family photos – Page 4 – It's All About Family

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.

Changing Names = Confusion!

The week 9 topic for 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is Changing Names.

You may have a story or two in your family about how “their last name was changed/shortened by the Ellis Island worker that couldn’t understand what they were saying”. Although that probably happened to some people, many times it didn’t happen that way! Most likely it was done by the immigrants themselves trying to fit in, or tired of spelling their name or hearing people mispronounce it!

My maternal family last name was Posłuszny. That little line through the “ł” sounds like “whoosh”. The majority of misspellings I see is “Poslushney”.

Two of the five Posłuszny brothers, Joseph and Charles, changed their name to Post some time during the 1920s. John used Post for business purposes as a restaurant owner, but used Posłuszny in his personal life.

Frank, poor Frank, who spent decades in an insane asylum, remained Posłuszny for his lifetime as did my grandfather Konrad’s family. I recall hearing that my Aunt Judy wished her dad had changed their name because she got so tired of spelling her last name to people!

Left to right John, Joseph, Frank, Charles, (far right) Konrad

Family Treasures

The topic for week 8 of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is – Heirlooms.

The definition of a Heirloom is a valuable object that has belonged to a family for several generations. Since my great-grandmother was the farthest back generation to immigrate in the early 1900s, I’ll have to go with what I have, but I still think they are pretty important!

Pictures. I have a lot of pictures! Professionally taken including family groupings from the early 1910s, first communions from the early 1920s, weddings, and family photos collected in multiple albums by my mother growing up in the mid-1920s and early 1930s, and beyond. In addition to those, I have videos from the early 1930s through the 1970s which I wrote about in an earlier post here.

When I started research in 2000, my Aunt Tootsie (Antoinette) was the Family Historian. She was the oldest Posluszny sibling and lived in the family home on Clifton Street from the purchase in 1925 until she moved to a Judd Square apartment in 1989. I often sat with her to discuss the family and the people in the pictures. Dates and seeing how far your lineage stretches back are fun, but my interest has always been the stories and photos. Who they were as people and as a family. Who we most resemble. I try to imagine what life was like in Yonkers and Connecticut in that time frame. I guess that’s why I love where I live so much because this is where they lived their lives.

I’m grateful over the years to acquire more photos from my Jakiela cousins, through my ancestry contacts, and through unexpected DNA matches! I’ll continue to share more pictures and stories as I create some order to my accumulated files and notebooks.