family lore – Page 2 – It's All About Family

My Favorite Discovery

The Week 33 topic for 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is – My Favorite Discovery. I’ve had a few discoveries over the last 25 years. My favorite discovery has a good side / not-so-good side, but it makes me happy.

The road to this discovery started in 2004, when my cousin Judy Posluszny Behme passed away and her husband brought me all her ancestry paperwork. She and I were working parallel, we didn’t share information or ask questions about what we had. I knew she was also working on it, but not much more!

The papers included email correspondence from someone named Joanne. Judy had sent a letter to Anna Engram, Joanne’s mother. I don’t know whether the letter was ancestry-related or just perhaps a Christmas card to Aunt Tootsie’s list of people. Who knows how long it had been since cards had been sent out but it was a smart idea to use the list for information too!

emails from 2/7/2001, 2/25/2001, and 11/18/2004

The top 2 emails are from Joanne to Judy in February 2001, 2 weeks apart, and the bottom one is my email to Joanne in November of 2004.

Joanne responded right away. She still didn’t know who she visited as a young girl but recalled a wedding in Wallingford “of a woman relative who was marrying at ‘mid-age'” and “this may have been a cousin? to my Dad”.

Through our emails, she told me about her father, Jacob Engram Jr., and his father, Jacob, who immigrated from Austria-Hungary and was a farmer. While growing up her father lived in the vicinity of today’s Bronx-Whitestone Bridge, and later on a rented farm in the Pelham Bay area. I knew there was some family connection because my grandmother loved her flowers and tending to her gardens.

My Aunt Judy helped put some pieces together in a phone conversation in November 2004. According to Judy, Uncle Jack Ingram had a farm “in Long Island”, and her parents would go there from Yonkers and help out. Uncle Jack had a son, Jack, who was in World War I and Aunt Judy remembered her mother kept up her Christmas tree until February, when “her nephew” Jack came home. The dates don’t add up but it’s interesting how that story got passed down. Jack served overseas during World War I from July 18, 1918, to July 13, 1919.

We continued our correspondence through the remainder of the year and determined that she attended my parent’s wedding on November 9, 1952. 72 years ago today! Joanne was only 7 years old so an older bride and a partially bald groom would be considered “mid-aged” in her eyes!

We emailed back and forth a few times and then didn’t talk again until 2016 and again in 2018. Life is like that sometimes!

And then, her kids gave her a DNA kit for Christmas in 2018. In March of 2019, we confirmed we were related. Oh boy, were we related! We were so much related that she and I shared twice the cMs compared to me and my first cousins. It also explained why some DNA matches were only between us and not between my maternal cousins.

I went to the experts – the Ancestry DNA Facebook group. My question “Why do I share 1,040 cMs with this person and only 527 and 467 with my first cousins” was met with “You need to talk to your mother”. Since my mother had been gone for 32 years by 2019, I answered my own question.

Joanne was my half aunt and her father, Jacob Engram, Jr., was also my mother’s father.

Shocked is putting it mildly.

My initial reactions were: 1) The work I’ve done on the Posluszny and Straub side was all for nothing!, 2) All the DNA matches associated with the last name “Duy” made sense because that was Jacob’s mother’s maiden name and, 3) not only were Julianna and Konrad Posluszny related (3rd cousins perhaps), but geez, Julianna and Jacob were related as well!

If there was any question of being related, I have the photographic proof:

That would probably be the bad side of the discovery because it did shake me up a bit.

I’m fascinated by the timing because my grandmother and family were living in New Britain in 1921 when she would have become pregnant. Did she know? Did she tell him her suspicions? Did their relationship continue after my mother was born? This is where I’d love to be a time traveler (and I’d have to let it happen again so that I would be assured I exist!).

The good side of the discovery is that I have an aunt! Jacob married in 1934 and had a daughter in 1945. Although she and my mother never knew each other, they did meet and/or knew about each other as a part of the family. Joanne lives in Pennsylvania and we have not met face to face yet. We are Facebook friends and we share any ancestry information we come across.

So this event would definitely qualify as my favorite discovery!

More Cousin Memories

I started my memories of my cousin Mal here and I’m going to continue the story now.

In Mal’s senior year of high school, he and 5 other young men in the state were selected by Senator Thomas Dodd to take the special examinations for an appointment to the Naval Academy. The senator “bypassed” the standard selection of principal and alternate and instead placed all of them chosen on a competitive basis and he was one of the two.

*Mal’s graduation from Notre Dame HS West Haven*

Mal headed off to Annapolis in 1960, the same year my twin and I were born, and our older sister was 2 years old – and he was our first cousin – a whole different generation.

Mal went to Annapolis with plans to play football. My Aunt Judy said he had to stop because of headaches but according to his obituary it was “an epic boxing match” that put an end to his football career.

Parents weekend freshman year

When Mal was in high school he started dating Margaret Donroe – Margie – from Hamden. My aunt would tell us how they would be on the phone and Mal would have the phone resting on his shoulder as Margie just chatted away on the phone and he would grunt occasionally to let her know he was listening. Margie was so vivacious and pretty and I just thought they were the most beautiful couple in the world!

*Margie at Bob’s Holy Trinity school graduation 1960*

Naval Academy graduation June 3, 1964

June was a busy time for the Bellafronto Family! Mal graduated from the Naval Academy on Wednesday, June 3 1964.

He and Marge were married three days later in Hamden Connecticut on Saturday, June 6th. My sisters and I were 6 and 4 and we were at the wedding but I’m not sure about the reception.

After their wedding and honeymoon, Mal and Marge headed off to his duty station in Yokosuka Japan where he would be aboard the guided missile light cruiser the USS Oklahoma City, the flagship of the 7th Fleet.

While they were in Japan, I would look out my bedroom window and watch the sun come up over the hill and I would think that on the other side of the hill was Japan and as the sun set there, it came up here! Their oldest son, Malcolm III, was born in Japan and their second son, Eric, was born in San Francisco after his tour was completed.

*Japan was going to sleep on the other side of this hill…*

Whenever they would come to the east coast, Aunt Judy made sure everyone got together to visit with them.

After Mal left the Navy, he got into the paper industry. I remember them living in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, maybe Illinois, California, and finally Oregon. It was too bad that by the time I moved to California, they had already moved!

As the years went by, we didn’t see them as often because Aunt Judy and Uncle Mal moved to Florida.

When my cousin Bill got married in Illinois in 1987, we were together with Mal and Marge (known as Maggie by then) for the first time in a long time. Aunt Judy and Uncle Mal were there too, and we’ve always had such a fun time being with them, this visit was no exception.

*Marge, Mal, Aunt Judy, Uncle Mal, and my twin Gail*, *his goddaughter*

I saw Marge one last time at their son Eric’s wedding in San Jose in 1993 or 94 when we were living in California. Sadly, she passed away in 2009 after a reoccurrence of breast cancer.

Fast forward….

In 2013, Mal’s brother Bob was hosting a family reunion at our cottage in Lebanon CT for his daughter Cathy and her family visiting from Morocco. Mal, young Mal, and Eric came out from the west coast for the party. Bob and his wife Teri brought Aunt Judy who was now 96 years old. We had a wonderful time visiting with everyone! It felt like one of the Posluszny Fourth of July parties I’ve written about. We shared hours of memories and a lot of laughter.

The following year, 2014, Mal and Mary, his partner of a few years, were heading east. Mal would be attending his 40th Naval Academy reunion. I met with Mal during the week and we took a walk around the home on Clifton Street that his mother and mine grew up in. It was in bad shape after water damage and (probably) foreclosure, but the walkway to the back of the house was still there and the odd little entry into the basement.

I also contacted the owner of the family home on Lincoln Avenue to arrange a visit there. Their parents bought the house from Aunt Judy and Uncle Mal and they bought it from their parents. It really is a great neighborhood! We both enjoyed walking through the house, seeing the changes, and seeing what stayed the same.

Mary came out the following week, we had dinner together, and they stayed at our cottage in Lebanon Ct. The cottage his family had for the majority of his years growing up was in the next town so he and Mary spent time driving around the area and visiting the former family cottage on Pickerel Lake.

That would be the last time I saw him, but I enjoyed an email exchange, infrequent but more frequent than that with other long-distance family (hint, hint).

I talked to Mary, his partner last week and we had a nice conversation about their time together and my memories of him.

Malcolm James Bellafronto Jr 1942-2014

A Cousin’s Passing

I found out earlier this month that one of my cousins passed away in Oregon on July 15th. If you know me, or read my posts, you know that I am the Keep of All Things Family so I wanted to share my memories and thoughts on him.

My cousin, Malcolm James Bellafronto Jr, was born in October of 1942. He was the son of my Aunt Judy, my mother’s next older sibling and her husband, Mal. He was nicknamed Butch (I don’t know how he got that name). They lived on North Orchard Street when he was born.

When he was a year old, my Uncle Mal went into the Navy and my Aunt Judy and Butch moved in with my grandmother, grandfather, Aunt Tootsie, and my mother. He was a big little kid! He shared a few stories with me and although he doesn’t recall much of living on Clifton Street, he did remember this story:

During the war my mother and I lived with Gram when my father was in the Navy. I don’t have any specific memories of that period. I do have some vague recollections of Grandpa P.

There was one incident that my mother told me about later. Apparently, I used to spend time out in back with Grandpa. You remember how big the garden was. There was a gate leading into the garden that you had to lift up to get in and out. Well I wandered into the house one time and everyone wanted to know how I got out of the garden. So I showed them, lifting the gate with a loud grunt. Evidently, Grandpa always grunted when he lifted the gate. Mal was 18 months old at the time of that video!

*Aunt Judy holding Butch and sister in law Millie 1944*

He was the center of attention while living on Clifton Street!

In 1945, while his dad was on leave, the three of them drove cross country to California where his ship was docked. Aunt Judy and Butch were planning on staying with her Tante Lizzie and Uncle Ben while Mal was out to sea but he got back on board ship and was told he fulfilled his service and so was done and they came back home to Connecticut.

His brother Bob was born four years later and they eventually moved around the corner from us on Lincoln Drive in a home that Uncle Mal built with help from the students in the Wilcox Tech carpentry program where he was an automotive teacher.

The majority of males in our family attended Notre Dame High School in West Haven, CT. He played football there and relayed the following story to me:

“For the 3 summers of my high school years I would live with Gram for the two weeks before school started. My dad had August off and the family would stay at the lake in Moodus. I started early for football, 3 a day drills. Walk to the train station in the morning, train to New Haven then 2 buses to West Haven. We were on the field by 8 and finished up around 4. Then buses, train and walk to Gram’s. What I remember was how long her hair was and how she would brush it every night while we watched TV. And she was an absolute fanatic about wrestling, pounding the couch and yelling at the TV. For the 3 summers of my high school years I would live with Gram for the two weeks before school started”

Also – “But the main memory is of Gram’s cooking. The pastries she made on holidays. Her cheesecake was out of this world. Tootsie got the cheese part right but could never get the crust. As far as regular meals, I remember everything being overcooked and pretty well tasteless.”

He also told me that when they were building the stairs for the cottage in Colchester, he was the free labor! He said it was a lot of hard work and it kept him in shape for football.

He also told this story about staying at Gram’s house during the summer and the trains that passed along the side of the house going from the steel mill to the main railroad tracks:

“I also remember picking up coal that the engineer would throw into the yard when they stopped at the street. You remember the train tracks going to the steel mill behind the house.

I slept in the front bdrm by the tracks. I distinctly remember one night when I was staying there for football waking up in the middle of the night to the most god-awful noise and most brilliant white light filling the room. Had no idea where I was and what was happening.

When I finally came around enough to look out the window, I saw that the commotion was a very large steam engine stopping at the street with its carbon arc front light shining in the window. Scared the hell out of me.”

*Cousin Charles Jakiela, my parents, Butch at their wedding (altar boys)*

I hope you don’t mind if I end this here. After graduation from Notre Dame High School, Mal was heading to the Naval Academy in Annapolis Maryland.

To Be Continued….

What Doesn’t Kill You…..

The topic for Week 24 of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks, is Hard Times.

This is the story about my dad’s family, The Jakiela Family.

Their story, as I know it, begins with my grandfather, Charles, born in August of 1890 to Ignacy and Catharina (Murdzck) Jakiela. He would have a brother born in 1893 and a sister in 1894.

His mother died in 1894, the same year his sister was born, which makes me think her death might have been related. Charles was not yet 3 years old.

His father married Victoria Borek in October of 1894.

*Marriage record for Ignacy and Victoria*

Charles left for the United States in November of 1906 when he was 16 years old. He traveled with a cousin, Pawel Murdzck with Charles heading to Southington Connecticut and Pawel to Braddock Pennsylvania. I don’t know if they ever saw each other again.

Charles made his way to Palmer Massachusetts and the fabric mills. There he met his wife, Antonia Liro who immigrated in 1910 and had headed north to live with her sister Aniela and her husband Joseph Mikula and their children.

They were married in 1912 and made their way back to Southington where she gave birth to Steven in 1913 and Edward in 1915, and Charles worked for a Peck, Stowe, and Wilcox which manufactured tools and was the largest employer in Southington.

Life might have been good for a time, Charles continued to work at PS&W, and Antonia took care of their 2 young sons but then World War I came along.

Charles completed his draft registration card and family lore says he wanted to go to war because he “of his love for the country that took him in”. After hearing about some of the anti-immigrant sentiment, I wonder if he felt like he had no choice. Whatever the reason, he headed to Camp Devens in Ayers Massachusetts in May of 1917. He became a citizen of the United States June 26, 1918 under the May 9, 1918 while at Camp Devens.

*Charles’ naturalization certificate – years later, cousin Steve had a deli in the same location* *at 31 Liberty Street Southington!*

He headed sailed out of Boston on the September 4, 1918 along with the 301 Trench Mortar Battery of the 76th Division. Just in time for the Meuse-Argonne Campaign in France which would lead to the end of the war.

I don’t know how he fared in the trenches, but on the way back to port and the transport ship to take him home, his train ran over an unexploded munitions over a trestle. The bomb went off and he ended up in the river. This is another family story. A friend from home who was also on the train, saved his life. He came home with a scar running from his forehead to the back of his head. But he came home!

He arrived back in Boston Massachusetts on April 26, 1919 aboard the SS Santa Rosa from Pauillac France.

Charles and Antonia wasted no time in restarting their family and Helen was born in March of 1920! Followed by Walter in November 1921 and my dad, John, in June 1924.

The town directory shows Charles went back to Peck, Stowe & Wilcox and they lived in a variety of rentals in the area of the factory.

Everything came to a halt in the early morning of April 1, 1927 when Antonia died from pregnancy complications and Charles was left with five children, the youngest not quite 3 years old. Sound familiar?

I’ve told this part of the story a few times. Charles was devastated. He gave my dad to his godmother, and brought Walt and Helen up to Massachusetts to be taken care of by their Uncle Joe. Steve and Eddie stayed with him in Southington. When they moved to Wallingford in February of the following year, the family was brought back together again. I think that’s where the story I heard comes from, that the kids ran away from him, and he realized it was time to bring them back.

Charles drank, had a hard time holding a job, and wrote many letters to the Veterans Administration asking for more money. When they moved to their last rental on Prince Street, Eddie, now a teenager worked for the baker next door. After a few weeks of not getting paid, he asked the baker for his pay. The baker informed him he had a deal with his father that Eddie was working for their rent.

I was told he was a talented craftsman and that he made a beautiful wooden cross for Antonia’s grave. Uncle Joe would send him fabric from the mills and he would sew pillow cases for the house, and one time he made a wardrobe in the basement. The only problem was it was too big to get upstairs. So he took it apart and remade it. That’s where my dad got his talent.

My Auntie Helen told me they attended Whittlesey Avenue School, but when it got crowded, they were sent to Colony Street School. She liked Colony better because at Whittlesey the children from the fancy homes on Main Street were snobs. The kids in the Colony Street area were on a more economic level with her family.

They were fortunate to have St. Peter and Paul’s church to go to. Walt and John were altar boys and Helen cleaned the church. Did Charles ever attend? I don’t know but Charles got angry when my dad couldn’t say his prayers in Polish.

Charles died in May of 1935 in a hit and run accident while walking home one night. He was identified by the letter in his pocket from Stanley Judd of New Britain offering him a job that he would have started the following week. My father was not yet 11 years old.

Life might have been good before Charles went off to war but I think he came home, obviously injured, but also suffering from PTSD. Poor Antonia, how did she survive financially during the year and a half he was gone? How did Charles survive with five children to take care of, and have to work?

All five siblings grew up to have families and were successful in their lives. They persevered through the hard times and were always there for each other.

Thinking of them, I think of our professions and jobs that my sisters and I have had. Janice is a retired pediatric ICU nurse, Gail worked for years as a paraprofessional in elementary school following the same child from first grade through fifth grade and then would start all over again with a new child, I worked in an elementary school library, in the cafeteria, and then became a big sister to a first grader being raised by his grandmother. We all saw children and parents going through hard times and we all rose to the challenge to make their lives a little better while in our care.

Preserving Family History

The Week 19 topic for 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is: PRESERVE. Today I’ll share my story.

I don’t know where my enthusiasm for researching and writing about family history came from. I do remember on our move from California to Connecticut, we stopped in Oklahoma to visit my husband’s family. His Great-Aunt Mildred Galloway had all the family census sheets and we had copies made to take with us. Maybe that’s what made me think about my family but a few years passed before I started anything.

I love finding the names and places, and I love having my DNA results to see the matches, but more than that, I love discovering the stories.

In the early days of my research, there was very little online, but I am fortunate to live in the same town that my parents’ families moved to in the mid-1920s. It was easy back then to visit the Town Clerk’s office for records. Over the years, I’ve received amazing photos and stories from my cousin Joan and her siblings and I’ve reached out with a little success for stories from my maternal cousins. It was through my cousin Judy’s files (and DNA) that led me to my half-Aunt Joanne.

I think most importantly for me is that my sisters and I grew up with only my grandmother alive and that was only until we were 7 and 9. My maternal grandfather died in 1944. My paternal grandparents died in 1927 and 1935! For our kids, my mother died before any of them were born. Now we have another generation in the family, these stories can get passed down to and through them.

*Gram with her 3 youngest grandchildren and 4 great-grandchildren Christmas 1966*

Love and Marriage

🎵 Love and Marriage, love and marriage, go together like a horse and carriage….🎵

The topic for week 18 in 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is: Love and Marriage.

I don’t know anything about the love lives of my ancestors, but there are two couples who had long married lives.

The first would be my great-uncle Walter Bonk and his wife Beatrice. I knew them as Uncle Walt and Aunt Bea. He was my grandfather’s half brother, born during my great grandmother’s second marriage. I only saw them once a year at the Pickerel Lake 4th of July parties along with their adult children and grandchildren and they always brought Great Aunt Mary, my grandfather’s sister.

Walter was born in 1903 in Wildenthal, in the Galician area of Austria. He and my great-grandmother, her husband John, and Walt’s half sisters Mary and Elizabeth came to the United States in 1907. They went from Yonkers, to New Jersey, to finally Wallingford.

Walter met Beatrice and they were married in 1925 in New Haven. They lived in New Haven until his father’s second wife Viola died in 1937 and they inherited the home on East Street. They had four children, Ann, LaVerne, Joan, and Henry who all grew up in Wallingford.

Uncle Walt died in 1998 at the age of 94. At that time they were married for Seventy-Three Years. 73! That was longer than my mother was alive! Aunt Bea lived until the age of 98 and she died in 2003.

The second couple with a long, happy, married life was my mother’s sister, Judy, and her husband Mal. I wrote about their marriage here. They were married in 1939 and were together until Uncle Mal’s death in 2002 at the age of 89. They lived down the road from us in Wallingford for many years until they moved to Florida. They were together for 63 years. Aunt Judy lived for another 14 years until she died in 2016 at 99 years old.

*Aunt Judy and Uncle May – 50th Anniversary and 1939 wedding*

Now, I wouldn’t want you to think that it takes being married to live a long happy life because my Aunt Tootsie is the exception to that!

Aunt Tootsie dated Uncle Lester for a number of years while they were both taking care of ailing mothers. They finally married in November of 1960 and lived in Wallingford with my grandmother. Uncle Lester died of a heart attack short of three years later in August of 1963. Gram died in 1967 and Aunt Tootsie lived alone in the house on Clifton Street.

Aunt Tootsie found love again with someone she and Uncle Lester had known for a number of years. She and Andy were married in November of 1978 and lived on Clifton Street but, unfortunately, Andy died short of three years later in August of 1981. Weird right?

Aunt Tootsie continued to live in the house on Clifton Street until she moved to an apartment in the Judd Square apartments and then to Westfield Nursing home. She died in September 2010 at the age of 101.

*Newspaper article on her 100th birthday*

Family Worship

The topic for week 13 of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is – Worship.

My maternal and paternal sides of my family have always been catholic. I have no church records of their marriages in the United States but I have baptism records for almost all of my parents’ siblings. My Posluszny family likely attended St. Mary’s Church in Yonkers New York as it was the oldest Catholic Church and about a half mile from their Jefferson Street home.

After their move to Wallingford, my Great Aunt Mary Posluszny Biega and her family attended St. Casimer’s Polish National Church. There was/is also a Polish Catholic Church, Saints Peter & Paul in Wallingford so I’m not sure of their decision to go to one over the other – possibly location. My Aunt Judy talked about my grandmother acting in the plays at St. Casimer’s with my Great Aunt Mary (her sister-in-law) directing, so I’m assuming she attended that church! At some point, my mother’s family switched to Holy Trinity Church. I speculate it had something to do with my cousin Judy, the first grandchild, attending Holy Trinity School in the mid-1940s. There would be 13 Posluszny related cousins attending the school over the course of 40 years.

The Biega family and my great grandmother Carolina Posluszny/Bonk continued at St. Casimer’s and are buried in its cemetery. While Holy Trinity has a beautiful spacious cemetery not far from the center of town, St. Casimer’s is off an industrial road on the south end of town near the highway and train tracks. In fact, you used to cross over the tracks at section WITHOUT ANY GATE OR SIGNAL. Yes, I put that in all caps because our neighbors (father, daughter, and son-in-law) were hit by a train while crossing the tracks in their car in 1992. That amazes me that the crossing was still allowed in the 1990s.

Interesting aside about Holy Trinity Church…I met an older woman years ago while on a work appointment. She was Italian and grew up in the Colony Street area of Wallingford. She said Holy Trinity Church was started by the Irish in Wallingford in 19847 and a brief rundown of the priests in the church’s history reads like a Dublin phone book – McGarisk, O’Reilly, Teevens, Quinn. The Italians were not made to feel very welcome in the church so they created their own women’s society within the church. Perhaps that’s why the town still has two Polish churches!

Once my paternal Jakiela side settled in Southington CT, they attended The Church of the Immaculate Conception where my Uncles Steve and Eddie made their first communion.

After my grandmother Antonia died, my grandfather and his five children moved to Wallingford and they began attending Saints Peter and Paul Roman Catholic Church. My dad, his brother Walter, and his sister Helen all made their first communion there. The boys were altar boys and Helen cleaned the altar for the priest.

*Helen – 2nd row 4th from left abt. 1930*

After their father died tragically in 1935 the priest worked with Steve, the oldest sibling, to be sure the family stayed together by offering to “be their guardian” in the event the state tried to separate them. Thankfully that didn’t happen!

My Uncle Steve’s family must have continued to attend Sts. Peter and Paul after their first two children were born. Charles, their oldest, wanted to attend Holy Trinity School. In order to get free or discounted tuition, they needed to be parishioners of Holy Trinity Church as so they did. That began a Jakiela tradition of all eight Wallingford cousins graduating from Holy Trinity School.

As a family, my parents, sisters and I went to Holy Trinity Church every Sunday for the 9:15am mass. We sat in the same general area and looked the back of the same heads every week. We also attended mass with our classes for holy days. I enjoyed walking down the hill to the church on those days! I was not crazy about going to mass every Sunday and wished that we took a summer break from church like we did with school. Even when we were on vacation, we went to Sunday mass at the local church!

After mass we would head to Boylan’s Market to pick up the Sunday newspapers – New Haven Register, New York Daily News, and a Boston paper – and drop off a paper to our grandmother and Aunt Tootsie.

We all made our first communion and I was annoyed we didn’t get to wear pretty dresses like Janice did! we made our confirmations and had our 8th grade graduations at church as well. Janice and Gail both were married at Holy Trinity.

When my mother died in April of 1987, her funeral mass was one of the last times I attended church before I moved to California that October. I didn’t stop because I was upset with God or anything but I was going because I didn’t want to disappoint my mother. Weird I guess, but we do what we do.

My father continued to attend of course and looking back I really admire his faith. Not the “I have faith in you” kind, but his religious faith. It’s not always easy. He started attending the late Saturday afternoon mass and afterwards, he would drop off the mass bulletin to my Aunt Tootsie, my mother’s oldest sister. He probably did that right up until his heart surgery.

He died in 2010 on Palm Sunday. The nursing home distributed palms that morning and they were in his room when he died. I still have them. As he told the medium in the first reading I had, “I died an angel’s death Phil”, meaning he didn’t feel anything, he didn’t suffer. Fitting for a person who worshipped until the end.

Story Update Mary Kukulska

In January of 2020, I wrote a story about my grandmother Juliana Ingram Posluszny Taking in her cousin’s daughter after her cousin, Mary Kukulska Juszczak died in childbirth. Mary’s granddaughter sent me a copy of the court documents for the adoption that included my grandmother’s affidavit.

While doing some research, I saw information on a 5th cousin’s tree that didn’t match what I had so I checked in with her. Make sure you go back and read the original story!

Come to find out, Mary successfully gave birth to her daughter Mary in 1910. Her husband John was the one who passed away in 1910 from an accident at the sugar factory.

With an infant to take care of, Mary married Michael Zupka in June of 1911. Shortly thereafter she became pregnant and gave birth in March of 1912 and, did you guess it? She died in childbirth. Their son Michael died as an infant in November of 1912.

I don’t know at what point Mary’s stepfather gave her to grandmother to take care of. Likely when her mother died, and I wonder who took care of baby Michael until his death 8 months later. My grandmother kept her until the strain of trying to raise three toddlers of her own became too much for her. Michael Zupka remarried in July of 1913 and went on to have 3 children. He passed away in 1955.

I relayed this new information to Mary’s granddaughter and she said her mother only knew her mother died in childbirth. It was just with the wrong child! When Mary got married to Michael Zupka it was using her married name Juszczak and I never thought the story was any different.

Mary’s daughter was adopted by a lovely couple who had lost their daughter in 1914 to diphtheria. She had a very happy life and knew she was adopted but never wanted her daughter to find her biological family. Her daughter found the adoption paperwork when she was cleaning out her grandmother’s house.

The Mysterious Mikula Family

When I first started my family research in the early 2000s, Ancestry(.)com was in its infancy and information was not as readily available as it is now. Research involved either visiting town clerks office to requests copies of birth, death, and marriage certificates or mailing a request and waiting for a response.

One of the mysteries of my paternal side was my grandmother’s sister Aniela (also known as Nellie) and her husband Joseph Mikula of Palmer Massachusetts.

One of the crazy family stories was that she and my grandmother were twins but that was far from the truth as she was born in 1871 and my grandmother was born in 1891.

What little I know of them is they were married in Poland and Joseph arrived in the fall of 1902. I don’t have his ship passage record but Aniela arrived in December of 1902 and she was heading to Windsor Locks Connecticut where he was living. Since Walter was born May 30 1903, counting on my fingers, she would have been pregnant with him when she arrived. From there, or at some point in time, they moved to Palmer, Massachusetts.

Besides the “Aniela and Antonia were twins” story, I only knew they took in my father, aunt, and uncle when their mother died in 1927 and they had two sons, Stanley and Walter and one daughter, Catherine who were older than the Jakiela siblings.

I sent a letter to the two Catholic Churches in town and received a response along with four Certificates of Baptism for Mikula children – none of them named Walter or Stanley or Catherine. In hindsight, knowing Joseph and Aniela lived for a time in Windsor Locks, Ct, I might be looking in the wrong state for their birth records.

My past research told me that Walter was born in May of 1903, Stanley in November of 1904, and Catherine in 1908. The “new” siblings included: Bronislaw born 1909, Genowefa born in 1911, Zofia born in 1913, Kazimiera born in 1915, Antoni born in 1917, and Mieczyslaw born in 1918.

Just to put this in perspective my dad and his siblings were born in 1913, 1915, 1920, 1922, and 1924.

Joseph, worked in the cotton mills throughout his life and it’s likely they lived in millworkers housing in Palmer. What I found out about the family was either sad, or non-existent.

Antoni died by accidental drowning when he was 1-1/2 years old in August of 1918. He fell into a well.

Mieczyslaw (Martin) died just short of 6 months old in September of 1918 from Infant Cholera “a disease of poverty”.

Through this all, their mother Aniela, was suffering from tuberculosis which eventually made its way into her bones. She died in May of 1919 from Tuberculosis of the Bone. Would she have been home with her children around her with this terrible disease?

Catherine died in 1934 at 26 years old of tuberculosis and was in the 1930 census as an inmate at the Hampden County Sanatorium.

Bronislaw is in the 1910 census at 1 years old and was not listed in the 1920 or 1930 census.

Genowefa, later known as Genevieve, married, had a child and lived her life in Vermont until her death in 1987. Besides Stanley, she is the only I found to have a family.

Kazimiera is on the 1920 and 1930 census at ages 5 and 15, but disappears after that.

Zofia is not in the 1920 or 1930 census when she would be 7 and 17 years old. However, my Auntie Helen recalled in one of our conversations that “Tootie” committed suicide but I don’t know when that would be as I’ve never found any information about her.

I would think something was amiss with these people and lack of information if I didn’t have actual church raised seal certificates.

*One of the Mikula children birth certificates*

What I realized after all this, was that Uncle Joe remarried after Aniela died and it was actually he and his second wife and Genevieve and Kazimiera that likely took care of my aunt and uncle in 1927. My dad was in Southington with his god mother (he was only 2-1/2 years old).

Walt and John were also brought to Uncle Joe’s after their father died in May of 1935. These pictures are from August of 1935. I can’t recall my dad ever speaking of being there but I bet it is where he discovered his love of the outdoors!

Uncle Joe outlived his second wife Anna and he died at the age of 67 from a cerebral embolism in 1945 while living in Worcester Massachusetts.

You might be wondering about Stanley and Walter? I actually have some information on them from family members and another interesting source. I’ll share that in another post.

The Family Profession

The topic for Week 6 of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is – Earning a Living so I am turning this week to the Posluszny side of the family to tell you about my grandfather and his brothers.

My grandfather, Konrad Posluszny, and his four brothers were hatters. The occupations on their ship manifests say “laborer” so it’s likely they picked up the trade when they immigrated to the United States.

*The Posluszny Family abt. 1909. Men from left – John, Joseph, Frank, Charles, stepfather Jon, and Konrad*

In the early 1900s, hat making was booming and during that time period, Konrad and his brother Charles lived in Yonkers New York. They held jobs as finishers at the Waring Hat Manufacturing Company. The factory was on the corner of Riverdale Avenue and Vark Street which was only a block and a half from their home on Jefferson Street.

*Waring Hat Manufacturing Company, Yonkers NY*

His other three brothers John, Joseph, and Frank all lived in Newark New Jersey. I don’t know which company they worked in but there were 34 hat companies in Essex County making it the hat capital of the world! They would have had their pick of any and they also worked as finishers.

The 1920 census showed all five brothers still in the hat making industry. Konrad and his family were still in Yonkers, John and Frank in New Jersey, Joseph and Charles with their families in Norwalk Connecticut.

The 1920s brought about a slowdown in the hat making industry and many companies merged. John left hat making and because a proprietor of a restaurant/saloon in Newark.

Unfortunately Frank turns up in the 1930 and 1940 federal census as an inmate in the Essex County Hospital for the Insane. We know the old saying “mad as a hatter” but in this case it was hereditary rather than occupational.

Charles worked for the American Hat Company and Joseph for the Hat Corporation of America, both in Norwalk. They worked has hatters until they retired.

But, the more interesting story is that of my grandfather. I’ve told the story of the family’s move to Easthampton Massachusetts where they lived very briefly before they moved to New Britain and lived in a two family house with my grandmother’s relatives where my mother was born in 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 for a cleaning solution for straw hats and was awarded with the patent on 1925. I don’t know if he ever made any money from it but he still holds the patent to it.

Unfortunately, in the summer of 1924, in the span of two weeks there were fires in his store.

I found these news clippings while researching this story and I wonder if it plays into what my Aunt Judy said in her recorded conversations about not being a business-type guy but he would have been successful if he was. She said he was too soft hearted and the politicians in New Britain would come in, have a hat made and say they’d pay him later but they never would. He couldn’t pay his insurance, had those two (suspicious!) fires a few weeks apart and had to go out of business.

The family moved to Wallingford and he went to work at the Steel Mill until his death in 1944.