 20 of 52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History is Fame:

Tell us about any local brushes with fame. Were you ever in the newspaper? Why?

When I was in sixth grade, I was the regional winner for my grade of the national "Parade of Presidents" essay contest, sponsored by The Kroger Co. 

Link to the article above:

https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth566774/m1/8/zoom/?q=%22francis%20de%20sales%22&resolution=3&lat=2705.353377239193&lon=1671.6796174335564

My classmates crowned me "Miss Kroger" in honor of
the contest sponsor at a party before I left on my trip.

My wonderful English teacher, Mrs. Rovello, had everyone in the class participate.  We had to write a short essay on a president and his leadership qualities.  I wrote about Abraham Lincoln.

I won among all sixth graders in South Texas and Southwest Louisiana. My prize was an all-expense paid trip to Washington, DC in January 1969 for President Nixon's first inauguration.

I shared a hotel room with girls from Pennsylvania and Connecticut.  Although we could not see the inauguration ceremony very well, we did have reserved seats for the parade.  We saw everything on our itinerary except the Washington Monument, which was surrounded by Vietnam War protestors, and the FBI.  Besides the places listed in the article above, we also saw the Iwo Jima Monument, Embassy Row, the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, and the Bureau of Printing and Engraving.

There were quite a few articles in local papers (The Houston Post, The Houston Chronicle, The Bellaire Texan, The Texas Catholic Herald, and The Southwesterner), both before and after the trip.  Here I've just included the ones that had photographs. :)

A few months later, I was a winner in a local Catholic Daughters of America poetry contest, and my (misspelled) name and photo was in a local newspaper again.

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

Wordless Wednesday: Emma Genevieve Pape Childs, May 1885 - March 1937

This photo was sent to me by my third-cousin-once-removed Carole, who saw my post about our common ancestors and later provided this photo.  What I know (and don't know) about Emma is in another post.  But I had to share this beautiful photo!

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

Matrilineal Mystery Monday: License in Houston, Ceremony in Bremond - Why?

Charles and Elizabeth Guokas, early 1900s

I've spent much of the past few weeks trying unsuccessfully to find out more about my maternal great-grandparents, Charles Peter and Elizabeth Bonewitz/Boenewitch/Bovits/Banavich (I've seen it spelled all these ways) Guokas. More specifically, trying to find out just which last name is correct for Elizabeth's maiden name, and just when and how the two came to Texas from Lithuania.

Charles supposedly came to the United States in 1880, 1882, or 1890 (three different dates on three different censuses).  My mom wanted me to check Genealogy.com's Russians to America, 1850-1896 Passenger and Immigration Lists CD-ROM, which I obtained through interlibrary loan. I'm not having much luck with it, though, perhaps because it only covers the ports of Baltimore, Boston, New Orleans, New York, and Philadelphia, and my great-grandparents perhaps came in through Galveston.

I do have a copy of their marriage license from Harris County, Texas, issued January 19, 1900:

It indicates that the marriage was solemnized on January 21 by Rev. Peter Litwora, Roman Catholic priest in Bremond, Texas, Robertson County. Which brought up the question: Why Bremond? Why not marry in Houston?

I don't have the answers, but I have a theory.

Bremond was founded in 1869 with a right-of-way through it to the Houston and Texas Central Railway Company.  One of the latter's investors included William Marsh Rice, namesake of Rice University in Houston, whose first wife was the daughter of Paul Bremond, a railroad executive for whom the town was named.  The first settlers were railway workmen and merchants who had followed the construction from Houston.  Charles was a locomotive fireman (at least according to the 1910, 1920, and 1930 census - can't find him on 1900 yet).

I do know that he was in Texas by 1892.  St. Mary's Catholic Church has a record of his marriage to Stefanie Jasielonis on January 10 of that year.  Church records also show the births of three children.  JoAnne was born and died in February, 1893, in nearby Hearne (also on the Houston and Texas Central Railway), and is buried at St. Mary's Cemetery.  Mary was baptized in February, 1895 - her godmother was Stefanie's sister Anna, who died at age 23 and was buried at St. Mary's Cemetery the following year.

Charles' and Stefanie's third daughter Anna Marie was born in January 1899, and Stefanie had died by August of that year.  Church records also record the marriage of Charles and Elizabeth in January 1900, after (family stories say) Charles advertised for a new wife back in the old country.  Charles' younger brother Joseph obtained a marriage license the same day as Charles  in Houston to marry Policina "Pauline" Cuniowskuna/Cylcernok (another one whose last name is spelled different ways in different documents).

It's not clear where the family was when daughter Elizabeth was born in 1901, but by August 1902, the family was definitely in Houston, as their home at 1314 Railroad Street is where second child Justice died.

St. Mary's Catholic Church, Bremond, TX, circa 1879-1908

St. Mary's Catholic Church in Bremond was founded by Polish immigrants.  One of their leaders, Joseph Bartula, kept a diary, and wrote a brief history of that community in 1894.  I found it interesting that St. Mary's had a Lithuanian priest, Casimir (Kazmierz) Polujanski, from November 1879 through mid-1887.  If my great-grandfather immigrated in 1880 or 1882, as some records indicate, he may have met this priest from his homeland, and perhaps felt comfortable at this otherwise-mostly-Polish church.

Bartula clearly did not like Father Polujanski, saying he "could not read or write" (probably not in Polish), and describing him as a "laggard," adding:

He was not a good priest but rather a cheater....He was only good in collecting dollars everwhere [sic]. Over a period of five years he collected several thousand dollars and then he left for Baltimore. There he brought a soloon [sic] from which he had a living.

Interestingly, when I did a search on Father Polujanski, I pulled up records from the Archives of Maryland Polonia at the University of Baltimore.  Polujanski is recorded as serving as a missionary to a couple of parishes in Pennsylvania in 1900.  There is also an interesting letter dated January 7, 1911, from a priest with Assumption Church in Keyser, WV, questioning the Baltimore archdiocese about Polujanski's status as a priest.

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

Sentimental Sunday: Happy Mothers Day, Mom!

Me and my mother, Geraldine Margaret Guokas Pape, taken in Chicago or Evanston in the winter of 1957-1958. You can just barely see Mom's saddle shoes in the bottom right corner of the photo on the left.

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

Three Novels with Family History Themes

I've recently read and reviewed two novels with family history themes, one for adults and one for children. I read and reviewed another in the latter category about eight months ago. The titles link to my review on my other (book review) blog.

Finding Family by Tonya Bolden is the book most recently published.  Aimed at ages 8-12 (grades 3-6), it's historical fiction, set in the African-American community in Charleston, West Virginia, in 1905.  Twelve-year-old Delana is an orphan trying to learn more about her parents. The story is built around antique photo portraits and postcards in Bolden's collection, and includes a family tree. In her author's note (pages 180-181), the award-winning author said she

had the great thrill of combining my passion for history with my wonderings about long-ago lives: the millions of everyday people from the past who experienced problems with peers, traumas, and dilemmas, and in the end life-lifting revelations like we do today; people who are footnotes in history books -- or not in history books at all.

Thankfully, in museums and historical societies, in libraries and private collections, we have people's diaries, family bibles, handicrafts, letters, and other artifacts - like photographs.  Such treasures not only give us insights into history but also allow our imaginations to take flight.

As for your life, I hope that you will take good care of artifacts from it, along with your family stories.  A century into the future, what you have left behind may very well be prized by a writer working on a book of nonfiction.  Or fiction.

Half Broke Horses is a "true life novel" (its subtitle) by Jeannette Walls about her grandmother, who lived an unconventional life in West Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Chicago in the first half of the 20th century. "I'd been hearing stories about Lily Casey Smith all my life, stories she told over and over to my mother, who told them to me," Walls stated in the author's note (page 271).  She continues (on page 272):

In telling my grandmother's story, I never aspired to that sort of historical accuracy. I saw the book more in the vein of an oral history, retelling of stories handed down by my family through the years, and undertaken with the storyteller's traditional liberties....

Lily Casey Smith was a very real woman, and to say that I created her or the events of her life is giving me more credit than I'm due. However, since I don't have the words from Lily herself, and since I have also drawn on my imagination to fill in details that are hazy or missing...the only honest thing is call the book a novel.

Also written for 8-12 year olds, Search for the Shadowman by Edgar-winner Joan Lowery Nixon is set in 1996 Texas. While working on a genealogy project for his seventh grade history class, Andy becomes determined to solve the mystery of the family's black sheep, and his connection with the (real) Texas Salt Wars of 1877. Andy uses many tools genealogists use (library research, genealogy discussion boards and e-mail, heirlooms, and cemetery visits) to solve the mystery.  Nixon also wrote two series of historical fiction based on the orphan trains of the late nineteenth century.

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

Easter 1973: 52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History - Pets - Sentimental Sunday

Easter, April 22, 1973:  kneeling, Brian, Bismarck, Mark;

standing:  Karen, Mary, Amanda (Mom made our dresses).

In the backyard of our home at 8015 Sharpview, Houston, Texas.

The prompt for Week 17 of 52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History is Pets.

Did you have any pets as a child? If so, what types and what were their names? Do you have pets now?

I should start this out by confessing that I am not an animal lover.  Apparently my parents really aren't either - we didn't get a pet until I was 15 and my youngest sibling was 7.  Dad had various dogs growing up, but I don't think Mom had any pets.  We all hate cats.

My parents got a purebred basset hound puppy in the summer of 1972.  We named him Bismarck.  Sadly, he died pretty young, but my parents got another purebred basset hound puppy in late 1976, that we named Barney.  Barney lived a long time, until just before my father retired in 1994.

My ex-husband had a purebred Belgian sheepdog named Keena when we married in 1983.  She had puppies and we kept one that I named Cascade's Rio Frio de Tejas, aka Texas.  Keena died of cancer in spring of 1991, and Texas of unknown causes a couple years later.  We then got a bare-eyed cockatoo named Genius, but that's a story for another day.  Don't have and don't want any pets today.

Happy Easter, everyone!

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

National Library Week: Houston Public Library (Julia Ideson Building), c. 1928

I picked up this lovely postcard of the downtown Houston Public Library (the Julia Ideson Building) in a local antique shop a couple years ago.  The postmark on the back is June 28, 1928, and the building was completed and opened to the public on October 17, 1926. This building served as the main downtown library until 1976 when the Jesse H. Jones Building opened.  I'm posting it in honor of National Library Week.

The new library opened after I graduated from high school.  The downtown Houston library I remembered going to was this one. Named for the first (and only) librarian from 1903 to 1945, the building has been undergoing restoration and is now the home of the Houston Metropolitan Research Center.

Just this past weekend, I learned I'm not the only member of my family who's worked for a library.  My mother, Geraldine Guokas Pape, worked in this very library building, shelving books for ten cents an hour when she was about 14 (so that would have been about 1942).  She didn't like the work, though, and quit after about two weeks.  She also said her first job with the Humble Oil Company (now Exxon), after her graduation from the University of Texas in 1949, was as a clerk in their company library.

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

Status Report

For a variety of reasons, I haven't been blogging as much as I'd like since the beginning of the year.  For one thing, I've used a lot of my "free" time working on income taxes, as our situation (and my son's) were rather complex this year.  Also, I've been doing a lot of work at my mother's request researching our various brick walls, and have not been very successful.  Not that there's nothing to write about, as I've had some successes in other research areas, just have not sat down and written about them (I'm also at least five posts behind on my book reviews).  And I'm WAY behind on gardening tasks.

However, now the taxes are finally done, so after doing some more work on my mom's requests (this weekend, as I will see her and Dad on Tuesday and Wednesday) and some weeding done and mulch film down and canteloupe seeds planted in the beds in the backyard, I will hopefully be back to blogging more regularly!

During the past 16 months that this blog has existed, I've been honored by being named a recipient of a number of awards by my fellow bloggers:

Ancestor Approved Awards from Joan Hill of Roots'n'Leaves, Debbie of Mascot Manor, Joy Burkhart of Tomorrow's Memories, and Sharn White of FamilyHistory4U;

Happy 101 Sweet Friends Awards from Joan again and from Greta Koehl of Greta's Genealogy Bog (yup, I'm in a bog too--love that blog name!);

a One Lovely Blog Award from A Rootdigger (who has many blogs), and

the Kreativ Blogger Award from Elizabeth O'Neal of Little Bytes of Life.

Thank you for the recognition, and more importantly, for taking the time to comment. Unfortunately, for the same reasons that I'm so behind on blogging, I can't fulfill the various requirements of these awards, so I won't be displaying them in my sidebar.  However, I am going to try to be better about commenting on other's blogs, and not just when I think I have something relevant to say. :)

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

Bluebonnets, Daffodils, & Tulips: 52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History - Spring - Sentimental Sunday

The prompt for Week 14 of 52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History is Spring:

What was spring like where and when you grew up? 

Spring is my favorite season! For me the harbinger of spring has always been flowers blooming.  In Houston, where I grew up, I remember lots of azaleas everywhere.  I also remember my grandparents stopping along a highway in the spring to let my siblings and I play in the bluebonnets.  My step-grandfather took home movies of us and there's a scene of us briefly playing in bluebonnets in late April, 1965, when I was eight.

I worked at Washington-on-the-Brazos State Historical Park from April 1977 through March 1979. It's at one end of the La Bahía Road Bluebonnet Trail in Washington County, one of the most prolific areas in Texas for the state flower.  If I remember correctly, in either 1977 or 1979, the bluebonnets were blooming early at the park, on March 2, Texas Independence Day.

Washington-on-the-Brazos State Park, April 1978

Me with the dogs, Corpus Christi, Texas, March 1984

I lived in Corpus Christi from April 1979 through mid-October, 1984, and the photo above was taken in the I-37 median with my ex-husband's female Belgian Sheepdog, Keena (on the left), and two of her puppies, Texas and Ranger.

Then we moved to Washington State.  I remember arriving there on November 1, 1984, and feeling SO depressed because all it did was rain the first couple weeks I was there.  But then I got a Christmas sales job at the local mall, and it snowed around Thanksgiving, and come springtime, we went biking in the Skagit Valley, where acres and acres of daffodil and (later) tulip bulbs were in bloom.

Daffodils in the Skagit Valley of Washington state, mid-1980s.

Roozengaarde, Mount Vernon, Washington, 1990s

West Shore Acres, Mount Vernon, WA, 1990s

For the following 21 years, I tried to get up to the Skagit Valley in springtime whenever I could, to visit display gardens of the owners of those blub farms at Roozengaarde (Washington Bulb Company) and West Shore Acres.

Anytime I was lucky enough to be in Texas in the spring (March 1995 and April 1999), I'd find some bluebonnets. I moved back home in January 2006, and have been lucky enough to see them every year on my way to and from work since 2007. The photo at left was taken in April 2007 at the Rocking MJ Ranch Bed and Breakfast near Canyon Lake.

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