Ancestry – Page 3 – It's All About Family

Frank Posluszny

Frank Posluszny was one of my grand-uncles and the 8th born child of my great-grandparents, Caroline Straub and Joseph Posluszny. He was the fifth to survive to adulthood.

He was born on September 1, 1889, in Wildenthal. I like finding the birth records for confirmation.

He immigrated to the United States in 1905, according to the 1910 census. There is a Hamburg Passenger list dated 1907 for a Frank Posluszny who matches age and departure village; however, without locating a ship manifest from Ellis Island, I can’t confirm which date is fact.

He followed his brother John to New Jersey where he met and married Josephine Huth on August 1, 1909, in Newark, New Jersey. Josephine was born was born on December 24, 1892 according to her citizenship paperwork. He was 20 and she was 17 when they got married. In the photo below, Frank’s brother Charles is standing left, stepdad John Bonk 3rd from left, Caroline, his mother, seated left, and Mary, his sister, seated right.

*Frank and Josephine Posluszny’s wedding party*

In 1910, Frank and Josephine were living in Newark on Belmont Avenue, and in the next three years welcome Josephine, Frank, and Stephania. According to the census, Frank was working as a hatmaker in a hat factory. There are several others on his street working there, and they could have been at the Thimble Hat Company in Orange, or the Hudson Hat Company in Newark. There were 5 hat forming mills and over 20 hat manufacturers in the Newark area in the late 1800s to early 1900s.

Frank and Josephine remain in the Newark / Irvington area, a few blocks away from his brother John and family up until 1927.

Searching through city directories for 1927 and 1929, I found Josephine listed in Newark, but no mention of Frank. I found a record of employment for her as a Hatter/Finisher for Snyder & Co at 133 W. 21st Street in New York in 1928 which I would like would be quite a trek every day in 1927.

In the 1930 census, Josephine is in Newark on 19th street with Josephine, 18, Frank Jr., 17, and Stephania, 16. Everyone can read and write, but none of the children have been in school since September 1, 1929, and all three of them have jobs. Where’s Frank? I found Frank as a resident at Cedar Grove. Also known as Essex County Hospital for the Insane. He must have been admitted between 1927 and 1929. As I’ve written, there were mental health issues in the Posluszny Family.

In the 1940 census, Josephine had moved again. She is living with her son, Frank, and with Stephania, now known as Mildred, her husband, and their daughter, Mildred. Josephine is listed as “widowed”. But I know that is not true. Frank is still on the census records of Cedar Grove.

Let’s talk about the children now –

Josephine, born in 1911, was the oldest child of Frank and Josephine. She was known as “Tootsie” because she liked to eat tootsie rolls! It found it surprising that we had two “Tootsie”s in the family!

She married George Rittersbacher in 1939. They did not have any children. George, unfortunately, died on the dance floor at his niece Mildred’s wedding reception in 1962. Josephine lived in Irvington, New Jersey, until her passing in 1987.

Frank Jr., was born in 1912, and enlisted as a private in the Army in 1942. I don’t know what he did or where he served. He moved out to California at some time in his life and was living in Laguna Woods when he died in 2010. It doesn’t appear he ever married or had children, and I can’t find any obituary or records.

Stephania, born in 1913, was married in 1936 in Pennsylvania to Hugh Christian McNicol. He was 29 and a chauffeur. Stephania was 23 and a hosiery worker. She signed the marriage license, Steffie Elsie Poslushny. She seemed to be trying out new names! In 1938, they were living in Newark on 19th Street and she is now “Mildred S”.

In addition to their daughter, Mildred, Mildred (Stephania) and Hugh had a son, Bobby, born in 1942.

*Frank and Josephine’s daughter and grandchildren abt. 1942*

Hugh was a truck driver for a brewery in Orange until he and Mildred moved down to St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1982. He died in 1997 at the age of 89. Mildred (Stephania) died in 2009 at the age of 95. Their daughter Mildred, who also lived in Florida, married and had 2 daughters. Mildred passed away in Florida at the age of 70 in 2006. From Mildred’s obituary, I did some sleuthing and sent an email to a woman I thought might be her daughter. Turns out I was right! Debbie, Frank and Josephine’s great-granddaughter, responded to my email, and we exchanged some information, and she confirmed that Josephine and Frank were her great-grandparents by the pictures I sent. She in turn shared information and pictures with me.

My new cousin, Debbie, who was born in 1963, knew both Josephine, whom they called Grossy because they couldn’t pronounce Grandmother in German, and Frank, who was called PopPop. What this means is after all those years, he was released from the institution!

Eventually Josephine and Frank owned this home at 225 Sunset Avenue in Newark. I recognized the address from Judy Behme’s wedding invitation list. It was a home with four apartments – upstairs and downstairs on the left and right. First, in the 1950 census, Josephine lived there with Frank Jr, in one apartment, Mildred and Hugh lived in another with their two children and the other two apartments were rented out. Josephine is now listed as “separated”.

Frank came home from the institution sometime after 1950 and here they are with their granddaughter Mildred McNicol at her 1962 wedding.

*Josephine, Frank, and Mildred Poslushny*

I asked Debbie about his being institutionalized. She knew that he had been, and unfortunately, he was committed again when Debbie was older. “Things went south when he taught me to roll his cigarettes for him” when she was 13 years old in 1976. She remembered him as “kind but quiet”.

Josephine died in 1990 at the age of 98 in Florida. When I asked Debbie about this she told me that “Grossy” moved down to Florida after her daughter Josephine Rittersbacher passed away in 1987. Grossy lived with Debbie and her family and “then they sent her down to Stephanie and Hugh McNicol to continue the care”. After that, she was admitted to a nursing home where she passed away.

But what became of Frank? I’m not sure. Debbie remembers “someone on this side” buried in Potter’s field and it might be Frank. She doesn’t remember any ceremony or funeral or even a funeral card. I have found a listing in New Jersey death records for a Frank Post’s death in July of 1979 at the age of 89 which would match my Frank. I hope I will be able to get a definitive answer soon.

I’m happy to have untangled the life of another one of Caroline’s children and like John’s, had a few surprises and produced more family!

Angel Antonia

She died in the early morning hours of April 2, 1927. Alone in her hospital room while her husband and five children slept in their nearby apartment.

She knew something was wrong the previous afternoon. She sent her 12 year old son for the midwife and then went to the hospital.

“She’ll be fine” is what they told her husband when he left the hospital that evening, only to be alerted by the grocer with the neighborhood telephone.

Her obituary said, “She was very well and favorably known to a large circle of friends among the Polish residents of the town”. Small comfort for her family.

She was buried in St. Thomas Cemetery in Southington on April 4th. Her husband carved a wooden cross for her grave and mourned her death until his in 1935.

Years later, her son, Edward, who, at her request, stayed home from school that day, had a headstone made for his mother.

*St. Thomas Cemetery, Southington CT, Section 12*

Her husband was never the same. Two of the younger children went to an uncle in Massachusetts and the youngest, to his godmother in town. When he and his older sons found a permanent place to live in Wallingford, he brought everyone back together. But how many months had gone by suddenly without a mother and then a father?

I try to imagine what their lives, and ours, would have been like if she lived long enough to watch her children grow up and to know her grandchildren. Would we call her Babcia? Would she teach us to speak Polish? Would we tease her about being so short and would my boy cousins rest their arms on the top of her head trying to be funny. Who would be her favorite child? Who would be her favorite grandchild?

We’ll never know.

Time and Memory

Reflections on the anniversary of my father’s passing

Friday, March 28th, marked the 15th anniversary of my dad’s death in 2010. In February of that year, after a month of turmoil for us all, he was finally settled into the nursing home after leaving his assisted living with a short stay in the hospital. He’d begun attending the events and, as always, enjoyed the music. My sister Gail said she’d had a nice visit with him, taking him for a walk around the grounds and spending time sitting and talking outside.

It was a Sunday, when I received the call from the nursing home to tell me he had passed away. He was sitting in bed eating breakfast when someone walked by, and when they walked by again, he was slumped over. Just like that. Gail and I contacted the funeral home then headed there and sat with him for a while. It was Palm Sunday and the home left a frond in his room that I took and have in a box with my parents personal belongings.

I’ve written more than once about my mother’s eight week journey from diagnosis to death with Glioblastoma. My dad’s death occurred one week prior to the 23rd anniversary of my mother’s death.

After my mother died, my father carried on. He was 63 and still working in the facilities department at Gaylord Hospital in town. He really loved that job! He was such a people person, he was an awesome painter and wall-paperer, my sister Gail worked there, and the Farms Country Club was next door so he’d look for golf balls during lunch or hit some balls.

He loved “his girls”, his grandkids, golfing, and riding his bike. During my 8 years in California, he visited both with my sisters and by himself and I never had to entertain him. He’d take off for the day on my bike or head to the golf course in town.

I won’t go through the litany of health ailments starting with his 1996 knee replacement, but they were enough to slow him down and significant enough that he was not able to live on his own after 2000. After that, it felt like from late January until April, he, and we, were dealing with one health issue or another.

During this week every year, I think about that. I’ve written about my dad’s childhood, how his mother died when he was turning 3 and his father died the month before his 11th birthday. He and his older siblings were then raised by his 12 years older brother.

What do I think about? I think that he didn’t want to leave his girls alone. I think that he wanted to be with us, to be our dad for as long as he could even if that meant fighting through whatever pain he had. I may sound crazy, but I think after 22 years and 51 weeks my mother said, “Honey, they’re going to be fine, come home” and with that, he went home.

Caroline’s Children

I always return to this picture because it is the only picture of Caroline and all her children. Her LIVING children.

As I’ve searched the parish records for birth records, I’ve encountered additional children of Caroline and Joseph. Upon examination of the 1910 Federal Census, she lists 14 children born with eight living! Here they are:

*Phillip – born on March 1, 1879. Died on May 1, 1883 of smallpox
John – born on March 5, 1880. Died on February 1, 1942
*Francis – born March/April 1881. Died August 23, 1881, of Dysentery
*Maria – born on March 18, 1883. Died on May 15, 1883 of smallpox
Joseph – born on August 9, 1884. Died on November 9, 1974
Konrad – born on May 3, 1886. Died on December 28, 1944
Charles – born on September 18, 1887. Died on April 30, 1952
Francis – born on September 1, 1889. Date of death unknown
*Stanislaus – born on August 14, 1891. Died on August 14, 1891, at birth
Mary – born on January 21, 1893. Died on Mary 1, 1995
Elizabeth – born on September 24, 1896. Date of death unknown
*Baby Girl Bonk – born June 28, 1899. Died on June 28, 1899, at birth
Walter Bonk – born on August 29, 1903. Died on August 3, 1998

I’m missing the 14th birth, but I’m still reviewing the records. Caroline and Joseph were married in 1876 so I checked 9 months from their wedding to 9 months before Phillip was born with no success. Next up will be the gaps between the other births!

Joseph Posluszny

Joseph Posluszny, born August 9, 1884, was my grand-uncle. He was the fourth child of Joseph and Caroline (Straub) Posluszny. Like his brother John, he was born in Lipnica, part of the district of Dzikowiec in southeast Poland. I’ve found a discrepancy in his date of birth in his WWI enlistment record but his birth record from the Lipnica archives shows he was born in 1884.

*Joseph’s birth record* – *August 9 birth, 10th baptism, house number 248*

Birth records list their father’s occupation as Colonista, which indicates they were German settlers who migrated to the region in the 18th century as part of a colonization effort by the Austrian Empire. With that migration came land, and family stories say they had a farm.

At 17, he departed for the United States on November 24, 1901, and arrived in New York Harbor on December 1st. His ship, Pennsylvania, departed from Hamburg, Germany, with stops at Boulogne-sur-Mer, France, and Plymouth, England, before arriving at its final destination of New York harbor. He was in Zwischendeck, better known as Steerage. Two weeks door to door, I wonder what he was thinking as he traveled. There is no person on his manifest page coming from Wildenthal so it appears he traveled alone.

He was heading to his brother, John Posluszny, who immigrated in 1900. The address for John on the manifest says 57 Jefferson Street in Yonkers. Although there isn’t a census listing for John in 1900, which I mentioned in my story about him, I found their uncle, Michael Straub, his wife Elizabeth, son Michael, and son John at that address.

*Ship’s manifest from Joseph’s arrival Line 23*

Joseph settled in as a hatter, just like his siblings, and continued to live on Jefferson Street at number 41 in the 1905 census.

His future wife, Anna Straub, was born in Wildenthal (now Dzikowicz) on December 25, 1887, to Joannes Straub and his wife Elizabetha. Elizabetha’s maiden name, and married name, were Straub, so there may be a familial connection to Joseph’s mother.

*Anna’s birth record – December 25 birth, 26th baptism, house number 19*

Anna departed Hamburg Germany on the Blücher and arrived in the United States on December 17, 1902. She headed to the home of her sister, Eva Straub, in Brooklyn, NY, with $12 in her pocket.

*Ship’s manifest from Anna’s arrival Line 25*

There’s no New York census record for Anna in 1905. But, they met, and Joseph and Anna were married on February 11, 1906, in St. Stanislaus Koskta Roman Catholic Church, Greenpoint (Brooklyn), NY. The church was only 2 years old when they were married.

Wedding party – brother, Charles is floor left, and John floor right. Brother, Konrad (other records say brother, Frank) standing second left. Back right, Ann’s brother, Adam Straub and wife, Margaret. Seated right, Anna’s brother, Lawrence Straub, *wife Josie, top left. Unsure if Julianna is woman 3rd from left.*

Joseph and Anna’s first child, a daughter Margaret, was born on December 1, 1906, in Yonkers, New York. Margaret is the baby in the front row of the Posluzny Family photo, held by Anna, and Joseph is standing at her right side.

Joseph and Anna moved to Newark, where he worked as a finisher in a hat shop. According to the 1910 Federal Census for New Jersey, Eva, her husband Walter Ingram, and Anna and Eva’s sister Lizzie, 18, lived with them.

The 1920 Federal Census finds them living in Norwalk, Connecticut, in a home they own. Joseph is working as a hatter in a factory. I talked about their hatter profession last year. Joseph worked for the Hat Corporation of America in Norwalk until he retired.

1930 is the first time Joseph is listed as Joseph POST, not POSLUSZNY or POSLUSHNY. Joseph and his brother Charles, who also ended up in Norwalk, were the only two who used Post exclusively as their last name. Aunt Judy said that she wished her father, Konrad, had done the same because she got tired of it being mispronounced. I always used it in response to someone talking about my maiden name Jakiela. I’d say, “You think that’s bad? My mother’s maiden name was Posluszny!”

They had 3 more children: Charles in 1910, Ann in 1915, Joseph in 1917, and Elizabeth in 1922.

*Joseph, Margaret (back)*
*Charles, Joseph, Anna and Ann (seated) abt. 1919*

I didn’t know Joseph and Anna and their family. The ages of their children fell in line with my mother’s family and my mother and their youngest daughter, also named Elizabeth, were both born in 1922.

Interestingly, Joseph, Jr., was born in Wallingford in 1917 and in my early searches I found Joseph his father in the 1915 town directory as a farmer in Yalesville. I never knew if it was really him, and that was the only year. I don’t know why there was the break in location or occupation. Sometime between the 1910 census and 1920 census, his mother and step father came to Wallingford, possibly at the same time from New Jersey.

The next generation, Joe and Anna’s grandchildren, were people I have met in the past. Ann married Walter (Wally) Regan and they had eight children. Margaret married Paul Wupperfeld and they had four children. Charles and his wife Mayre, were childless, Joseph Jr, and his wife, Dorothy had 2 children, and Elizabeth and her husband, Courtland (Court), had four children. The Regans and the Wupperfelds attended the Fourth of July picnics at Pickerel Lake, hosted by two aunts and uncles. Joseph and Anna possibly were there as well. In my head, I hear Aunt Judy calling them “the Fairfield Posts”, and “Uncle Joe”. We also attended a party at Crystal Lake in Ellington hosted by one of the Wupperfeld children when I was about 10 or 11. I have a connection with one of Joe and Anna’s great-grandchildren, Jennie, through Ancestry and her family tree contains at least 25 grandchildren and many great-grandchildren. Like my relative through John Posluszny, I appreciate that connection to the past.

Joseph died at 90 years old on November 9, 1974, in Norwalk. Eleven months later, Anna died on October 20, 1975, at 87 years old.

January 31st

January 31st. 38 years ago, on January 31st, 1987, my mother was diagnosed with brain cancer. Glioblastoma Multiform. It was not a question of IF she would die, but WHEN. It was so invasive throughout her brain, there was nothing they could do for her.

I’ve written about our journey with her illness here and here. Boy, did it suck. Her decline was so rapid, it was like she let out a sigh of relief from getting found out. I felt so fecking helpless. Maybe that’s why I always cajole my family members with a “you’re fine, you’re fine!” Like I can will their pain or illness out of them because I couldn’t do it for her.

So many years later, I see myself standing at the copier at work hearing my name as I’m paged for a phone call. I hear Gail saying, “I’ll always think of this when I pay my taxes”. I see me sitting with my sisters in the hospital cafeteria discussing what she’ll wear for her funeral. Weeks later, trying to force her to eat because the visiting nurse said when she stops, the end will only be a few weeks (it was). I went out that afternoon for the St. Patricks Day parade in New Haven and tied.one.on. We knew it wouldn’t be long.

She died 8 weeks after her diagnosis. Every year between January 31st and April 4th, I remember what it felt like to see her slip away.

John Posluszny

I told you about John Posluszny’s death and burial here but I thought you might enjoy hearing about his life and family.

John was born in March 1880 and was the eldest of the children of Caroline Straub and Joseph Posluszny.

He arrived in the United States in 1899 at the age of 19 and spent most of his life in the Newark, New Jersey area. I have no ship manifest for his arrival, but used the year recorded on the federal census reports.

Both the 1905 New York State census and the Yonkers city directory lists John living in Yonkers on Washington Street as a boarder in a household and working as a hatter (the family occupation).

Something puzzles me though. Jumping ahead a few years, the 1910 Federal Census lists a son John, 7 years old, which means he was born about 1903 and in the United States. The 1905 census doesn’t include a child or a wife but you’ll see further down this post, a marriage license says his first wife died. The Posluszny Family portrait was taken about 1907 based on the appearance of young John (front row left) and young Walter (front row right). I think the picture of John and his son and the picture of the four brothers was taken at about the same time.

*John Posluszny and his son John abt. 4 years old*

He married Stefania Mariasz in March in 1908. She immigrated in December of 1907 with her sister Karolina and they were heading to their cousin, Johann Straub on Jefferson Street in Yonkers. Johann Straub and Jefferson Street are names that have popped up regularly for Posluszny family members when they arrived in the United States. The marriage license says John was married before and his wife had died. I have no record for that and no birth record for John Jr.

*John and Stefania’s marriage license 1908*

There is another mystery – “they” had a daughter Martha, who was born in Austria in 1907 and came to the United States in February of 1909! I’m not sure who her parents really were. Martha arrived with John Posluszny’s cousin Katarzyna Burek, but I don’t recognize that name. Is it possible that Stefania had her out of wedlock in 1907? Illegitimate children were not uncommon according to the birth records I’ve been poring over.

By the 1910 census, we find John and his family in Newark New Jersey. This census assumes that Stefania gave birth to both John and Martha (2 children born, 2 children living). They were renters and shared their home with Stefania’s sisters Karolina and Julia. Julia is listed as being married for 8 years and immigrated in 1903 with a final destination of her husband Josef Dosedla. I don’t know what happened to him but by 1914, she was married to Jacob Vervliet in New Jersey.

John and Stefania had a son, Stanley born in August of 1918, nine years after Martha and 15 years after John.

*Stanley Posluszny born 1918 – approx. 1921*

In 1920, John, Stefania, Martha (13), and Stanley (1-1/2) are living in Irvington, a town in Essex County, New Jersey. John and Martha are both naturalized citizens and John is still working as a hatter. The sister in laws have moved on and so has the oldest son John. I found him living in Wallingford Connecticut with his grandparents, Caroline and Jon Bonk and working at Wallingford Silversmith.

By 1930, John is a restaurant owner and also owns a multi-family home at 617 18th Avenue in Newark. His restaurant / saloon was at 672 South 19th Street which appears to be the same building, with the entrance around the corner. I took the 2007 pictures from Google Maps because in 2023, the building is in a terrible state of disrepair!

Martha was married at 22 in 1928 to Leslie Theobald, a police officer for Newark. They had a daughter, Dolores and they were divorced in 1941. Their daughter, Dolores married Theodore Kozlowsky in 1951 and they had three children. I’m still researching to add them to the family tree.

*Divorce notice for Martha and Leslie – note the item underneath. Dr. Gilbreth is the mother of the real “Cheaper by the Dozen” family!*

I have not been able to find any information on John Jr. after the 1920 census in Wallingford. There are some possible leads but nothing that confirms to me that’s my John.

Stanley was easier to find possibly because he was born in the late 1910s. He graduated from West Side High School in Newark and then from Northeastern University in Boston with a bachelor’s in science degree. He would later become a dentist. But first up was World War II.

He registered in 1940 while he was a student at Northeastern. On the form, he spelled his last name “Poslushny” unlike our “Posluszny”. This picture is signed “Stan Post” which some of the male family members adopted permanently but Stanley did not.

He enlisted in the Marines in March of 1942. This was only a month after his father died as a result of a car accident. In November of that year, he completed pre-flight training and was sent to the Naval Reserve aviation base in Squantum, Massachusetts which was in the city of Quincy.

From there he headed to Pensacola Florida where he was commissioned a second Lieutenant in the Marines Corps Reserve after completing the flight training course. He was designated a naval aviator and assigned to the Navy Air Operational Training Center in San Diego California.

I was surprised to find this article for the same event in my local Connecticut newspaper archives and wondered why. Then I realized his sister Martha, and probably her daughter Dolores were living in Wallingford! 105 Ward Street a multi-family home and part of Steinke’s Market. The original market was owned by Joseph Laçz and his wife Elizabeth Posluszny (John’s sister). It was then purchased by Mary Posluszny Biega and her husband and at some point purchased (?) by their daughter Mary and her husband Otto Steinke. Whew. Remember, this was shortly after Martha and her husband Leslie Theobald were divorced in New Jersey. Family taking care of family again.

In 1945 Stanley was flying in the Pacific Theater and this event was recorded in the Newark Evening News.

The military rolls for Stanley show him stationed from Virginia to San Francisco and ending out his career as a captain.

He ended up back in the New Jersey/New York area and I believe he was married, had three sons, and was then divorced. I don’t know when he continued his schooling to become a dentist. Interesting note – his aunt Mary Posluszny Biega also had a son, Stanley G. and he became a dentist here in Connecticut.

He headed out to Arizona in 1955, was married in 1959, and had a daughter. I found her name on Ancestry in 2012. We have corresponded and discovered immediately that we were family. We became a DNA match a few years ago and since we have shared matches, I have new names to check on.

Stanley passed away in 1984 when she was only 21, not unlike he and his father. She told me that her father hated the cold and hated funerals and wanted to be cremated but her Italian-born mother refused and had him buried. How ironic that the same thing happened to father and son.

*Obituary and headstone for Stanley J. Posluszny*

I hope you enjoyed this biography of John Posluszny and his family!

Favorite Photo

The Week 2 Topic for 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is “Favorite Photo”.

This photo started me on my Ancestry Journey:

My mother’s oldest sister, Antoinette, known as Toots and Tootsie, was the family picture keeper. When I visited her in her little one room apartment, she would bring out the photos and tell me about the people in the photos. Some of the stories didn’t match the previous ones, but it was fun to just sit and listen to her. When she moved to a nursing home, my cousin Judy had the pictures and when she passed away, her husband gave them to me.

This photo is of the entire Posluszny Family, the maternal side of my family tree. In the front row is John Posluszny and his son John, Ann Straub Posluszny with her daughter Ann, Mary Posluszny (later to become Mary Biega), Caroline Straub Posluszny (at this time Bonk) and her son Walter, Elizabeth Posluszny (later to become Elizabeth Laçz). The back row is Joseph Posluszny, husband of Ann, Frank Posluszny, Charles Posluszny, John Bonk (the men’s stepfather and Caroline’s second husband, Walter’s father), Julianna Ingram Posluszny, and Conrad Posluszny (my grandmother and grandfather).

I have stared at this photo for so many years, just looking at the faces and wondering about them and their lives in Wildenthal (now Dzikowiec) before coming to the United States.

I marvel at the handsomeness of my grandfather (ok, he’s not really, but I am still related because he and my grandmother were 2nd or 3rd cousins), and I can’t get over the resemblance of Mary Posluszny Biega to my cousin Ann who has passed away.

I have individual pictures of a few of them, and some wedding photos that I treasure, but this photo is my favorite. It keeps me digging.

In The Beginning

It’s a new year and a new list of topics for 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks! We’ll see how it all works out, but hopefully, I can also get some subjects on my hit list written.

Week 1 Topic for 2025 is In the Beginning. I’ve written a post already about how I got involved in Ancestry so I’m taking this in a different direction. What better topic than my parents who started it all!

My mother, Elizabeth Ann Posluszny was born in 1922, and my father, John Steven Jakiela in 1924. They attended Lyman Hall High School together and my dad’s brother Walter was in my mother’s graduating class. I don’t know if they knew each other through their school years.

After high school, my mother went to Lauren Business School in Meriden and then went to work at Factory A of the International Silver Company. My dad worked at the Wallingford Steel Mill during high school and continued afterward until he headed to England in 1943. He returned to that job when he came home in 1945, and then he moved on to the paint store.

My mother and my dad’s sister Helen worked together at International Silver and belonged to a bowling league. My Auntie Helen told me that he would pick them up and drop off my mother at her home at 121 Clifton Street, and then he and Helen would go home. Auntie Helen realized something was happening when my dad started dropping her off first and then taking Betty home!

She also told me that “your mother said he’d better get off the pot and do something or she was moving on”. Suffice it to say they were married on November 9, 1952.

A little fun fact: Before their wedding, in January of 1952, John took a trip to Florida. I have an undocumented memory of him and his older brother Steve going there to see their brother Walter when he arrived stateside from wherever he had been. I wrote about him in March of 2024.

John sent some cute postcards to Betty while he was gone. He even put little notes under the stamps.

Betty was 30 on her wedding day and John was 28. Her mother was a widow and John lived with his oldest brother and his family so there was not likely a lot of money for a wedding but it was still beautiful. She had a timeless dress that was later worn by my sisters for their weddings. John and his groomsmen were in handsome morning suits.

*Steve Jakiela, John, Betty, and Tootsie Posluszny*

They left for a Florida honeymoon from the reception.

They lived in Meriden early in their marriage as Betty continued to work in the office at International Silver and John continued to work for Lacourciere Paint Company.

They hung around with John’s sister Helen and her future husband Ticker (Joseph) Jordan. They were married in May of 1953. They all loved to spend time at the Rocky Neck State Beach and vacation together in South Carolina.

They moved from Meriden to a cute rental on Carlton Street in Wallingford which was 2 blocks from her childhood home. Janice, Gail, and I were born when they were living there and we were likely busting out of the seams when we moved a year later to our beloved home at 15 Atkinson Lane.

Their marriage wasn’t perfect, but it worked for them. My dad loved having three girls and always said he wouldn’t want it any other way. He took us on bicycle and walking adventures and my mother instilled in us the love of reading.

They were the beginning of our family and the families my sisters and I created.

Symbols and Signs

The topic for week 38 of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is Symbols. You can probably figure out that it’s actually Week 52 of 52 Weeks and so I’ll pick and choose the remainder of the topics to fit in with the topics for 2025. Anyway… Symbols!

I’ve written about the signs that my departed loved ones send me. My dad sends dimes and cardinals, and I find those dimes in the craziest places!

Earlier this year, the words in the New York Times Connections puzzle on two significant days told me my mother was wishing us continued happiness.

Last year, my father-in-law checked in, sending me my special number, 717.

Psychic mediums tell us to open our eyes and ears to the messages of love that surround us because the signs are there. Two books I really enjoyed on the subject are “Signs: The Secret Language of the Universe” and “The Light Between Us”, both by Laura Lynne Jackson.

The most recent sign came early Christmas morning, at 2:15 AM to be exact, when a little wind-up musical box began playing its tune, “Deck The Halls”. I found this in my in-laws’ home when we were cleaning out after my father-in-law passed away in 2022 and it has been sitting on a shelf in a bookcase outside our bedroom. It doesn’t play any music unless you wind it up on the back, and once it’s played out, it stops.

We both woke up with a start and I grabbed my phone, thinking it was ringing but I never have my ringer on! I leaped out of bed and only had to go a few feet to the source. How the heck did it start playing? It played so briefly, that I thought I had imagined it. 2:15 in the morning!!

It was another sign.

My husband’s biological father passed away on Christmas morning in 2005. We don’t know the exact time because it happened in Washington State and we live in Connecticut. We received a phone call that Christmas morning around 7am after we had finished opening presents.

Could it have been him? Because it was the anniversary of his death, both our minds went to him. I also remembered that he came through at the end of a recent reading I had with my wonderful psychic medium. He was in the background and we decided to keep him there. Maybe he just wanted to make sure we got the message that he was thinking of us. It would be just like him to use the method he did! So we laughed, went back to bed, and I moved the darn music box down to the first floor!

Signs from our loved ones are all around us. We just have to be willing to recognize them.