(Not-so-) Wordless Wednesday: Freddie Taking Notice, 1930

I believe all three of these pictures were taken the same day, probably in 1930, maybe around the time my dad Fred Pape turned 1 on February 4, and probably outside the family home at 2093 West Lunt Avenue in Chicago.  The picture on the far right includes Dad's older brother Bob (Paul Robert Pape Jr., 1926-2008) and his mother, Elizabeth Florence Massmann Pape (1902-2000).

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

Military Monday: Happy Birthday, Dad!

My Dad, Frederick Henry Pape, is 84 today!

The photo was probably taken in Korea in late 1952 or early 1953.

© 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.

Open Thread Thursday: Who Inspires You?

Lately I've been suffering from a bit of writer's block when it comes to this blog, but Thomas MacEntee over on Geneabloggers posted a topic that provided some inspiration today:

This week’s topic for Open Thread Thursday is:

Who inspires you when it comes to genealogy and family history? Whether you are on the path to a professional career or setting up a business in the genealogy industry, or you pursue genealogy for the sheer pleasure and challenge, there must be some person, event or thing that inspired you. Let us know your “backstory” of genealogy inspiration.

My mom and her cousin Edith Carole,
after locating their grandfather Wolfe's tombstone, about 1998

Well, this is an easy one.  My mom, Geraldine Guokas Pape (who is now 84), is my inspiration when it comes to genealogy and family history.

I'm not sure exactly when Mom started working on our genealogy and family history.  It's been at least as long as my son has been alive - almost 27 years.  I remember that's when I got interested, too - that desire to know more about where you came from, so you could share that information with your own children.  Of course, it's gone way beyond that now - for both me and Mom.

Back in those early years for me - around 1987 - I remember installing Personal Ancestral File (PAF) on my Macintosh computer and using it to print out nice pedigree charts for Mom and Dad. (I still use PAF to this day.)  That was my main role back then - taking the information Mom had found, and entering it into the computer.  I was pretty busy raising the offspring and did not have time to do any research on my own.

Flash-forward to about 1997, when I started working in libraries.  Ancestry Library Edition (or its predecessor) was available in the large public library system where I worked, and I began to use it to find "stuff" for Mom.  As time went on, the "stuff" I was finding was for me as well.

I discovered I really liked doing the research - and working in libraries - and this led to my earning a master's degree in library science, and becoming a full-fledged librarian.  I was fortunate enough to do my practicum in the awesome Genealogy and Local History department of the Denton (TX) Public Library, and now I sometimes get to help people with genealogy and local history as Coordinator for Archives and Special Services at the Dick Smith Library at Tarleton State University.

(Oh, and BTW - Amy Coffin of We Tree is my inspiration for starting this blog.  I "met" Amy in LiveJournal while she and I were in - different - online library school programs.  I finally got to meet her in person at a Texas Library Association annual conference a few years later and have been following her blog from nearly its beginning.)

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

Tombstone Tuesday: Gretchen Reis Pape and Leo John Pape

photo courtesy Amy Windler

photo courtesy Gast Monuments

Gretchen (Margaret Anna) Reis was born April 4, 1886, in Evanston, Illinois, the oldest of the seven children of Joseph A. Reis and Margaret Muno (who were both born in Illinois of German parents). She is listed as an artist in various Evanston city directories from 1909 through 1933 (although she continued painting after that), and in the 1974 edition of Who Was Who in American Art, 1564-1975: 400 Years of Artists in America.  She died on April 20, 1947, and is buried at St Henry's Cemetery in Chicago.

Leo (Lee) John Pape was born December 27, 1893, in Evanston, Illinois, the son of German immigrants John Pape and Gertrude Kramer (or Cramer). According to the 1940 Census, he completed four years of college.  He enlisted in the Navy on July 19, 1917, and was released from service on February 15, 1919.  He married Gretchen (Margaret) Anna Reis sometime between 1924 and 1927, and they lived in the same house in Wilmette, Illinois, from at least 1927 to the ends of their lives. They had no children.   At various times he worked as a building contractor (1929), garage door manufacturer's sales agent (1930 and 1933) and as a proprietor of a building business (1940). He died on April 2, 1979, and is buried at St. Henry Cemetery in Chicago (not at St. Boniface as indicated by his obituary).

I recently had 1893 - 1979 engraved on Uncle Lee's stone.

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

Sentimental Sunday: Dad with Nieces, ABT 1953

This photo is of my dad, Frederick "Fred" Henry Pape, and his two oldest nieces, Rosemary and Marianne Streff, daughters of his older sister Elizabeth "Betty" Marie Pape Streff.  Nephew Frank "Bud" Streff Jr. is not in the picture, perhaps because he was too little to pose.  Based on the size of the girls,  I think this photo was taken in December 1953, when Dad brought my mother to meet her future in-laws.   It was taken in Chicago, either at Betty's home or (more likely) at the home of Betty and Fred's parents, Paul Robert and Elizabeth Florence Massmann Pape, at 2093 West Lunt Avenue.

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

Wordless Wednesday: Mark & his mom Jewel Moore Gresham, 1943

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

Sentimental Sunday: My Blog Header

 Just a quickie post here to identify people in the new blog header I put up a few months ago.  Click on the image to view it in a larger format.  I created this collage using PicMonkey.  I've used all these pictures in previous blog posts.
I tried to put the photos in reverse chronological order, but got messed up a little at the end.  From left to right:

1)  My parents, Geraldine Margaret Guokas and Frederick Henry Pape, on their wedding day in Houston, Texas, September 11, 1954.

2)  My paternal grandparents, Elizabeth Florence Massmann and Paul Robert Pape, outside the front door of their home at 2093 West Lunt Avenue, Chicago, Illinois, probably in the late 1940s
.
3)  Mark's parents, Jewel Moore and Francis Edward Gresham, on their wedding day in Corpus Christi, Texas, October 26, 1940.

4)  One set of my maternal great-grandparents, Levi Marion Shelton and his wife, Sarianne Spikes.  It was taken in Louisiana sometime in the 1920s or early 1930s, before 1935.

5)  My maternal grandparents, Sara Melzina Wolfe and Charles Peter Guokas Jr., outside the Hotel Galvez in Galveston, Texas, during their honeymoon in late July, 1926.

6)  One set of my paternal great-grandparents, Gertrude Kramer (or Cramer) and John Pape, outside their home at 1043 Sherman Avenue in Evanston, Illinois, probably in December 1918 or January 1919.

7)  The other set of my maternal great-grandparents, Charles (Kazimieras) Guokas Sr. and Elizabeth (Elžbieta Benevičiūtė) Banevich, in Houston, Texas, probably shortly before or after their wedding in January, 1900.

8)  Mark's maternal grandparents, Nancy "Nannie" Flora Jones and Tandy Clayton Moore, probably sometime after they married on August 7, 1901.

9)  The other set of my paternal great-grandparents,  Frederick Henry Massmann and Elizabeth Camilla Dienes, at their wedding on June 5, 1900, at St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church in the Lincoln Park area of Chicago, Illinois.

10) My paternal great-great-grandparents Jacob Pape and Elizabeth Gierse, taken in Germany probably in the 1860s.

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

Tombstone Tuesday: Key West Cemetery, Florida

I'm back from a cruise.  One of the places we visited was Key West, Florida.  We took an open-air hop-on hop-off trolley tour around town, which passed by the Key West Cemetery.  Here is a photo looking west from Frances Street:

 And here is some information about the cemetery:

Key West Cemetery / Joe Shlabotnik / CC BY 2.0

This looks like it would be an interesting place to poke around when we have more time (and the temperature isn't so hot).


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

Happy New Year 2013!

That's me in the center, with my siblings Mark and Karen.  I'm guessing this was taken on New Year's Day in 1962.  Mark was 17 months old then; I was almost 5, Karen was almost 4.  It could have been New Year's Day 1963, but then I think baby brother Brian (born July 1962) would have been in the picture.  [Originally posted January 1, 2011; no time to come up with something new this year.  Going off the grid in a few days - comments will be temporarily turned off then too.]

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