Photos of mothers and children in honor of Mother's Day. 

Photos of my paternal grandmother Dorothy Winifred Mason-Kapple, daughter of Fred Mason and Helen Mullen, with her with her children

My Robert John Kapple and his sisters in 1930's Chicago

My father looks like a handful in the photo below. My grandmother said he took one of my aunts somewhere in a wagon, when she was a baby, to see a turtle near the train tracks a block from their Chicago home. Apparently she left my aunt alone for a little bit and when she returned my aunt was missing. 

Photos of my maternal grandmother Graciela Lucresia Del Castillo-Forgey, daughter of Nicasio Del Castillo and Elena Garcia with her children. 

In this photo are my grandmother's 5 children and her twins Charles and Cecil Forgey. 

Below a play date and get together for neighborhood mother's in Glendale, California in the 1930's. 

Another Play date below 1930's style

Below is a picture of me with my own mother Edna Fay Forgey-Kapple

I was so fat here it too my mother and two cousins to hold me up. 

I will close this trip down memory lane with a favorite photo that was shared with me by a distant Austrian cousin; it's of my great-grandmother Mary Kurta-Kappel and two of her 11 children in the early 1900's. 

Wishing all mothers a Very Happy Mother's Day! 

Looking for a Mystery House/ And identifying the location of other photos

My father, Robert John Kapple, often talked about a house he lived in that was once a Catholic Church rectory. It was moved away from the church to another lot away from the church long before they bought the house. It was moved using a team of horses. My father was born in 1933 in Chicago. My father died in 1990 when I was in my 20's. Unfortunately I didn't ask him where he lived when his family was living around the south Chicago Pullman area before coming to California. After hearing so much about how nice the house was and its history I was curious and wanted to see a photo of it. Once Google street view became available I knew if I had a street address I could find it on street view. 

When I began my genealogy research on my father's family in the late 1990's I discovered my father's parents were living in a two story house which was actually two apartments one upstairs and the other downstairs. My father's parents lived downstairs with their children and my father's paternal grandparents Frank Kappel and Mary Kurta lived upstairs. I knew this wasn't the house he referred to as the former rectory. I had an address of this house from my father's birth certificate, however, and was able to get a photo from the Cook County Assessor's website. 

At some point the family moved into the rectory house but I didn't know when?

When the 1940 US Census became available I found a new address for my father's family. The new address was 12038 Normal Avenue. When I checked Google street view I was disappointed to find that the address was now a vacant lot. It didn't seem like a big enough lot for the large house my father described as the former rectory? 

 A few years ago a 1rst cousin and an uncle shared some old family photos with me and one of them was of the house below. I thought that the house in this photo could be the house my father talked about? It definitely wouldn't have fit on the empty lot in the street view above. I couldn't reconcile the images.  

Looking at the other old family photos I noticed the Kapple children in photos with houses in the background. I wondered if they were taken on Normal avenue? 

When I the checked street view these houses were not on the same street. I decided to check Google street view to see if I could locate houses that looked like these. I began checking around the church and school the family attended. I immediately found similar houses not far from the church on 118th Street (I had noticed my family often chose to live near a Catholic church because the Kapple children attended parochial school).

 

I noticed there was a hint to the location of one of the photos because there was an old two story brick apartment building on a corner in the distance. There was what appeared to be a building with a large pitched roof next to this building. 

Looking at Google street view I felt I had a match for this location. Unfortunately the church steeple was just out of the range of the photo above. 

I then found another family photo showing the same buildings in the distance. Unfortunately the steeple of the church was obscured by a tree. 

I then looked at the houses around the location where the photos were taken. I found one that looked promising for the rectory house my father talked about. When I saw the brick house on a corner across from the houses in the photos I remembered my father said the house was on a corner lot. 

Looking at the house from another direction I noticed it could have appeared in another old family photo. 

It appears to be the same house in this family photo below. The backstairs are now enclosed however. 

I certainly felt like I found the correct house but did I? I needed to find something connecting my family with that address. I knew I couldn't use the 1940 Census to confirm the address because that was the Normal avenue previous house. Apparently after WWII started and my grandparents had steady work they were able to buy a larger home for their family of 7. Also this would allow my great-grandmother Mary Mullen-Mason to have her own space and live with the family because it looks like this house was divided into apartments like the Forest Avenue house. 

I couldn't find any city directories online for Chicago for the time after the 1940 Census. I did manage to find phonebooks for Chicago online. I had to search through a number of years before I found my grandmother listed in the phonebook in 1946. Before that year the family probably didn't have a phone. Apparently my grandparents had already separated by then and my grandmother lived in the house with her children and her mother. 

I was happy to see the address in the phonebook confirmed that I had found the right house.

At first I wasn't sure the photo of the house I had was the same house as the brick house on 118th street? The house in street view looked smaller. Examining it more closely it's the same house. It's nice to have a positive identification of the photo and an exact address. 

 

I was able to get more details about the house at the Cook County Assessors website. The house is 122 years old and 2,394 sq ft. 

I was also able to find the location of this family school photo using Google street view.

St. Catherine of Genoa was actually the closest parochial school to the house at 737 118th St. It was a short walk from the house.

 It's had some remodeling since the photo was taken in the 1940's 

I was able to identify the location of some photos taken on Normal avenue based on Google street view comparisons. One of these photos looks like it was taken in the back of the Normal house, and the other on the side. My aunt Margaret and uncle Tommy are in one of these photos with their grandmother Helen Mullen-Mason. All of the Kapple 7 children are in the other. 

This photo of my aunt Margaret was taken inside the house on Normal Avenue. The house across the street has been remodeled but it's most likely the house seen outside the window.

 

I checked the Newspapers.com website for the family addresses. I only found a couple classified ads for the sale of the house in the 1950's. I couldn't find any ad for the sale of the property by my grandparents. In 1940 they said they owned the house. If I knew exactly when both houses sold I might be able to find an ad? 

Suburbanite_Economist_Wed__Oct_15__1952_

That was a fun journey around the Pullman area of South Chicago. I probably could have gotten more help in locating the properties from my aunts but where is the sport in that?