I was surprised to realize that I haven’t told the story of my grandfather, Konrad James Posluszny. He was the sixth child born to Caroline Straub and Joseph Posluszny on May 3, 1886, in Wildenthal (now Dzikowiec) in the Galicia region of Poland. When he was born, only his older brothers John and Joseph were still alive, two children having died from smallpox and one from dysentery.
Konrad departed Europe through Hamburg on the Blücher on December 6, 1902, and arrived in New York harbor on December 17th. He traveled alone and headed to his brother John on Jefferson Street in Yonkers. Like hundreds of other immigrants, he was listed as a laborer on the ship’s manifest. He was quickly hired at a hat company, which was a booming industry in the early 1900s.
Konrad met and married Julianna Ingram on July 15, 1906, in Yonkers. Time for the family picture! Konrad and Julianna are on the right. I think Konrad is the most handsome of the bunch. But I might just be biased.
Konrad is listed in the Yonkers city directories fairly consistently. In 1905, at 41 Jefferson Street to 50 Jefferson Street, to their final residence of 98 Jefferson Street from 1908 through 1921. This would be the location for the birth of their first four children – Antoinette Gertrude, Conrad, Louis, and Julianna.
Antoinette was the firstborn on January 7, 1909, in Yonkers, NY, and this photo is the only one of Konrad and Julianna with any of their children when they were young.
Konrad was an employee of Waring’s, a hatmaker in Yonkers, which was a block and a half from their home on Jefferson Street. In the 1905 directory, he’s listed as a Presser. Pressers worked with steam, heat, and heavy hydraulic machinery to press and shape felt (often made from rabbit or beaver fur) into the final form of a hat. Come to find out, these were the men who worked with toxic mercury nitrate, which could lead to chronic mercury poisoning. In other directories, he’s listed as an employee or a hatter still at Waring’s.
Konrad became a naturalized citizen of the United States on April 29, 1921. It was also in 1921 that something unthinkable happened. Julianna had a relationship with a cousin whose connection to her I still haven’t fully determined, but possibly first or second cousin, and she became pregnant with my mother. Did Konrad know? Was he suspicious? I don’t know. But Konrad, Julianna, and their four children moved north to Easthampton, Massachusetts sometime in mid to late 1921.
From there, they moved to New Britain, Connecticut, where they lived in one of the apartments of Julianna’s relative at 15 Derby Street. My mother, Elizabeth, was born on April 5, 1922.
In New Britain, my grandfather opened up a hat store called the Conrad Hat Company, and in 1923, it was at 43-45 Broad Street before moving to 317 Main Street. In 1924, he applied for a patent on a cleaning solution for straw hats and was awarded it in 1925. I don’t know if he ever made any money from it, but he still holds the patent. Unfortunately, in the summer of 1924, in the span of two weeks, there were fires in his store, and that was the end of his hatting career.
The family moved to Wallingford in 1925, and they purchased a new home at 121 Clifton Street. Konrad was hired at the Wallingford Steel Mill, which was practically in their backyard. The railroad tracks for the cars from the steel mill to meet up with the main tracks ran along the side of their house, and the rumble and shriek of brakes during the night was enough to wake the dead. His job in 1935 was a roller, someone who manually guided the red-hot sheets through the roller with tongs and steel forks. I wonder if it brought back memories of his job as a presser at the hat factory. In the following years, he was a gateman, and in the last directory before he died, a janitor.
My Aunt Tootsie (Antoinette, the firstborn) told a story about a gypsy who told her father he would die by a gun. “This is why he didn’t allow guns in the house”, she told us. Unfortunately, he got access to a gun in the late night or early morning hours of December 28, 1944, at his job as a janitor at the steel mill. It was a self-inflicted gunshot to the head from a .38 revolver. He was found by the chief guard at 5:30 in the morning. No one in the family could give any reason for this act, but other newspaper articles say he was concerned for his son Conrad’s safety in the Army, having recently been sent to New Guinea. He was given a high funeral mass and buried in the family plot in St. John Cemetery.
Obviously, he didn’t die by a gun because a gypsy said he would! He suffered from severe depression. Aunt Tootsie casually mentioned how he was able to “have beer when he was in the hospital” because the doctor said he needed it. She never mentioned why he was in the hospital, and I never asked, but depression was something that ran in the family and affected a younger brother and a younger sister.
He was gone for 16 years before I was born, and would have only been 74 years old if he had lived. I wish I had met him. We never talked about him or his death with my mother and it wasn’t until the late 1990s that I would sit with Aunt Tootsie and she would share the photos and stories as she remembered them. Such precious time lost.
A conversation with my Aunt Judy about Julianna and Konrad gives some more in-depth stories about them.
It's All About Family 