Ancestry – Page 8 – It's All About Family

Family Lore: Fact or Fiction

This is the first of my posts for 52 Ancestors and the topic is Family Lore. The moment I read it, my mind went back to the year 2000 when I started my journey to research my Jakiela, Liro, Posluszny, and Ingram family history.

The definition of Lore is: “a body of traditions and knowledge on a subject or held by a particular group, typically passed from person to person by word of mouth.” I don’t think that rings any truer than for my Jakiela side of my family.

Charles and Antonia, my grandparents married in June of 1912. They had two children, Steven in 1913 and Edward in 1915 by the time Charles headed off for World War I in 1917. When he returned, they had three more children, Helen in 1920, Walter in 1922, and John (my dad) in 1924.

The short version: in 1927, Antonia died from a miscarriage and after a move from Southington to Wallingford, CT, Charles died in 1935 in a hit and run accident as he walked along the side of a road at night. That second family tragedy made 22 year old Steven and four siblings orphans. What would they remember of family stories and traditions? What would they pass down to their children?

The children of my Uncle Steve have give me the most information. As the oldest, Steve would have been “the keeper of family possessions”. My Uncle Eddie and my Auntie Helen both gave me information in sit-down interviews I did with them and I would ask my Auntie Helen all sorts of questions to get her talking when I would take her to the grocery store or a doctor’s visit.

Here is some of that family lore:

My grandmother Antonia and her sister Aniela in Massachusetts were twins. They were NOT twins, in fact, Aniela was born in 1871 and Antonia was born in 1890.

Charles had been a writer for a Polish newspaper in Chicago before moving to Southington. No, Charles’s destination from Poland was Southington but there’s no record he settled there before heading to Palmer, Massachusetts to work in the textile mill where he met Antonia. Now, he might not have been a newspaper writer but according to Auntie Helen, on a regular basis he would write to the government asking for his pension from WWI to be increased.

Charles was injured in WWI when a forgotten ammunition exploded under their train as they were heading home from France and he had a scar on his head from front to back. I don’t know the truth of this, but it was relayed to me by Auntie Helen. He was flung into the river and would have drowned but he was saved by fellow soldiers.

Steven left school after his grammar school graduation, after his siblings had been scattered among relatives, and gathered them together to live as a family again. Very “Party of Five”-ish but no. The story might be mistaken for what happened when their mother died in 1927. Steve and Eddie stayed with their father. Helen and Walt went to Uncle Joe Mikula who was the widower of Antonia’s sister in Palmer Mass. John was not yet 3, and he went to the home of his godmother, Amelia Marcieniec in Southington. Once Charles, Steve, and Eddie got settled in Wallingford, Charles went and brought the younger siblings back home.

Steve, at 22, kept the family together. The priest at St. Peter’s and Paul Church in Wallingford said he would sponsor them if anyone tried to break the family up. The first is very true. Eddie was 20, Helen 15, Walt 13, and John turning 11. The family remained together. John and Walt did spend time in Palmer Massachusetts with their Uncle John in the summer, and their cousins Walt and Stanley Mikula were known to have spent time in Wallingford. Eddie got married in 1936 and left the family to live in Meriden. Steve and Florence Liedke who lived on the corner of their street, got married in 1937 and Helen, Walt, and John moved in with them.

Steve “fibbed” his way into a job as a meat cutter at a market. The 1930 census when he was 16 says that he was not attending school and was working as a salesman at a meat market, so there might be truth to the story he left school after 8th grade. Very possible, as his father had trouble keeping his jobs. It’s likely that’s how he got the job and he went on to become the premier meat cutter at Caplan’s Market in Wallingford until he retired. The man knew his cuts of meat!

Cousin Steve’s Liberty Deli in Southington was in the same location that the family lived at in 1918. Oh yeah, that’s true! Not really family lore, more of a Fun Family Fact. 31 Liberty Street.

We are of Polish royalty. Well, I can’t deny that all we Jakiela girls are Queens, and Jakiela in Polish is Jagiello (Ya-GAY-wah), and The Jagiellon dynasty, family of monarchs of Poland-Lithuania, Bohemia, and Hungary became one of the most powerful in east central Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries. It was ruled by King Wladislaw II Jagiello and Queen Jadwiga. So maybe there is some truth to that tale.

This is some of the family lore that has been accumulated over the 23 years since I first started researching my family. It’s been fun putting it all in one place and I hope you enjoy it!

It’s All About Family All Year Long

I’m starting, and hopefully I will complete, a “challenge” called 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks #52Ancestors.

I’ve been spending more time on my other site Thoughts From the Passenger Seat writing about thoughts that pop into my head, or answering the daily prompts. It’s easier! I don’t have to dig through the paperwork or get frustrated searching on Ancestry.

But I miss it….and I bet you do too!

Starting this week I’ll be writing one story a week based on the prompt provided. It won’t always be dates and facts and it could be about any one in my family – maybe even you!

Conversations with Aunt Judy – Part 2

Through the questions asked by Little Judy and her brother Jack, I’m going to share Aunt Judy’s answers and give a little background to her responses. If you missed the beginning, you can find it here. Let’s start with the early years.

There was a lot of conversation about Gram. She was quite a woman who had quite a secret! This is what she had to share about her mother.

What do you know about your mother’s early life?: She was quite a lady. She was not the person that people knew in the end. She was one of the lucky ones. She came here with no one. I don’t even know how she got here without a sponsor. She was lucky to be taken in by a rich woman – I don’t know her nationality or her name, but she immediately enrolled her in night school. That’s why she could speak English and learned at the niceties (Gram was this woman’s maid). That’s why she had so much poise. She was very fortunate.

How did she meet Grandpa? They both lived in Yonkers which was considered Germantown because that’s where all the Germans immigrated to. They were 3rd cousins and has to get dispensation. *This would mean they shared great great grandparents and in the early 1900s even 2nd cousins didn’t need dispensation so that might have been a family tale. Commonality appears to be with the Straub last name.

How many languages did she speak? She could speak German, Russian, and Polish, and she could understand “Jewish”. I bet out of all of us my mother had the highest IQ. She then followed that up with – I don’t know if my mother was any smarter than my dad but she had more balls than my father, yes she did!

Where did you learn to cook and sew? My mother! She could look at a piece of crochet and she could do it. She and Toots (the oldest daughter) would walk and window shop and if they saw a dress that Toots liked, she could just look at it then they’d go to Horowitz’s and buy the material and make a paper pattern and then the dress would be done the next day. I’m a good sewer but I could never do that! Gram didn’t need a pattern. There was nothing she couldn’t do and that’s why when we’d get shy about something she’d get so impatient with us! She’d say, “American boy got an education, and you can’t open your mouth?” She would open hers!

What else did Gram enjoy? She was an actress! She was in plays at the Polish (national) church a couple of times a year. I can still picture watching them! My mother and Aunt Mary (Gram’s sister-in-law). Aunt Mary was the boss – producer. Everyone would go to the church on Sunday night to watch. I don’t know what the hell they were saying but whatever she said, I guess it was the right thing because they’d all clap!”

What was Gram and Grandpa’s relationship like? She had a tough row to hoe. My father had a drinking problem. Fortunately, when he’d get drunk, he’d go up to bed and go to sleep. But he never lost a day’s work in his life. My mother got the paycheck. But just the same, to us, we knew Christmas would come, he was going to have too much to drink and then go to bed. It bothered us! Now we realize it wasn’t all that bad.

Tell us about your dad My dad and his brothers were hatters. When we moved to New Britain, he owned a hat company (The Conrad Hat Company). Dad was not a business-type guy but he would have been very successful if he was. He was a soft-hearted guy and the politicians in New Britain would come in and take advantage of him, having a hat made and saying they’d pay him later and they never did. He couldn’t pay his insurance, had a fire, and went out of business. They moved to Wallingford so he could find a job. He did get a job in the steel mill and his mother and stepfather gave them $500 to put a deposit on the house at 121 Clifton Street.

Who graduated from High School and when did everyone start working? Tootsie (15), Connie (14), and Lou (11) didn’t attend any school once they moved to Wallingford. Tootsie did housework until she could get into the factory. Connie grew up to be a fabulous baker but I don’t know if he started working for one right away. Lou went to the farm (Wallingford was filled with farms in the 1920s) and pretty much lived there. Judy graduated high school, and Betty graduated high school and went to business school. She was asked why did everyone start working. “Because there was no money!” Think about it – 5 kids, dad with no job, moving to a new town – everyone had to pitch in.

My mom, Betty front left, cousin Pauline right. Back cousin Katherine and Judy in cap

I’m going to end here and next, we’ll hear from Aunt Judy about her life growing up, meeting Uncle Mal, and their life together!

Conversations with Aunt Judy – The Prologue

Around 2009, my cousin Jack took the home movies that our Uncle Mal Bellafronto recorded and, I don’t know the magic involved, combined them onto DVDs with my Aunt Judy Bellafronto and my cousin, Judy Behme discussing what was recorded. These three DVDs range from the mid-1930s with Uncle Mal playing football for a local team through the late 1970s with my sisters and I cheerleading at a high school Thanksgiving Day game.

He gave the cousins each copies and they are something I treasure and find myself watching every couple of years. Each time I do, I find something else precious to view.

As I was once again organizing my “Family History” space which is one end of the room over our garage, I found an additional DVD that I’m sure I watched when we first received it. I popped it into the DVD slot on my 2008 Mac Desktop and started watching. Then quickly grabbed a notebook and a pen and started transcribing.

It is approximately 45 minutes of “The Judys”. Jack and Judy Behme (his sister and forever known as “Little Judy”) asked questions of their aunt’s life growing up, meeting Uncle Mal, and their marriage. I recognized some of the answers which I know I’ve shared here and there in the past but I didn’t appreciate the stories and details until now.

I’ll share the background and facts in this post and then over the next posts break it out in sections. So let’s start….

Julia Gertrude Posluszny was born on May 15, 1917 in Yonkers NY to Julianna (Ingram) and Konrad Posluszny. She was their fourth child and the second girl in the family. Her siblings were Antoinette (Tootsie 1909), Conrad (Connie 1910), Louis (Louie 1913).

The family moved from Yonkers around 1920 to East Hampton, MA, then to New Britain in 1921, and to Wallingford CT in 1925 where Konrad’s mother, stepfather, and half brother lived. They moved into a new home at 121 Clifton Street where family lived until 1988.

She went to school in Wallingford, graduated in 1935 and met and married Malcolm Bellafronto in 1939. They had 2 sons and resided in Wallingford in a house on Lincoln Avenue. In the late 70s/early 80s, Uncle Mal retired from teaching at a tech school and they moved to Florida where they lived happily for many years.

Uncle Mal passed away in January of 2002 at the age of 88. As Aunt Judy became elderly, she moved to New York, but first spent some time in Morocco living with her granddaughter and her family! Once in New York, she resided in a nursing home and passed away on December 24, 2016 just 6 months shy of her 100th birthday.

To my sisters and I growing up, she was our stylish aunt. We enjoyed going to her house and she made us outfits for Easter for a number of years. She and Uncle Mal had a cottage at Pickeral Lake we would visit frequently on Sundays during the summer and use the cottage for a week some summers.

She had a wonderful laugh and we loved to listen to her stories (and gossip!). The last time we saw her was in 2013 at our former cottage in Lebanon Ct for a family reunion when her granddaughter Cathy, husband Fred and their 4 children came to the U.S. Aunt Judy’s son Bob and I put together the event and Aunt Judy was there along with her son Mal and his two sons Mal (III) and Eric. She was 96 at the time (Impossible!) and as quick witted as ever.

I look forward to putting the questions and answers into story and hope you enjoy this journey with me!

Together One Last Time?

Front: Connie with Jack Posluszny
Back: Elizabeth, Judy with Mal Bellafronto, Lou, Konrad, Antoinette, and Julia with Judy Posluszny — Poslusznys @1943

Judging from the ages of Mal, Jack, and Judy, this picture was taken sometime in 1943. Uncle Connie enlisted in November of 1942 and was working as a cook in an Army base in Texas. Elizabeth and Tootsie took a trip to visit him in August of 1943.

Knowing that Konrad died and how he died right after Christmas in 1944 makes these pictures a little more poignant.

This is another picture from the same day based on the clothing. I can’t help but notice the shapeless dress and hand-sewn hem! Gram had very long hair but it was always worn slicked back in a bun.

Mystery Solved!

FACEBOOK – March 22, 2014

I’m sucked back into my family search on Ancestry.com

Poor great-uncle Bronislaw Liro and his wife Mary. They became a reality last night when their marriage record popped up – but nothing else.

Then a quick google search of his name gave me two deaths – one for their son at 8 days old of infant cholera, and another for their daughter at 8 months old (4 years later) of Infant Cholera.

And not a trace of them anywhere else going forward. It’s always 1 step forward and 2 steps back.

This post written in 2014 popped up for me the other day on Facebook. I’d forgotten all about it posting it and want to share what I found out a few years later.

Just some background – I had the names of Louis, Joseph, and Mitchell Liro floating around in my research notebooks because their Massachusetts locations fit with what I knew about Bronislaw. I might have sent a letter to one of them with no response.

“Joseph Liro” popped up as a DNA match in 2017 and I sent him a message through Ancestry. Sadly, not many people respond to messages! But I got lucky this time.

Joseph is the grandson of Bronislaw and Maria! Here’s a refresher on Bronislaw and Maria:

Bronislaw was born in 1881 and immigrated to the US in 1905, and headed to Three Rivers, Mass his older sister Aniela and her husband Josef Mikula.

Maria came to the US expecting to be joined by her sweetheart but she never heard from him, met Bronislaw and married him. Then oops! Turns out the sweetheart had trouble raising the money for his passage and when he finally made it to the U.S. Maria was already married to Bronislaw.

They were married sometime prior to 1908. They had a son John who died at 6 days old in August of 1908 of Infant Cholera. Joseph’s father Louis was born in 1909. A daughter Katy in 1911 was 6 months old in July of 1912 when she died of Infant Cholera. Following that, Mitchell Stanley was born in 1913.

So right there, Joseph brought together the names that have been circling around each other all these years!

Two to three years later (1915 or 16), Bronislaw and Maria (unlike my grandparents and great aunt and uncle) have a little nest egg from working in the textile mills and decide to GO BACK TO POLAND.

We all know what happened shortly after that – World War I broke out. Bronislaw fought in the Austrian Army and the “victorious Soviets” took him prisoner and sent him to Siberia.

As the war raged on, Maria was afraid that her sons, Louis and Mitchell would be called up to fight in the Polish Civil War even though they were American citizens, so she sent them back to the United States to live with a friend of hers.

In the late 1920s/early 1930s, Bronislaw escaped Siberia where he tended the horses at the camp. He appeared at the family farm in the village of Turza in southeastern Poland saying “I escaped and have come home”. Life went on and they had more children.

What happened to Louis and Mitchell? It sounds like Louis never saw his father again because he never went back to Poland. Mitchell fought in Italy during WWII and traveled through Poland but I don’t know if Bronislaw was still alive or if he went to their home.

After WWII, Maria came to the United States for a short visit, lived with Louis and his family but she returned to Poland in 1962 “to die”. Louis traveled to Poland often in the 80s and 90s and met his Aunt Katarzyna and her children and visited his grandparents’ graves.

Based on their birthdates and the dates of WWI, Louis and Mitchell would have been young when the war broke out! Louis said, “my father and his brother were so grateful to this woman (who took them in) that they had her buried in our family plot in Indian Orchard, Mass. which is a neighborhood in Springfield. I think it’s sort of a Yalesville to our Wallingford.

So that’s the story of Bronislaw and Maria. They all lived years longer than Aniela and Antonia but it was still fraught with heartache.

A Glimpse of the Past

My biggest complaint about research family is I don’t want to know just dates and places, I want to know what life was like! I want to know what they were doing and feeling! Alas, aside from what I learn from Michelle, my favorite medium, I will never know.

But! As I was googling around Google, I was led to these!

Images of America – Throggs Neck – Pelham Bay

I can’t wait to get them! I love the one we have of Wallingford and I search the pictures for familiar locations and how they looked in the past. Although I won’t have that familiarity with Yonkers and Pelham Bay, I will be looking at places were my family lived and worked. You all know Yonkers is where Julia and Konrad Posluszny as well as a majority of his family lived before they moved northward to Connecticut. The Pelham Bay book is for Joanne and the other Ingram family I mentioned a post or two ago. Her father and grandfather had farms in the Pelham Bay Area and the book description mentioned the farmland in the area. I’m excited to get a glimpse and imagine one or two of the pictures are of their farms.

I may not get their actual memories but I will try to imagine them as I look through the books.

A Piece of the Puzzle

Elizabeth Ann Posluszny, my mother, was born in April of 1922. Her mother, Juliana Ingram, was 34 and her father, Konrad Posluszny was 36 years old.

Betty, as she was known, was the youngest of five. Aunt Tootsie (Antoinette) was the oldest, born in 1909. Uncle Connie in 1910, Uncle Lou in 1913 and Aunt Judy in 1917.

Everyone was born in Yonkers, New York except Betty. After the 1920 census the family moved to Easthampton Massachusetts. According to Aunt Judy, her mother was so unhappy living there that “she didn’t even encourage my father to find a job” and “she didn’t unpack any boxes”. Next we know, Betty’s born in New Britain Connecticut and the family is living in an apartment owned by an Ingram cousin and by 1925 they bought 121 Clifton Street in Wallingford.

Betty grew up in Wallingford and had whatever she wanted. If her mother couldn’t afford it, her oldest sister Tootsie who left school after 8th grade would buy it for her. She took dance lessons, played basketball and was a majorette with the high school band. She wasn’t as craft oriented as her sisters – she didn’t knit or crochet or do needlework, or sew; but she had her mother and sisters for that! She loved to read and collected postcards buying blank ones on her trips or keeping ones that arrived at the house.

Betty traveled a lot after high school. She and Tootsie took a train trip to Texas to visit Connie in the army after Betty graduated from high school in 1940. Betty and her cousin Pauline traveled by train to California to visit their Tanta Lizzie and Uncle Ben (Weiss) and see the sights of Los Angeles. Her collection of postcards sent to her family tell of her travels and the fun she had.

My DNA mystery match, Joanne, was born in 1945 and in our earlier emails she said she had been to Wallingford in the past with her parents. She was around 7 years old and went to the wedding of “an older couple”. They missed the ceremony but made it to the reception and she remembered “stepping down into the hall”. It was my parents wedding and the reception was at the old Moose Club on Long Hill Road. How strange I thought that they would be there as we never had any communication with them that I knew of. I wondered what else she would remember of our family or if there had ever been any other trips to Wallingford!

The Search Continues

Most of you know I have been researching all sides of our family when Ancestry.com was a twinkle in the creators’ eye. It started with personal stories, microfilm at the library, town clerk records, funeral cards that were kept in dresser drawers (when hoarding is a good thing). God bless Aunt Tootsie for being the keeper of family photos and Judy Behme for working with me and for handing over these photos for preservation.

Ancestry.com with it’s public records all in one place, online family trees and the creation of DNA matches has been a gold mine (but sometimes a curse!). I have been able to work alongside cousin Cathy Bellafronto on the other side of the world to add members to the tree.

But even with new information available, Grammy Julianna Ingram Posluszny born February 19, 1888 continues to be a little bit of a mystery to us in the present day.

We know this for fact – she had 2 sisters in the United States. Mary (Marianna, Marya) born 1891 who later became Mary Wirth mother of cousin Katherine and cousin Pauline; and Elizabeth (Elzbieta) born 1894, and married to Ben Weiss (Uncle Ben and Tante Lizzie of Los Angeles). However, Grammy’s obituary mentions 4 sisters, with 2 of them in Poland along with a brother Walter also in Poland.

Recent website discoveries show me yes indeed, there are 4 sisters – Marianna, Elzbieta, Zofia (b. 1898) and Christine (b. 1901). However, there is no record of Walter, but there is Franciszek Jozef born in 1896! Well, there are 2 boys in the picture at the top. So now we have Julianna born 1888, Mariana in 1891, Elzbieta 1894, Franciszek 1896, Zofia 1898 and Christina 1901. And Walter. So there are a few more people – mother Gertruda and father Ludwick and someone else – in the picture but I think we have the siblings fleshed out now.

Which leads to another mystery. Family stories and a medium agree that Julianna was young when she came to the United States. Younger than stated in manifest records. But how young? One record that has been found by me and cousin Loisanne list a Julianna Ingram arrived in New York on June 19, 1896 from Bremen on the Bonn. Based on the year she would have been NINE YEARS OLD. Possible? Then is she even in the second picture?

Her marriage license to Konrad Posluszny in July of 1906 states she is 19 years old consistent with a 1887/1888 birth year. The 1910 census says she immigrated in 1900 and the 1920 census is a little hard to read but transcription also says 1900 which would make her a more reasonable 12(!). So where is her ship manifest record? Maybe they fudged her age but would they really send her off at nine years old and if so, why? Did she travel under a different name? Unfortunately the records online from Padew – actually living, breathing scanned copies of the records which force me to keep my Polish to English and Latin to English app open – only run from 1890 to 1899 so, no record of Julianna’s birth.

Maybe there was something going on? Reasons they felt she should leave? It wouldn’t be the first time that they lied about age. Marianna’s manifest record says she was 18 years old for her trip in 1907 when she was actually 16 years old.

So there it is — if anyone has any ideas, suggestions, comments – please share them! What I have discovered is my great great grandparents are Sebastian Ingram and Elizabetha Burghardt and Andreas Kahl and Catherine Jung.

Signs From My Father

Leaving me dimes and sending me cardinals

Growing up my sisters and I heard about and saw pictures of our parents at the El Rancho Motel in Myrtle Beach South Carolina. They went there on their honeymoon and went again with my dad’s sister Helen and her husband Ticker. They loved it there, and we loved looking at the pictures over and over again.

It’s no longer there but a search on the internet had this to say: “The sprawling grounds included 75 air-conditioned rooms with over 250-person capacity, car shelters, outdoor grilles and room service, a meeting room, and an adjoining restaurant. The palms and pines-wooded lot also included an 18-hole putting green, shuffleboard, ping pong, and their distinctive illuminated swimming pool, measuring 90′ x 40′, with a small island in the middle with palm trees.” From that description I know why they loved it – heck I would too!

Last year and a few week ago, my husband and I spent a week in Surfside Beach, South Carolina which is just one town south of Myrtle Beach.

My mind was on planning and packing all the week before we left and we were doing a lot of weather watching and worrying whether we’d have sun or a week of rain. It was evident my father wanted me to know he was thinking about our trip too when I reached my hand up in the shower to get the soap – and put my hand on a dime! In the shower! Boy that was weird….

We broke the trip down there into two days this time so we wouldn’t be burnt out and stopped in La Plata MD which is about halfway. It was a Best Western and I have a membership card. I stuck my hand in my pocketbook to get my card holder and came up with a dime STUCK to my card holder!

I said “Daddy you are tricky! I know you’re with us!”

Once we got there we spent a lot of time on the balcony of the condo where we were on the 3rd floor. It was relaxing looking at the water or just listening to the sound while reading our books. While sitting there one day I heard a very familiar bird sound…..

Sure enough – there’s a cardinal sitting there saying hello. He showed himself during the week and finally, on the last day of our visit while I was sitting on the couch, I looking up and he was was fluttering around at our balcony rail! He sat for a second and then flew off.

I can hear my father saying “That was a good time Nanc – I’m glad you had fun”.