Casimir's Dream

"I am His"

noreply@blogger.com (John Duke) — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 03:23:00 +0000

Two girls were born barely three months apart in rural Poland. We don't know exactly where, but their mothers were sisters so they probably lived fairly close. The year was 1879. The area is now known as Kruszyny, but at that time it was part of the vast Prussian Empire. Martha was slightly older than Pelagia. The girls probably don't remember the time they spent together in Poland, for they were separately torn out of their motherland by their parents who sought a better life. Martha left with her mother and father for the United States in 1881. Thirteen months later, in May of 1882, Pelagia's family -- father Leon and mother Barbara -- followed, sailing from Bremen. Martha arrived in New York and Pelagia landed in Baltimore. It must have been a strange, disorienting experience for the young families, confronted by a language they did not speak and a culture they did not understand. The two families soon made their way to the border district of Fayette and Westmoreland counties in southwestern Pennsylvania, where they found comfort in the Polish communities congregating there.

Like most of the Polish immigrants, Pelagia Prusakowski and Martha Wolinski were nourished in the Catholic faith. Although they went to public school at an early age, their lives changed in 1890 when they were eleven years old. Their families had been attending church at St. John the Baptist in Scottdale. While Catholic, it had the singular disadvantage of being what Martha later called an "Irish parish," having been established by an earlier generation of immigrants. The pastor was Father Lambing. Certainly the quality of relations varied from parish to parish, but there was often a tension between different Catholic immigrant communities. The Irish dominated most of the ecclesiastical hierarchy in the United States in the late nineteenth century and the newer arrivals sometimes resented the disparity.

St. Joseph's Church in Everson, on the other hand, was a new parish, having been established in 1887 by Fr. Alexander Szmigiel, who had been the assistant pastor to Father Lambing at St. John's. The nascent St. Joseph was a decidedly Polish congregation -- the third in western Pennsylvania -- and its presence encouraged even more Polish immigrants to settle in the area. In 1889 Fr. Szmigiel established a school for the children of his parishioners. One year later he asked Sister Mary of Jesus the Good Shepherd (Franciszka Siedliska) to help set up a school for his Polish flock.

Franciszka, or Frances, was born into a Polish noble family with wealth and privilege, which she threw over for a life of poverty and service over the objections of her father. As Sister Mary, she founded the Congregation of the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth (CSFN) in Rome in 1875. The congregation was Polish, but their mission spread to other countries in Europe. Ten years later, at the behest of the Archbishop of Chicago, she brought her congregation to the United States to help educate the growing number of Polish immigrant children. She and eleven of her chosen sisters established themselves in Chicago, concentrating their mission on education and health care. They gradually spread their ministry to other cities.

The earliest home of the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth was in the parish of St. Josaphat, Chicago, where the Sisters took charge of a parish school and a group of orphans. In the early days of this mission, the Sisters were entrusted with the double duty of teachers and keepers of orphans. Within a few days of the Sisters' arrival in America, classes were opened to children. On September 9, 1885, 200 children enrolled at the school.

During the first year of residence in America, Mother Frances received calls for Sisters from various parishes. That same year, in 1885 she staffed a school attached to St. Adalbert's parish and set up a convent within the boundaries of St. Stanislaus Kostka Church, in Chicago. Here, too, Mother Frances established the first Provincial Home and Novitiate for her Community. St. Joseph's Convent, known as the Holy Family Academy, is the cradle of the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth in America. The convent consisted of one two-story building and a one story frame building where the Sisters commenced a night school of sewing and music for young girls. A year later, a day school was opened and in 1887 a boarding school for girls was commenced. The number of students, however, increased so rapidly and a new building was erected in 1892. In 1925 a three-story building was constructed. (1)

One of the early education ministries for the Sisters of the Holy Family was in the coal mining town of Everson at the Polish church established under Father Szmigiel. The sisters who taught at St. Joseph's were a source of inspiration to Pelagia and Martha. Together the two cousins embraced the religious underpinnings of their education. In 1895, barely 16 years old, they left their families for religious training at St. Joseph's Convent in Chicago, the spiritual and teaching center of the Sisters of the Holy Family. This was not a lightly taken step. Everson and Scottdale were small communities where people knew each other. Chicago, on the other hand, dwarfed the tiny mining town. Already by 1880 it exceeded half a million people, and more than doubled that by 1890. By the turn of the century it was approaching 1.7 million souls, with the largest Polish population outside of Poland itself.

The order had founded the convent ten years earlier in an area of northwest Chicago known as Polish Downtown, the center of expatriate Polish life in America. The convent had already outgrown its quarters at St. Stanislaus Kostka Church by the time Pelagia and Martha entered. A new building was constructed close by, which is probably where the cousins established their residence on October 15, 1895. Pelagia took the name Felicia and Martha, Alexandra. They lived and prayed two full years together with the intent to take holy orders. But in February, 1897, a letter arrived from Pennsylvania, informing the girls that Martha's father, Martin Obertowski, was very ill. Martha returned home on February 14; she was with her father when he passed away that summer. Martha stayed to help support her family, never returning to the convent: Alexandra died.

Pelagia, however, remained. Eventually she would receive the silver ring at her final vows affirming her life's work, bearing in Latin words from the Song of Solomon: "My Beloved is Mine, and I am His." The 1900 census gives us a small look into her life at the convent in Chicago (line 15, her last name spelled Prusakowska). She was one in a community of fifty recorded. The house was situated on West Division Street between Cleaver and Holt (now Greenview) Avenues, with boarding students living next door. Pelagia was 20 at the time of the census, the average age in the community, which ranged from 13 to 39. No doubt the older ones exercised spiritual and domestic care over their sisters. The first entry is for Thecla Lubowidzka, at 39 the second oldest at the residence. This is likely Lauretta Lubowidzka, one of three blood sisters who joined Franciszka Siedliska early on in 1877 in Rome, helping to found CSFN. Mother Lubowidzka was given major responsibility for the work of the order in the United States.

Mother Maria Lauretta Lubowidzka was entrusted by order foundress Mother Mary Frances Siedliska with the mission to start a hospital. Born in Poland in 1862, she came to this country in 1885 and became the first Mother Provincial of the Holy Family of Nazareth Sisters of the United States. She served in Chicago for 17 years. Her special concern was Polish schools, but she also opened a school for African-American children in Chicago in 1933. Mother Lubowidzka was called "the Saint of Division Street" as she walked through the streets of the neighborhood, able to speak to neighborhood residents in five languages. (2)

Virtually the entire community of women on West Division Street had roots in Poland. Among them, eight were born in the U.S. and one in England, but they all had native born Polish parents. Those born in Poland had been in the United States an average of 14 years. Since this was the era of Poland's partition, note is made in the census of which sector the family came from. Most were from German Poland (including Pelagia), with the remaining 16 evenly divided among Austria Poland and Russia Poland. The one exception to the Polish character of the house was 15 year old Mary McKeen, who was Irish. It must have been an odd life for young Mary, who probably had many unintelligible conversations float past her.

The sisters at Holy Family had missions in both health care and education, so it is likely that Sister Felicia had training and practical experience in both while in Chicago. The Holy Family of Nazareth Academy (Akademia Najświętszej Rodziny) was established eight years earlier for the education of young Polish girls. Wacław Kruszka gives an outline of what the curriculum was like in the Academy in the early twentieth century.

The course of study in both Polish and English at the Holy Family Academy offers religion, church history, liturgy, reading, stylistics, composition, rhetoric, literature, grammar, arithmetic, algebra, geometry, bookkeeping, national history, universal history, geography, astronomy; from the natural sciences: physiology, zoology, botany, mineralogy, hygiene, physics, chemistry; German, French, regular and artistic calligraphy, basic and advance art, stenography and typing, oil and water color painting, pyrography [burning designs into wood or leather with an iron], piano, organ, violin, mandolin and guitar, and needlework (darning, mending, sewing of underwear, embroidery with color and gold threads as well as various elegant feminine needlework). (3)

Since the two young girls in Everson had been educated in the Holy Family system, it is likely that Peligia and Martha were exposed to much of this course of study. There are paintings from Sister Felicia still in the family and she was said to play the piano as well.

Sister Felicia lived and worked in Chicago for another ten years. In the 1910 census (line 97) we find her living on Ward Street (or Wayne as it is called now). She is now 30 and a teacher at St. Josaphat School, though it is unclear when she started there. Sisters from CSFN took over staffing the school in 1885 from the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word, a religious order from Texas. The school began with several hundred Polish immigrant students and grew to over 1,100 by 1925, though this was after a new addition was built in 1913. Sister Felicia taught at St. Josaphat with eleven other nuns, in addition to one other sister and two other women who did the domestic chores of the house.

According to her CSFN service record, the now mature nun from Poland indicates she was assigned in 1910 to teach in Emsworth, north of Pittsburgh and only fifty miles from Everson. This assignment must have been after the 1910 census in April, probably after the school term ended. It certainly gave her an opportunity to see her family more often. By this time, her parents had moved to nearby East Huntingdon Township, where their two daughters Teckla and Victoria lived with them. Pelagia had left them as young girls; they had in the meantime blossomed into women. Her father would live for another two years and her mother a good ten. Her beloved cousin Martha had been married now for nine years and was living in Georges with her husband Casimir or John, another twenty-five miles to the south. Martha had given birth to three children by this time. Another four would come later.

For the next 48 years until her retirement in 1958, Sister Felicia served as a teacher and as mother superior, sometimes taking on domestic duties in a religious community. We see the arc of her life, working in Pennsylvania, Illinois, New York, Massachusetts, Washington, and New Jersey. She was ill and couldn't work in 1945. Before she retired in 1958 in Philadelphia, she gave music lessons in Brooklyn. It is a life filled with work and service.

There is a small window that looks into the phases of Pelagia Prusakowski's life in the 1920 (line 72) and 1930 (line 77) censuses. At the time of the first census, she is living in Brooklyn, New York, in a house called Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary on Vermont Avenue. The penmanship on the census is faint and hard to read, but she is now called Sister Mary Felicia and her long service has placed her as the head of the house with six other nuns. Now 40 years old, the document claims that she was born in the West Prussian partition of Poland, then immigrated in 1881 and naturalized in 1886. We know from the ship records that the actual year of immigration was one year later, in 1882. Although she is able to speak English, her native tongue is Polish. Interestingly enough, the census tells us that Sister Felicia's own mother was born in Poland but spoke German as her first language. It is impossible to tell if her mother was ethnically German or if her Polish family had been Prussianized through the occupation. The other nuns in the household all come from Polish-speaking families.

Sister Felecia is a teacher, as are four of the others living in Presentation House -- the service record tells us the school is part of the St. John Cantius parish on Blake Avenue, around the corner from the sisters' residence. The youngest sister in the household is 20 and in training to be a teacher. The sixth member of the female family is also a religious; her task is devoted to keeping house for the others.

Between 1920 and 1930, Sister Felecia was transferred to several stations. She left St. Cantius for another superior position in Maspeth in Queens. She then took consecutive teaching positions in Worcester and then Cambridge, Massachusetts, before moving to Ambler, Pennsylvania (north of Philadelphia), where she also taught. By the time of the 1930 census, she was in northeast Philadelphia, teaching at a school called Saint John Cantius (the same name as her 1920 ministry in New York) and living in the Holy Face house with twenty-four of her sisters. The area known as Bridesburg has been populated by Poles for generations, many of them first generation immigrants.

The census uses Sister Felicia's birth name, but spells it with a "z" (Pruzakowski rather than Prusakowski). She is now fifty years old, but still living in a predominately Polish house. In contrast to her previous residences, about half of the sisters are born in the United States, but most of the parents are native Polish. One set of parents are from Czechoslovakia and one father from New Jersey, though the name itself indicates Polish heritage. By 1930, distinctions between the partitions of Poland -- Austrian, Prussian, Russian -- have disappeared. One is simply from Poland. It is no surprise that Sister Felicia lists her native language as Polish, but the year of immigration is now correctly stated as 1882.

The sisters of Holy Face were dedicated to teaching. Saint Cantius was on Almond Street, one block over from Thompson, where the nuns lived. The school as such no longer exists. In 2005 it merged with All Saints School and emerged as Pope John Paul II Regional Catholic School.

1930 was the last year Sister Felicia was in Philadelphia. Before the year was out she had transferred to Our Lady of Czestochowa and began living in the St. Frances of Rome house in Brooklyn. Until her retirement in 1958, Sister Felicia was actively engaged as a teacher or as the caretaker in the house of her religious community. She often stayed only a year in a ministry before transferring to another location. She was hospitalized at the end of World War II for some unnamed condition, cared for by the sisters of her community at Nazareth Hospital in Philadelphia.

We will not be able to look any deeper into Sister Felicia's life until the 1940 census is released next year. She had a long life after her retirement, living with the Infant Jesus house at the same Nazareth Hospital where she convalesced in 1945 until her death on February 23, 1969. Shortly before her death, the daughter of her cousin Martha -- the same cousin who came from her native Poland, who traveled across the ocean to settle with her in a small town in Pennsylvania, who set off with her on a glorious adventure in Chicago to take religious vows -- the daughter of her cousin Martha visited Sister Felicia in the hospital. The floor where the retired religious lived was on one of the upper floors. Her visitor was welcomed by the residents warmly. In fact, the reception was so heartfelt and sincere that the daughter would remark forty years later that she had never been so well received. It felt, she said, like she was "royalty." In surveying the richness of her life, one gets the impression that Sister Felicia was accustomed to serving others as if they were royalty, and in doing so, her own life became crowned in jewels.

(1) Kiguori, M. "Seventy-Five Years of Religious Growth." Polish American Studies Vol. 8, No. 1/2 (Jan. - Jun., 1951), pp. 1-11. Published by: Polish American Historical Association Article. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20147246
(2) Granacki, Victoria. Chicago's Polish Downtown, Charleston, SC: Arcadia, 2004, p.40.
(3) Kruszka, Wacław. A history of the Poles in America to 1908, part I. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, c1993, p.164.

Muster call

noreply@blogger.com (John Duke) — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 02:59:00 +0000

I recently discovered the muster rolls for the USS Independence. These were quarterly roll calls of all the personnel on a ship. The logs give basic information, such as the date of enlistment, the ship served on, and the service number. I used the muster rolls in combination with his discharge certificate and other information to track the naval career of Francis James Duke and the ship he served on.

His ship was initially designed as a light cruiser named the Amsterdam, but when it was launched on August 22, 1942, it had been redesigned to be an aircraft carrier christened the USS Independence, the fourth ship in the US Navy so named and the first carrier built from a cruiser hull. The sponsor at the christening was Mrs. Rawleigh Warner, an aristocratic family with deep ties to the oil industry. I'm not certain what Mrs. Warner was like, but she must have been formidable: ships are supposed to adopt the personality of their civilian sponsors. Technically, sponsors are a permanent member of the crew, though I don't see her name on the muster rolls and it certainly would have set Duke back to encounter her on board. The USS Independence was commissioned on January 14, 1943, the day before Duke was received on board. Captain G. R. Fairlamb, Jr., was the commander.

These are the key events in the history of the USS Independence and Duke's service on her.

Jul 1, 1940	USS Amsterdam ordered built as light cruiser, designated CL-59
May 1, 1941	Construction begins by New York Shipbuilding Corporation	Camden, NJ
Feb 12, 1942	Cruiser order changed to aircraft carrier (CV-22), and order communicated to New York Shipbuilders on March 18
Mar 18, 1942	USS Independence reclassified as a "Small Aircraft Carrier" and redesignated CVL-22
Aug 22, 1942	USS Independence launched	Camden, NJ
Sep 15, 1942	Duke enlists in US Navy	Pittsburgh, PA
Jan 14, 1943	USS Independence commissioned	Philadelphia, PA
Jan 15, 1943	Duke received on board USS Independence as Apprentice Seaman	Philadelphia, PA
Jan 31, 1943	Duke rated Apprentice Seaman	En route to San Francisco via Panama Canal
Feb 1, 1943	Duke promoted to Seaman Second Class	En route to San Francisco
Feb 28, 1943	Shakedown training in Caribbean	En route to San Francisco
Jul 3, 1943	Arrives in port after traveling through Panama Canal	San Francisco, CA
Jul 14, 1943	Leaves port	En route to Pearl Harbor, HI
Aug 1, 1943	Duke promoted to Aviation Machinist's Mate, Third Class	Vicinity of Pearl Harbor, HI
Sep 1, 1943	Attacks Japanese installation, destroying 70 per cent	Marcus Island (Minamitorishima)
Oct 5-6, 1943	Successful attack on Japanese installation	Wake Island
Oct 21, 1943	Returns to port, then departs for Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu	Pearl Harbor, HI
Nov 11, 1943	Six attacking Japanese aircraft shot down during attack on town	Rabaul, Papua New Guinea
Nov 1943	Returns to port, then sails for Republic of Kiribati	Espiritu Santo
Nov 18-20, 1943	Attacks on town of Tarawa in Gilbert Islands	Kiribati
Nov 20, 1943	Torpedo air attack seriously damages starboard quarter of ship, in spite of destroying six enemy planes. 12 sailors killed and 5 missing	Kiribati
Nov 23, 1943	Returns to port for patch repairs	Funafuti, Tuvalo
Jan 2, 1944	Returns to port for permanent repairs, including addition of another catapult	San Francisco, CA
Jul 3, 1944	Returns to port and begins pioneer training for night carrier operations	Pearl Harbor, HI
Aug 24-29, 1944	Continued night training operations	Enewetak Atoll, Marshall Islands
Aug 29, 1944	Departs with large force in operation to secure Philippines by providing night reconnaissance and combat patrols	Republic of Palau
Sep 1944	USS Independence shifts to daytime operations. Major attacks on Luzon	Phillipines
Oct 1944	Returns to port	Ulithi, Caroline Islands
Oct 6, 1944	Leaves port for Okinawa	Ulithi, Caroline Islands
Oct, 1944	Provides day strike groups, night fighters, reconnaissance planes	Okinawa, Formosa, and Phillipines
Oct 24, 1944	Spots major strike force and attacks, and with other ships sinks battleship Musashi and disables cruiser in Battle of Leyte Gulf	Leyte Gulf, Phillipines
Oct 24-26, 1944	Shadows Japanese force, then fleet attacks, sinking all four Japanese carriers	Leyte Gulf, Phillipines
Nov 9, 1944	Returns to port	Ulithi, Caroline Islands
Nov 14, 1944	Leaves port for night attacks and defensive operations	Off Phillipines
Dec 1, 1944	Duke temporarily promoted to Aviation Machinist's Mate, Second Class, to fill vacancy	Phillipines
Dec 30, 1944	Sorties and leaves port	Ulithi, Caroline Islands
Jan 3-9, 1945	Supports landings	Lingayen Gulf, Phillipines
Jan 10-29, 1945	Attacks air bases on Formosa, Indo-China, and China	South China Sea
Jan 30, 1945	Leaves for port	Pearl Harbor, HI
Mar 13, 1945	Returns to port	Ulithi, Caroline Islands
Mar 30-31, 1945	Pre-invasion strikes	Okinawa, Japan
Apr-Jun, 1945	Supports invasion assault with patrol and strike craft, shooting down numerous Japanese planes	Okinawa, Japan
Jun 10, 1945	Sets sail for Leyte Gulf	Okinawa, Japan
Jul-Aug, 1945	Takes part in final carrier assaults on Japan	Off coast of Japan
Aug 6-9, 1945	US drops atomic bombs on Japan	Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Japan
Aug 15, 1945	Japan surrenders	Radio address by Emperor Hirohito
Aug-Sep, 1945	Conducts surveillance flights to locate prisoner of war camps and cover landings of Allied troops	Off coast of Japan
Sep 22, 1945	Sets sail for United States	Tokyo, Japan
Oct 1(?), 1945	Duke temporarily promoted to Aviation Machinist's Mate, First Class	Pacific Ocean
Oct 31, 1945	Arrives in port	San Francisco, CA
Nov 9, 1945	Duke receives discharge orders via radio transmission	San Francisco, CA
Nov 15, 1945	USS Independence begins transporting troops back to US	Pacific Ocean
Feb 13, 1946	Duke discharged	Sampson Naval Training Station, Seneca, NY
Oct 31, 1946	USS Independence returns to port for final time	San Francisco, Ca
July, 1945	USS Independence used for testing atomic weapons	Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands
Aug 28, 1945	USS Independence decommissioned	Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands
Jan 29, 1951	USS Independence destroyed by weapons tests	Off coast of California

The USS Independence was a fighter. It had a crew of 86 officers, 1,235 enlisted men, 41 Marines, and an air group of 114. The ship carried 36 fighter craft and 9 torpedo bombers. Its fighters shot down 101 enemy aircraft and its gunners 12. It sank the cruiser Oyodo and a destroyer escort, as well as 9 merchant vessels. The Independence inflicted damage on the battleships Nagato and Haruna, the cruiser Tone, the carrier Ryuho, and 3 destroyer escorts.

Duke began his naval career aboard the Independence as an apprentice seaman. This was sailoring at its most basic, a combination of boot camp and grunt labor. The Bluejacket's Manual describes the duties of this position: "Know naval drill duties, tie knots. Stand watch." The job paid $50 a month. Of course, room and board were free, but an apprentice seaman was not a position where one wanted to linger.

Duke's first real position was as a seaman second class, which he attained after a few short weeks, probably a pro forma promotion. In addition to four more dollars a month, the duties began to require a higher level of skill: "Know naval drill duties, knots, steering and signaling. Stand watch and gunnery duties." If nothing else, he would leave the Navy knowing how to tie a good knot.

Six months later Duke was again promoted, this time to aviation machinist's mate third class. This was a position with some meat: "Assemble, service and repair airplanes and airplane engines. Splice aircraft wiring. Know principles and theory of flying." The position was gratifying to the former owner of a gas station in Uniontown, and he never lost his love of tinkering with things mechanical. In another few months, he would begin to receive his quarterly clothing allowance of $8.75.

Duke remained as an aviation machinist's mate for the duration of the war, receiving temporary promotions to second then first class as the war dragged on. The promotions were temporary because of the demands of the war. The designation was intended to fill gaps in manpower, with the intent of changing the temporary rates back to their original rate at the end of the war. This never happened, with most personnel leaving the service after hostilities ceased. First class seamen were paid $66 a month, which would be about $813 today, or $9,750 annually, with all the navy dogs you could eat. The ship's band got preferential treatment in the mess.

Like many men of his generation -- the fathers of my friends -- World War II was the defining moment of Duke's life. Shaped by the Depression, their religion, and their communities, men entered the war with obligation and devotion. They could mock the bureaucracy of the military and the ineptitude of the brass, while at the same time throw their lives without hesitation into situations that had no certain outcome. The war years seeped into Duke's soul. The aura of the Navy pervaded our household, even when it was not mentioned. The bright and eager eyes of the boy who entered the war and the eyes of the man who emerged from it in 1946 are deep with sorrow and wisdom.

Happy Father's Day, Dad.

Off by three

noreply@blogger.com (John Duke) — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 14:04:00 +0000

The Klinck brothers, Graham and Leonard, were born in Canada, along with their seven siblings. The family had relocated to Ontario from Albany, where the first recorded Klinck settled in . The line as I have it looks like this:

George Klinck (ca. 1756-1811 or 1812) m. Catherine Graham (ca. 1760-1828)
Leonard Klinck, Sr. (1785-1852) m. Elizabeth Brown (1782-1887)
Leonard Klinck, Jr. (1824-1914, brother to Graham) m. Sarah Wear (1828-1881)
Elgin Klinck (1864-1958) m. Hattie M. Hoyt (1870-1967)
Marion Hoyt Klinck (1894-1995) m. Manila Faye Remore (1899-1987)
Donna Julia Klinck Fisher (1933-2004)

Graham (1830-1911) and his brother Leonard returned to the United States shortly before 1850, both settling close to each other in Illinois. While working on some gaps, I was satisfied when I found the 1910 census for Graham, his wife Sarah, and daughter Ruby (lines 9-11) in Castleton, a small village in the township of Penn north of Peoria. Evidently, the family was not well off enough to own their own house, for they were boarders in the home of Charles and Nettie Collins, who themselves were renting a house. Although he was 80 years old, Graham still listed bricklaying as his profession, working on his own. It must have been a hard life for a bricklayer in his ninth decade, having to live with his family in a stranger's house he did not own. Graham would die the next year; his wife Sarah would follow him seven years later in 1918. Their daughter Ruby was 36 and unmarried during the 1910 census, still living with them. She would not pass away until the depths of the Depression in 1937. No occupation is ever listed for her.

I did not think much of this hard-luck family until I found something very odd -- Graham Klinck and his family appear again in the 1910 census (lines 55-57), this time in the town of Princeville, sixteen miles south of Castleton. Princeville actually makes more sense for them, since this is where Graham and his family were living during the 1870, 1880, and 1900 censuses. The Princeville census does not paint nearly such a harsh financial picture. Graham does not list a profession, but lives off his "own income," as one would expect of an aging man after years of hard physical labor. Moreover, he owns his own house free and clear, with not even a mortgage payment to worry about. Dates may not be his strong suit, or maybe his memory was beginning to play tricks on him. In Castleton, he says he immigrated from Canada in 1847, but in Princeville it is 1850. And wife Sarah is now 69 years old, rather than the 68 she was in Castleton.

Duplicate entries are not supposed to happen during the census. The instructions for the enumerators say, "Enter the name of every person whose usual place of abode on April 15, 1910, was with the family or in the dwelling place for which the enumeration is being made." In others, they were supposed to record where one lived on April 15, regardless of where they were interviewed or living on the date of the interview. The interview in Castleton really did take place on April 15, but the Princeville interview did not occur until a week later, on April 22. Obviously, a mistake was made, probably on the part of the interviewer in not asking questions carefully enough. Is it possible that the family were boarders one week, and homeowners the next? Unlikely. Why were they in Castleton, then? The answer is the Collins, whose house they were in on April 15. The wife Nettie, it turns out, was the middle-aged daughter of Graham and Sarah, born in 1860. She had married Charles Collins in 1880. Apparently, her family was out for a spring visit, and the interviewer mistakenly listed them as boarders. After both her parents died, Ruby moved in with her older sister Nettie, and at least until 1920 stayed with them in Castleton.

After all this digging, I think I need to get in touch with the Census Bureau. Their 1910 report of 92,228,496 individuals in the United States is off by three.

A place in Poland

noreply@blogger.com (John Duke) — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 01:48:00 +0000

Trying to determine the nativity of European ancestors is difficult. Distance from the United States of course makes a difference, as well as the fact that many records are not digitized or may not even exist. Language is a barrier, but so are the name changes, different spellings, and impenetrable penmanship in original documents. On top of that, there are volatile border changes and conquests that not only affect what one called one's native country, but also the language that one used to name things.

A good example is Poland. I have spent a considerable amount of time trying to determine where Martha Obertowski (wife of John Wolinski, originally Casimir Zwolinski) was born. Martha left behind many handwritten notes, which is both a blessing and a curse, since she sometimes contradicts herself, or gives different versions of the truth. Examining her records and those of others, however, enables us to get as close as we can without actual birth or baptismal records in hand.

Martha was born in the area now known as Poland, but at the time it was under Prussian rule. I've used records and writings from Martha, as well as from her cousin Pelagia Prusakowski, to piece together my understanding of her earliest years before coming to the United States.

Martha grew up in a part of the Prussian Empire where place names frequently had both German and Polish versions. Martha said she was born in Gross (or Groß) Kruszin (53°19'2.10" 19°11'11.87"E), which she sometimes spelled Krushin or Kruszyn. In 1820 it was known as Krußn and in 1789 as Kruszin. Under German occupation in 1942 it was Großkrossen. One can also find it as Kruzyn, but on contemporary Polish maps it is called Kruszyny. Gross Kruszin is in what was then the province of West Prussia (Westpreußen) in the Kreiss or county of Strasburg (Polish Brodnica). Today the province is called Kujawsko-Pomorskie.

Records from the convent she entered in Chicago say Pelagia was born in Duzy Kruszyn, though some family documents say it was Gross Brudzaw, now known as Brudzawy ( 53°18'28.78"N 19° 9'7.79"E). Duzy means large or big in Polish, similar to the German gross or groß. When used with a city, it usually means greater. We don't want to think of this in the sense we use now in the United States (such as Greater Los Angeles or Greater Indianapolis), since both Groß Brudzaw and Groß Krushin each had only about 500 people living within its environs in the late nineteenth century. Kruszyny is but 2 kilometers northeast of Brudzawy in a very rural area, so it is possible the names are just a convenient way of identifying the general vicinity and not the villages themselves. Both villages are in the Catholic parish that also goes by the name Groß Kruszin, so it is possible Martha was always referring to the parish as the area from which she came. In the same way, records for Pelagia's ancestors speak of living in Brodnica (formerly Strasburg), but his may be the district (Kreis) and not the town, which lies to 15 kilometers to the southeast of Kruszyny and Brudsawy. In 1905, all of the Kreis Strasburg/Brodnica had a population of less than 60,000, about half of which lived in the town of the same name.

Strasburg/Brodnica, like much of West Prussia at the time, had a mixed population, with almost two-thirds ethnic Polish and most of the rest German. The girls' mothers' maiden name was the German Faross or Faroß; I found her one time writing it Farros. Martha was fluent in German, including having a good reading ability. Both Martha and Pelagia would sometimes say they were from Germany or Prussia, and sometimes from Poland. They would tend to claim their Polish ancestry after the dissolution of the Prussian Empire following World War I. Martha, at least, spoke and read German as well as Polish. The girls' fathers had names that are more difficult. Pelagia was Prusakowski (Polish), but sometimes she used the more Germanic form Prusakowska. The records for Martha betray a similar fluidity -- most of the time it was Obertowski, but it would suddenly become Obertowska, and sometimes even Obertons. It is most likely that both Martha and Pelagia were part ethnic German by their mothers and part ethnic Polish by their fathers.

Martha considered Gross Kruszyn to be part of Germany, in spite of ancient historical borders. "My father came to Germany from Poland ... Came to Gross Kruszyn Germany," where he probably met his German wife Rosalie Faross. Solving one mystery, opens up another, however. If Anton Obertowski came from Poland, where exactly in Poland did he come from? If you find out, please let me know.

Blood of the Slovak

noreply@blogger.com (John Duke) — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 06:18:00 +0000

I read Dracula for the first time recently. I came across this passage, which made me sit up and take note, like a sharp bite to the neck.

The strangest figures we saw were the Slovaks, who are more barbarian than the rest, with their big cowboy hats, great baggy dirty-white trousers, white linen shirts, and enormous heavy leather belts, nearly a foot wide, all studded over with brass nails. They wore high boots, with their trousers tucked into them, and had long black hair and heavy black moustaches. They are very picturesque, but do not look prepossessing. On the stage they would be set down at once as some old Oriental band of brigands. They are, however, I am told, very harmless and rather wanting in natural self-assertion.

I was immediately given to thinking about several images of the Stephen Michael Duch and his wife Susanna. They are not an exact match to Stoker's description, but the images resonate. The Duchs arrived in America from Slovakia barely a few years before Bram Stoker's novel was first published.

As even the most casual observer knows, Count Dracula had his castle in Transylvania, a region of Romania. To the northwest, through Hungary, lies Slovakia and, to the west of that, Czechoslovakia. The first narrator in Dracula, Jonathan Harker, is at first taken in by the charm of the Slovaks and other ethnic central Europeans he sees on his journey to the Count to take care of some legal business.

Here and there we passed Cszeks and Slovaks, all in picturesque attire, but I noticed that goitre [an enlarged thyroid gland on the neck caused by hormonal imbalance or iodine deficiency in the diet] was painfully prevalent ... Now and again we passed a leiter-wagon—the ordinary peasant's cart —with its long, snake-like vertebra, calculated to suit the inequalities of the road. On this were sure to be seated quite a group of home-coming peasants, the Cszeks with their white, and the Slovaks with their coloured, sheepskins, the latter carrying lance-fashion their long staves, with axe at end.

The picturesque gradually darkens and the "barbarian" Slovak emerges. Harker is surrounded by the babble of languages and consults his "polyglot dictionary." He hears the word "vrolok," which he says is Slovak for "something that is either were-wolf or vampire." Contemporary dictionaries tell us vrolok is werewolf; upír would be more appropriately applied to vampires as we think of them today.

The Slovaks show up again after Harter realizes he is a prisoner of Dracula. It is now obvious the Slovaks are in the employ of the vampire. More than that, they are cruelly callous to the plight of the captive as he looks down at the courtyard from a castle window.

With joy I hurried to the window, and saw drive into the yard two great leiter-wagons, each drawn by eight sturdy horses, and the head of each pair a Slovak, with his wide hat, great nail-studded belt, dirty sheepskin, and high boots ... They looked up at me stupidly and pointed, but just then the 'hetman' [Polish for 'head man' or 'captain'] of the Szgany [gypsies] came out, and seeing them pointing to my window said something, at which they laughed. Henceforth no effort of mine, no piteous cry or agonised entreaty, would make them even look at me. They resolutely turned away. The leiter-wagons contained great, square boxes, with handles of thick rope; there were evidently empty by the ease with which the Slovaks handled them, and by their resonance as they were roughly moved. When they were all unloaded and packed in a great heap in one corner of the yard, the Slovaks were given some money by the Szgany, and spitting on it for luck, lazily went each to his horse's head. Shortly afterwards, I hear the cracking of their whips die away in the distance.

The Slovaks assist Dracula make his assault on England, transporting him and his boxes of Transylvanian earth across the continent to the channel seaport. The Slovaks become the Count's laborers and feared henchmen, capable of heinous crimes. A man is found whose "throat had been torn open as if by some wild animal. Those we had been speaking with ran off to see the horror, the women crying out 'This is the work of a Slovak!'"

It is the Slovaks whom Dracula engages to help his escape as he flees England back to his castle. They conceal him and transport his sleeping body up the river, then hand him over to the gypsies for the final push home. The Slovaks are loyal to their master and can put up dreadful resistance -- "the Slovak is strong and rough, and he carries rude arms." But they can also be craven cowards, for Dracula is afraid to emerge from his casket "lest his Slovak carriers should in fear leave him to perish."

Beyond an imaginative work of fiction, Dracula can be read as a commentary of the cultural milieu the Slovaks and others entered when they left their homeland. It is questionable how much first-hand information Stoker had about his subjects. He never actually traveled to the areas he wrote about, relying instead upon travel books, histories, and descriptions by other writers. That Slovaks play such a prominent role in the narrative is itself surprising, since at the time Slovaks made up only a little more than half a per cent of the population in Transylvania, and only about 250 in the region in which the majority of the action takes place. When inaccuracies slip into the text, they can often be traced to the works Stoker consulted.

Stoker was less concerned with creating an accurate snapshot of Transylvania, however, than of painting an exotic and dangerous atmosphere for the malevolent Count. If he wasn't quite spot on about the population of Transylvania, he did choose the right locale to depict where vampires walked. Although vampire stories can be found in many cultures, it is in Central and Eastern Europe -- Romania, Slovakia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Russia, Hungary -- where the tradition found the most fertile ground. Stories of vampires persisted through the twentieth century there and can still be found.

Even if his sole purpose was to generate a foreboding atmosphere, it is still interesting to speculate why Stoker would have singled out the Slovaks (along with the gypsies) for such a prominent role in the tale. The answer may rest in his own history. Stoker grew up in Dublin, where he went to the university and later entered the civil service. Early on, he expressed interest in fantastic stories. In 1878 he left Dublin for London, where he managed the Lyceum Theatre. It was here that Stoker completed Dracula. He died in 1912.

What I find most interesting is that Stoker was a witness to what was to become the largest movement of people in history. Between 1838 and 1914, 30 million Europeans immigrated to the United States. Census figures for the foreign born population in the U.S. tell the story:

1850 ........... 2,244,602

1860 ........... 4,138,697

1870 ........... 5,567,229

1880 ........... 6,679,943

1890 ........... 9,249,547

1900 ........... 10,341,276

Compare the dates for when family members from Central Europe migrated to the New World -- right in the middle of this wave of immigrants.

1881 ........... Obertowski

1884 ........... Smetanovsky

1889 ........... Duch

1893 ........... Zwolinski

The port at Hull on the southeastern coast of England was a major entry point for Europeans migrating to America. They would travel across England and depart from the western ports, often stopping briefly in Ireland to pick up more passengers. By the time Stoker was working on Dracula, there was an attempt to isolate the emigrants from the native population in their journey across England. Still, the influx of such a mass influx of people could not help but bring with it wide publicity and most assuredly social problems, some real and some imagined. Here was an "invasion" of the country by people who did not speak the same language, who dressed and spoke differently, who had a different religion, ate different foods, and even smelled differently.

With no real contact between the two cultures, it is easy to create unfounded myths, fantastic stories, and dark secrets. Stoker preys upon the "outsider" status of the distant Europeans, feeding the prejudices that could lead one to believe that here were a people that was motivated by money and greed, that lacked a moral compass, that were capable of the most despicable crimes against humanity, that were mercenaries in a satanic army assaulting England -- that were "more barbarian than the rest." "For Stoker," says Stephen Arata, "the vampire 'race' is simply the most virulent and threatening of the numerous warrior races - Berserker, Hun, Turk, Saxon, Slovak, Magyar, Szekely - inhabiting" Transylvania. (p. 628)

The cult of the foreigner preying upon a population is not far from the way many view outsiders today. Then it was the Berserker, Hun, Turk, Saxon, Slovak, and Magyar. Today it is the Mexican immigrant and the religious Muslim. Today, as then, it is easier to demonize than to understand.

References
   Arata, Stephen. D. (1990). The occidental tourist: "dracula" and the anxiety of reverse colonization. Victorian Studies, 33(4), pp. 621-645.
   Evans, Nicholas J. Indirect passage from Europe: Transmigration via the UK, 1836-1914. Journal for Maritime Research, (June 2001), retrieved from http://www.jmr.nmm.ac.uk/server/show/conJmrArticle.28/setPaginate/No, March 12, 2011.
   Gibson, Campbell J., and Emily Lennon. Historical Census Statistics on the Foreign-born Population of the United States: 1850-1990. Population Division, U.S. Bureau of the Census. February 1999, retrieved from http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0029/tab02.html, March 12, 2011.
   Light, Duncan. The People of Bram Stoker's Transylvania. Journal of Dracula Studies 7(2005): 38-44, retrieved from http://blooferland.com/drc/images/07Light.rtf, March 11, 2011.
   Stoker, Bram, and Leslie S. Klinger. The New Annotated Dracula. New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 2008.

A digression
I have been charged with discovering Darien's Icelandic roots. At one point, Count Dracula tells Harker:

We Szekelys [the Count's family name] have a right to be proud, for in our veins flows the blood of many brave races who fought as the lion fights, for lordship. Here, in the whirlpool of European races, the Ugric tribe bore down from Iceland the fighting spirit which Thor and Wodin gave them, which their Berserkers displayed to such fell intent on the seaboards of Europe, ay, and of Asia and Africa too, till the peoples thought that the were-wolves themselves had come. Here, too, when they came, they found the Huns, whose warlike fury had swept the earth like a living flame, till the dying peoples held that in their veins ran the blood of those old witches, who, expelled from Scythia had mated with the devils in the desert. Fools, fools! What devil or what witch was ever so great as Attila, whose blood is in these veins?

Some things should not be delved into too deeply.

My father's name was also Anthony

noreply@blogger.com (John Duke) — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 05:08:00 +0000

"My father's name was also Anthony."

Thus writes Martha Obertowski Wolinski in her Polish prayer book The Little Treasury of Saint Anthony, given to her in 1962 by her half-sisters Lillie and Lucy.

From the time her husband died in 1957 until her own death in 1971, Martha attempted to sketch out the important details of her life for her children and grandchildren -- names, dates, places. As she ages, she almost becomes obsessive in repeating over and over how her life was shaped. There is a high degree of repetition in her notes, and sometimes spellings change or dates are off a bit, but there is also a convincing consistency in what she is telling us. It shines a poignant light on a woman who sees intense value in what she has lived.

Martha often writes about her journey to America. This first note below is from a letter to her daughter Joan, written in 1960. The second is on the title page of the prayer book. The next two are from her notebooks. The last note was written on her father Anton's naturalization papers.

I was born in Gross Krushin. My father came from Poland to Germany. I was 2 1/2 yrs old when we came to America in 1881. [After?] arrived at Connellsvile or Broadford, first place we lived at Jimtown which does not exist now then at Morgans.

My father's name also was Anthony
Had a uncle Priest Robaczewski in Germany
his mother's brother. That was the way my father got to Germany. Uncle died.
Gross (town) Kruszen
My mother's name was Rose Faross

My father came to Germany from Poland
Anthony Obertowski 21 yrs old
his Uncle Rev. Robaczewski
His mothers brother she died had a step-mother. Came to Gross Kruszyn Germany. Mothers name Rose Faross
sister Aunt Barbara (Prusakowski) [Faross]
I was 2 1/2 yrs old born 1879
Came to America 1882 yr. Left Port Hamburg 3 weeks on ship landed New York came to Connellsvile Pa.

1882 Kruszin
From Gross Krusin Germany came to America 1882 from port Hamburg
3 weeks on ship landed N.Y. Lived at Jimtown moved to Morgans Lillie born and Lucy

Came to America Apr. 25th 1882
arrived at Broadford Fayette Co. Penna.
I was 2 1/2 yrs. old.
Martha born at Gross Kruszhin 1879 - Sept 28th

There is a lot buried in here, as well as some conflicting statements. To help make sense of it, it is fortunate that we have some of the ship records from the trip across the Atlantic.

Martin Smetanovsky traveled as a "direct passenger" when he immigrated from Slovakia in 1884. Other than the brief stop in Le Havre, Martin sailed on a single ship to lessen his travel time. In contrast, Martha and her family traveled by indirect passage, in which more than one ship was required to make the journey across the Atlantic. Indirect passage was the more economical, hence more than a third of the emigrants between 1870 and 1892 were willing to put up with the longer travel time. Out of Hamburg, emigrants would sail to England, France, Belgium, or the Netherlands and transfer to another ship. Sometimes they would have to travel to another port, often by rail. The transport companies would typically book all the legs of the trip as a single package, so the traveler would only need pay a single fee up front. The development of direct passage reflects how the shipping companies adjusted their routes in response to the massive wave of immigrants to America.

The Obertowskis sailed from Hamburg to England, then from Liverpool to the United States via Ireland aboard the ship Abyssinia. The passenger log in New York refers to the family by the name of Obertons, and the date of arrival is April 21, 1881 (and not April 25 or 1882). The log documents that the steamer left from the ports of Liverpool in England and Queenstown in Ireland. The family of three is listed as coming from Germany, since they are indirect passengers. One can find Irish names as well as German and Central European names in the list. They were booked in steerage, or the lowest class of travel, further emphasizing the state of their finances. The list is difficult to read, but you will see the family beginning on lines 26-28.

Anton Obertons	34	[M]
Rosalie	30	F
Martha	4 [months]	Child

We can complete the loop by looking where they started, in Hamburg. The passenger records for April 5 show them boarding the steamer called Bravo flying under the flag of England (the ninth family named down in the list, lines 28-30) destined for the port of Hull. The name of the family is now Obertowsky, and the document says the transport is to "Amerika via Liverpool." There is a wealth of information in the record:

1. Zuname	Last Name	Obertowsky
2. Vorname	First Name	1. Anton 2. Rosalie 3. Martha
3. Geschlect männlich	Sex	1. [Male]
3. Geschlect weiblich	Sex	2. [Female] 3. [Female]
4. Alter	Age	1. 34 2. 30 3. 1
5. Bisheriger Wohnort	Previous residence	Groß Krischin
6. Im Staate oder in der Provinz	In the state or province	Posen
7. Bisheriger Stand oder Beruf	Present status or occupation	Landmann [Farmer]
8. Ziel der Auswanderung	Destination	New York
10. Erwachsene und Kinder über 10 Jahre	Adults and children over 10 years	1. 1 2. 1
10. Kinder unter 10 Jahre	Children under 10 years	3. 1

Kingston upon Hull was a major receiving port for emigrants from Hamburg. The port is on the River Hull, about 25 miles inland from the North Sea. After the Bravo ferried the Obertowskis from Hamburg, they would probably have debarked to the Emigrant Waiting Room at Hull's Paragon Railway Station, which also had a separate platform dedicated to travelers from Europe. There were also dedicated emigrant private boarding houses in Hull, but more and more the strategy developed to move emigrants quickly to their destination while isolating them from the native population -- both to prevent the spread of disease and to protect the emigrants from being preyed upon. Normally, the passengers would remain on board the ship until shortly before the train, operated by the North Eastern Railway Company, was due to leave -- usually not more than 24 hours. The waiting room was built in 1871 for the express purpose of accommodating the emigrants, but by the time the Obertowskis arrived in 1881, it was already being doubled in size.

The Liverpool port is about 150 miles by rail from Hull. The train would leave about 11 AM and take three or four hours. Upwards of 17 cars at a time would be pulled by the steam engine, going through Leeds, Huddersfield, and Stalybridge east of Manchester before proceeding on to Liverpool. There was a limited amount of luggage that people could take with them with the several transfers they had to endure. This luggage would be stored in the rear cars. By the time they arrived in Liverpool, they would often have to wait until the next morning to board their ship -- for the Obertowskis, the Abyssinia.

From Liverpool, the Abyssinia sailed to Queenstown to pick up more passengers. The name was given to the port when Queen Victoria visited in 1849, but was changed to the more Gaelic-like Cobh in 1922. The town is near Cork on the southern coast of Ireland, the last stop before leaving for America.

The immigrant center on Ellis Island did not open until 1892. The Obertowskis first set foot in America at Castle Garden (also called Castle Clinton), the immigration center that was situated on the southern tip of Manhattan. It was built as a fort to protect against the British during the War of 1812. It was later given to the city, where it served as a cultural center and theater. It then became the first official immigrant receiving center in the U.S., where upwards of 8 million people arrived between 1855 and 1890.

Bringing It Home

Piecing all of this together is revealing. Martha says her father Anton "came to Germany from Poland" when he was 21. This is a bit ambiguous, since Poland was divided among three empires, but most likely this means he traveled from a region controlled by Austria-Hungary or Russia to one under German-Prussia rule. This would be Posen (the German form of the Polish Poznań, a province west of Warsaw). He settled in Groß Krischin as a farmer (the German form of what I now believe to be Duzy Kruszyn, which I'll explore in a later post) with the aid of his uncle, the Reverend Robaczewski. At some point Father Robaczewski died, but it is important to note that this is the brother of Anton's mother, meaning that we can assume this is her last name as well, giving us an important genealogical link. The tree suddenly has more depth.

Anton probably met his wife Rosa (or Rozalie/Rosalie) in Groß Krischin. Their child Martha was born there in 1879. Living in what was then part of Prussian Empire explains why Martha spoke German and sometimes referred to herself as coming from Germany. It also explains how Obertowski became the more Germanic Obertowsky/Obertowska/Obertons. Martha is confused on one point, however. In a number of places she says she was two-and-a-half when the family left their homeland in 1882. It is clear from the records, however, that they came over in 1881, meaning she was only one-and-a-half. The Hamburg list only says she is under ten years of age, while the four months in the New York list is clearly in error, to say nothing of being difficult to read.

When the family decided to emigrate, they went to Hamburg. They left on April 5, 1881, and traveled across the North Sea in the Bravo to Hull. There they caught a train to Liverpool, boarded the Abyssinia, stopped for additional passengers in Queenstown, then sailed for New York, arriving at Castle Garden on April 21. This is a few days shy of the three weeks Martha says they spent on the ship, but still several days longer than it took Martin Smetanovsky to come across. When one factors in the time needed to get to Hamburg, and then from New York to Connellsville, Pennsylvania, it probably was at least three weeks.

For a young girl less than two year old traveling under very trying conditions, it would have seemed an eternity. She did, however, also have a father named Anthony to watch over her.

Steerage out of Europe

noreply@blogger.com (John Duke) — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 20:24:00 +0000

Information is scant for Martin Smetanovsky (1858-ca.1925), whose daughter Kathryn married Stephen Matthew Duke. There is but one federal census I've located, in 1910, although there should be at least two more after his immigration to the United States in 1884. By 1910, Martin was raising his family with his second wife Anna in Mount Pleasant, in Pennsylvania's Westmoreland County.

Part of the problem may be the liquidity of the name. The earliest record I have spells the name Smetanovsky, but I have also encountered Smetanavsky, Smetanorisk, Smithnosky, Smithanonowsky, Smetauoswski, Smetanofsky, Snitnopky, and, most dismaying of all, Smith.

At the time of the 1910 census, Martin and his family were living at "Mine Shaft #2." Mount Pleasant was the hub of a major mining region. To the north of the township was a village with the prosaic name of Standard Shaft. At its height, Standard Shaft Mine #2 and its coke ovens employed 1,000 men and boys, producing 56 tons of coal daily. There were 22 miles of railroad to service the fields, 17 of which were under ground. The field was opened in 1878 by the Pittsburgh company A. A. Hutchinson, which also built the patch village of Standard. The mines were acquired by the Frick company in 1883, developing them into one of the largest coal and coke operations in the area.

Large numbers of immigrants worked the mines, as can be seen from the census. Martin followed this tradition. By 1910 he and wife Anna had been married 14 years. There are seven children recorded by the census (all born in Pennsylvania), but there is a later mention of another son George, though that is perhaps a second name for one of the children on the 1910 census.

In addition to the children Martin had with Anna, there is one child enumerated in the 1910 census from his previous union with Sophia. This is Frank, or Francis Martin, who was 24 at the time. His younger sister Kathryn was by this time working in Uniontown as a household servant. Frank's niece Connie remembers Frank as working in a grocery store in Uniontown (and wondering why he would serve his cat ice cream, but not her). Connie also remembers him as missing part of an arm. Draft registration cards for Frank also note the damaged limb. It turns out that, like many immigrant children, he entered the coal mines early, and by 17 he was working as a mule cart driver. On October 8, 1902, a rail car on one of the 22 miles of track at Mine Shaft #2 crushed his hand, necessitating amputation. It is probably for this reason that we find him working as a watchman for the coke ovens in 1910, rather than under the ground with the other men.

Although neither the elder Martin or his wife speak English in 1910, they do own their house free and clear, and they are both literate. But where did Martin come from?

The 1910 census lists Martin's year of immigration as 1885, although ship records tell us this is off by one year. The census says his country of origin is Austria-Slovakia, and his native language as Slovak. This gets us close, but we can go deeper by looking at other records.

The first source we will look at is the list of passengers entering New York in 1884. Here we find a record for Martin Smetanovsky (the eighteenth name down from the top), arriving in the port on January 29, 1884, on the steamer Gellert. The ship sailed out of the port of Hamburg, Germany. It stopped in Le Havre, France, before continuing on to the United States.

Hamburg was a major port for immigrants coming to America because of its strategic location on the Elbe River. From 1850 to 1934, five million people passed through its port, four million of them destined for the United States. Two-thirds of these came from outside of Germany. 1.2 million came from Austria-Hungary, Russia, Romania, and other countries of southeastern Europe. Le Havre, to the south through the English Channel, also was a major departure point, and ships from Hamburg would stop there to take on additional passengers.

Like many others on the Gellert, Martin's occupation is listed simply as "workman." His country of origin is said to be Hungary, but that doesn't help us much, since much of Central and Eastern Europe was under the dominance of the Austria-Hungary Empire until its dissolution at the end of World War I. To get closer to the facts, we need to look on the other side of the Atlantic.

A list of the Gellert's passengers was also made when it left Hamburg on January 16 -- which tells us he was on board for almost two weeks. Martin, like many immigrants, was travelling by steerage, the lowest class of passenger. In steerage, passengers were treated as little more than cargo, packed together in large rooms with inadequate food, ventilation, and toilet facilities. Single males like Martin were isolated from the single women and from families, both groups having their own quarters (though not any better in quality from the men). Two weeks under such conditions would have been trying. It is no wonder that the port authorities in New York recorded the dead who arrived in addition to the living.

The Hamburg passenger list is in German. Martin is again number 18 on the left side of this page. Here is what we find.

1. Zuname	Last Name	Smetanovsky
2. Vorname	First Name	Martin
3. Geschlect männlich	Sex	[Male]
4. Alter	Age	26
5. Bisheriger Wohnort	Previous residence	Saros
6. Im Staate oder in der Provinz	In the state or province	Ungarn
7. Bisheriger Stand oder Beruf	Present status or occupation	Arb (?) [worker]
10. Erwachsene und Kinder über 10 Jahre	Adults and children over 10 years	1

Most of this information we already have from the New York list. What is most interesting is Martin's previous residence, Saros. Ungarn means Hungary, but as we have noted, the Austria-Hungarian Empire covered a lot of ground. The clue here is the place name within Ungarn. Šariš or Sáros was the name of a political division or county (called a comitatus) formed in the 13th century in the old northeast portion of the Austria-Hungarian Empire known as Upper Hungary, or Slovakia. Its northern border is shared with Poland. Today, it is mostly contained within the Prešov Region of the Slovak Republic (formed from the division of Czechoslovakia in 1993), but places with the name Šariš can still be found on maps, such as the famous Šariš Castle ruins above the village of Velky Šariš. After the Empire collapsed in 1918, the administrative comitatus disappeared.

I still don't know precisely where Martin came from, but I'm a lot closer.

Kindred in unity

noreply@blogger.com (John Duke) — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 14:15:00 +0000

How very good and pleasant it is
when kindred live together in unity!
Psalm 133

Not everyone can claim an ancestor who is honored with a feast day by a major denomination. Those descended from Roger Williams, however, have reason to be proud.

February 5 is the day in 1631 when Williams first landed in Boston in the New World, escaping the stifling orthodoxy of England. He was variously a Puritan, a Baptist (and founder of the church), and a Seeker. He helped to establish concepts of religious freedom and the separation of church and state that are now embedded within our culture. The city he founded, Providence in Rhode Island, became a sanctuary for those suffering religious persecution.

The Episcopal Church in the United States designated February 5 as the feast day for Roger Williams, which he shares with Anne Hutchinson, another early advocate of religious freedom who was persecuted for her beliefs. There is some irony in this in that as a Puritan in England he was frequently at odds with the established church.

The prayer adopted at the General Convention commemorating Williams and Hutchinson in 2009 sings:

O God our light and salvation, we thank you for Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson, whose visions of the liberty of the soul illumined by the light of Christ made them brave prophets of religious tolerance in the American colonies; and we pray that we also may follow paths of holiness and good conscience, guided by the radiance of Jesus Christ; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

How to climb a tree

noreply@blogger.com (John Duke) — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 01:29:00 +0000

Art, John, Duke (circa 1952)

When I was young, we would sometimes pile into the car and drive from Norwalk to Alhambra to visit Uncle Frank and Aunt Jewel. Sometimes Aunt Sophie and Uncle Art would be there. We called them our aunts and uncles, even though I had no idea how we were related. I learned later that the aunts were the half sisters of my father's mother, Kathryn Smetanovsky. Technically they would have been my half grand aunts. Kathryn's father, Martin, had married Anna after his first wife, Kathryn's mother Sophie Wilczek, died during the great Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918, along with tens of millions of others.

As we would drive up to Alhambra, we would pass a giant Babylonian palace visible from the I-5 freeway that ran through the City of Commerce. I knew we were halfway there when we passed Babylonia, with its monumental figures and fantastic mythological creatures marching out from the massive walls ringed with merlons and crenels in staggered battlements. It was a giant art deco factory of poured concrete and rebar, originally built in 1929 as the Samson Tire and Rubber Company. Its construction was one of those Californian extravaganzas, with 12,000 people attending its groundbreaking. It was built on the cusp of the Great Depression. Barely a year later it was sold to US Tire and Rubber, which eventually became Uniroyal. During World War II 10,000 people worked at the plant. I didn't know it had been constructed during my parents' lifetimes. I marveled that such an ancient structure built of giant sand-colored stone blocks had survived the centuries of time, and that an entire modern city had grown up around it in the desert. With not much grasp of history or chronology, I imagined it being attacked by Knights Templar, or Indians maybe, while the Babylonians (Egyptians, as I thought of them then) defended themselves by pouring over the walls burning melted rubber tires from steaming vats. Today the palace is an outlet center, a mammoth Assyrian shopping mall that people hardly notice as they storm through the gates to buy discount jeans and dinnerware.

For most children, adult talk is excruciatingly boring. Uncle Frank made it bearable by having a ready supply of candy, and sometimes silver coins to give us. When we grew tired of the adult conversation, we would go outside and speculate how we could climb up the towering pine growing in the back of their apartment to retrieve the million dollars that Uncle Frank said he had placed at the top with a helicopter.

These thoughts came to mind as I have been looking through a lot of Uniontown newspapers lately, mostly searching for information about Stephen Matthew Duke. He was active in the Slovak community, so there is much to be discovered. But I am also finding interesting things about others along the way. One of them is Kathryn Smetanovsky Duke (1893-1955), Stephen's wife and half sister to Jewel and Sophie. She is recorded as a frequent contributor to functions organized by the Slovak American Welfare Association of Uniontown and by St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church. Often she would help with the entertainment or food. One of the activities that surprised me most was her involvement in the Slovak Democratic Women's Club. It was founded in 1936 and went by several names.

Kathryn's obituaries are extremely helpful in filling out the family, particularly in learning about her half siblings. She had already passed away by the time I remember our trips to Alhambra. Prior to finding the newspaper clippings, I only knew of four of the step-siblings, with inaccurate information about married names and residences. I now have the eight children of Martin and Anna:

Martin Edward Smetanovsky
Julie (Jewel) Smetanovsky Hlozek
Sophie M. Smetanovsky Phillips
Elizabeth Smetanovsky Kastner
Verne Smetanovsky Hudoc
Stephen Smetanovsky
Joseph Smetanovsky
George Smetanovsky

I keep climbing this tree. I don't think I will ever find a pot of gold at the top. But the higher I climb, the more I can see these visions of ancestors, marching forth tall and strong from ancient palaces, like Babylonian kings and queens.

Lining up for posterity

noreply@blogger.com (John Duke) — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 03:43:00 +0000

I have had the good fortune to connect with several relatives in the past several months. I mailed them information about our common family history, then was rewarded last week with a nice package from Delores, my first cousin once removed. She gave me extensive information on parts of the Duke family where I had gaps, as well as an intriguing tombstone from Uniontown written in Slovak that I hope to investigate later.

The most exciting thing she gave me was a copy of a photograph taken about 1902 (judging by the look of Katherine, born 1900). It shows Stephen Michael Duch in the background leaning casually against a wall in the shadow of a porch. Lined up in front of the house are seven of his nine children. Stephen Matthew towers above the rest.

Reading from left to right:

Michael (1898-1975)
Henry (1896-1977)
Anna (1895-1983)
Stephen Matthew (1886-1968)
Katherine (sitting on lap) (1900-1958)
Mary (1888-1968?)
John (1893-1956)
father Stephen Michael (1862-1937)

Missing from this family portrait are two of the children, Andrew (born and died in 1885) and Paul (born later that year in 1902 and died 1983), and mother Susanna (1864-1930). In the photo, Stephen Matthew and Mary as the oldest of the children have a commanding presence, conveying a sense of responsibility over the others.

Dolores also sent me a photograph of Susanna. It looks to be cut out from a shot I have of Susanna with her husband, but the coloration is different and it is blown up. She has the look of a hardened working woman of the country, but her eyes and mouth are gentle.

Thank you, Dolores. Your package was a treat.

Some found, one lost

noreply@blogger.com (John Duke) — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 03:44:00 +0000

I recently had e-mail from a second cousin who discovered this blog. His father was Henry Duke, and his grandfather was Henry William Duke (1896-1977), brother to my own grandfather Stephen Matthew. Our common great-grandparents were Stephen Michael Duch and his wife Suzana Baniak, the first of this line to come to America. He shared some information with me, and gave me the name and phone number of his aunt, Shirley, who would be happy to talk to me.

I called Shirley two nights ago. She is very sharp and we had a pleasant conversation. The daughter of Henry William, she now lives in a retirement community in Uniontown. I was able to give her some information, but will send her more by mail, since she doesn't have a computer. She told me she will look through her papers and photographs and send me things she thinks of interest. I will give her a genealogy form to help her fill in the important information she can remember about her ancestors.

We talked some of what life was like growing up in Uniontown, about where various children are and who has passed on. She said her grandmother Suzana was a sweet woman, but that her husband Stephen Michael was less so. We talked of her father and uncles -- Stephen, John, Henry, Michael, Paul, Andrew -- and how her contemporaries were dwindling, one by one. Among those still living, she mentioned John, the son of my own namesake, John Stephen. Shirley called the son Johnny. He was born the year the stock market crashed, in 1929. I am not certain exactly where in Pennsylvania this was, but one year later at least his family was in Brier Hill Village in Redstone. It is likely that was where he was born. John Sr. was working as a coal miner and paying fifteen dollars a month in rent.

John Jr. (or John M.) did not wander far. He eventually moved to Mather in Greene County, west of Uniontown, where he lived most of his life, eventually marrying Ruth Broadwater. They had a son and a daughter. Gradually six grandchildren entered their lives, followed by five great-grandchildren.

The day after I spoke to Shirley, she called me and left a message on my phone. The same day I had been speaking to her, her cousin Johnny had died at the age of 81. A funeral mass was said for him today at St. Marcellus in Jefferson, Pennsylvania.

Requiescat in pace, Johnny.

Lost at C

noreply@blogger.com (John Duke) — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 04:39:00 +0000

For some reason, I have had a difficult time finding the 1930 census record for James Weller Fisher. I attributed this to the fact that by 1930 he must have been in China, preparing for his eventual relocation there. His son relates this period in his life:

This was 1929. The depression had hit. My father already was worried about his job at Arrow Aircraft. [Wallace] Harper [who owned a car dealership in Hong Kong] suggested that my father come over to Hong Kong and see if he could make a living selling airplanes in the Orient. Mr. Harper was American, but his mother was Chinese, and he had lived in Hong Kong for a long time so he could speak and understand Chinese. Mr. Harper proposed that they go into business together. With his language skills and my father's mechanical abilities and aviation skills, he said, they could try to sell planes to the Chinese warlords. (Bill Fisher, Living again ... one's forgotten past. Personal History Productions, 2007. p. 19)

Although James Weller did make at least one preliminary trip to China, he was in fact at home during the 1930 census. I discovered the key while looking at Weller Crandell's well-documented genealogy tree. He uses the 1930 census as a source, and when I looked at the original I saw why I had missed it: Fisher was spelled with a "c", Fischer. This is indeed an oddity. I don't find a similar spelling in other records from James Weller. The instructions to the census enumerators are quite extensive and detailed, so the correct spelling of a last name, especially such a common one, would have been strongly emphasized. Unless the enumerator made a major goof, James Weller Fisher must be the source of the spelling. Perhaps he was toying with a different spelling to distinguish his family name from that of his wife Ruth (also Fisher), or perhaps it was just a whim to tweak the nose of a government agent.

James and Ruth are at lines 12 and 13.

There are other interesting aspects to this 1930 census. The street address is given (3496 M Street), so we can see how the corner house looks today through Google Maps. The Fishers were renters, paying a total of fifty dollars per month. A boarder, James Ward, lived with them.

We can also see from this census that James Weller did indeed work for the aviation industry. He could not have been working at Arrow Aircraft and Motor Corporation for long before departing for China, since the company was only formed in 1925 and then emerged with a new name in 1928. James was working there as a manager on the cusp of the Great Depression, so it is no wonder that he was concerned about his position. A fire at one of the plants in 1929 only worsened his prospects at the company as buyers scrambled to cancel orders. The prospect of something new and potentially lucrative in China was a strong draw.

The Fishers spent several years in Hong Kong and China. There are records of them returning to America several times. The first was in 1932, when it appears that James returned alone, sailing into Seattle on the S.S. President Cleveland. The log shows he was still associated with Arrow. James sailed on the same ship in 1935, this time coming into Los Angeles and traveling with Ruth and their young son. The journey across the Pacific took about 24 days. This was only a visit, for the young family would remain expatriates until 1938. Their US residence is listed as being on Cass Street in Omaha, which ironically enough now has a take-out Chinese restaurant on the property.

The Cleveland's log dips into an issue touched on before -- Ruth's age. Various dates can be found, including 1893, 1894, and 1895. The President Cleveland says 1896. At least she was consistent in her inconsistencies.

The President Cleveland was built in 1921 in Norfolk, Virginia, and later pressed into naval service in World War II, at which time she was rechristened the USS Tasker H. Bliss. She sank off the coast of Morocco after being struck by a German torpedo during the invasion of North Africa: another case of being lost at sea.

Inconsequentials: ashes to ashes

noreply@blogger.com (John Duke) — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 03:47:00 +0000

Sometimes it is the little, seemingly inconsequential pieces of information that can lead one to discover the most profound events in a life.

I have been systematically going through old Uniontown newspapers recently, mostly looking for information about Stephen Matthew Duke. He often went by the name of Duch, so I was using that as one of my search terms. All of the Duchs I have run across so far in Fayette and the surrounding counties have been related, so I perked up when I was reading the Daily News Standard for February 18, 1931:

Mrs. Mary Lesko, 58, died of complications early Tuesday morning at her home in Smock.
Mrs. Lesko is survived by her husband, Nicolas and the following children: ... Mrs. Katherine Duch, Brier Hill ...

Not knowing immediately who Mrs. Katherine Duch from Brier Hill might be, I looked at my database of names. I focused on John Stephen Duke, the brother of Stephen Matthew. I could see from census data that his spouse was named Catherine E. I had not had any success in discovering her maiden name, so I was anxious to find out if Katherine Duch was Catherine E.

Looking again at the obituary, I noted that Mary Lesko had died when she was 58. Catherine E. was 33 during the 1930 census, so it seemed a reasonable age spread for Mary to have given birth. I looked more carefully at the census record. I had recorded the Duke family as living in Redstone at the time, but when I looked again at the census data sheet itself I noticed something else. There were several fields for recording geographic place names in the census sheet, one of which contained an unincorporated place name. And there it was: within Redstone, John Stephen and Catherine Duke/Duch lived in Brier Hill Village.

After this it was just a matter of filling in a few details. Now that I had the name Lesko, I had another hook to search. I found that in 1910 the Leskos were living in South Union, so it is not surprising that John and Katherine would eventually meet. Katherine was called Katie then, and the names of her siblings echo the names mentioned in the obituary. Her father, Nicolas, went by the name of Mike.

After Katie married John, they moved to Brier Hill Village, about nine miles northwest of South Union. John's brother Henry lived very close by, as I could now see from the census. Connie remembers her Uncle John (nicknamed Sadie) and family coming to visit:

I remember both my Uncle John and Aunt Kate when they came for visits with my parents while I was in grade school. ... I did not know Aunt Kate's maiden name but yes, that is the John Duke family from Brier Hill in the 1930 census. The two boys were about my age at the time and would come with their parents when they visited us on Elma Ave. My sister, Ruth (age 15), was a friend of Margaret (age 13). In later years, I remember hiding upstairs when they visited because the two boys were so rambunctious. Uncle John was the only one in the family who had a car -- one of the doors was tied on with a rope because it would occasionally fall off.

By the time World War II arrived, the couple had moved to Mather, in the Greene County township of Morgan. Mather is twenty-five miles from Brier Hill Village, to the west. Everyone at that time would have known of Mather. In May 1928, there was an gruesome explosion, which killed 195 of the 279 workers in the mine, making it still the sixth worst mining disaster in U.S. history. Methane gas had built up in the mine, then ignited from a spark when a battery locomotive arced.

John Stephen's own death was no less sudden and abrupt. He died as he worked, in the mine at Mather. A sudden heart attack on March 1, 1956, confirmed by an autopsy, felled him. Many miners died in obscurity; John Stephen a little less so. One of his daughters married Nicholas Kornick, who went on to become a state representative. After his death, Rep. Kornick eulogized John Stephen:

One doesn't have to go far to find unsung heroes.

Rep. Nicholas Kornick tells us that his father-in-law, John (Sadie) Duke, who succumbed to a coronary thrombosis last week in Mather Mine, kept the fact that he had a bad heart from the members of his family. The autopsy showed that he must have suffered serious chest pains for years.

Catherine died some years later, in 1971.The seemingly inconsequential can sometimes hide profound pain, and one death can lead one down a path to others.

Fingering an ancestor

noreply@blogger.com (John Duke) — Mon, 24 May 2010 22:46:00 +0000

It was reported several weeks ago that a statue of Roger Williams that stands tall in Providence's Prospect Terrace Park had the fingers and thumb of its left hand repaired by Jim Lawrence and his daughter Ally. Jim is a stone mason and Ally an artist. The hand had been mutilated by vandals some years previous. The statue was built in the 1930s by Leo Friedlander as a WPA project. It is massive, stiff, more intimidating than engaging. A local wag calls it Disco Roger, though you won't know why unless you look closely at it. The remains of Williams are buried beneath the statue.

Roger Williams played a major role in the intellectual growth of the New World. Born about 1603, he studied at Cambridge and became a preacher. He advanced uncomfortable ideas about religious freedom in the face of extreme religious orthodoxy, oppression, and corruption. His beliefs caused him to leave England in 1631. He initially settled in the Massachusetts Bay Colony where he took up preaching again, only to suffer intellectual constriction at the rigidity of the Puritans. Eventually, Williams was banished from Massachusetts. He fled to the area now known as Rhode Island. He befriended the Narragansett people who lived there, learned their language (later writing a book about Native American languages), and insisted on paying them a fair price for the land he settled. He called settlement the founded in 1636 Providence.

Providence became a refuge for religious exiles, and eventually the capital of Rhode Island. Williams served as one of the early governors of the colony. He continued to preach and write, helping to shape a view of religious tolerance and the separation of church and state that became one of the underpinnings of the United States Constitution, asserting that the individual has an absolute right to freedom of conscience over the authority of the state. His views deeply influenced the intellectuals of the American Revolution, including Thomas Jefferson. He founded the First Baptist Church in America, but subsequently became what is called a Seeker, a forerunner of Quakers that disavowed organized churches. Williams died in 1683 or 1684. He left an abiding legacy to the people of Rhode Island and to the nation that emerged a hundred years later.

There is a wealth of information about Roger Williams, his life, and his thought, much of it freely available on the Web or in local libraries. The Roger Williams Family Association "is constituted for the purpose of honoring and preserving the memory of Roger Williams, Founder of the present State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations and our progenitor; the preparation and preservation of an authentic genealogy of his descendants; the identification of as many descendants as possible; and the promotion of friendship and social intercourse among them." What is of interest here is the lineage Roger Williams (and wife Mary Barnard) established in the United States.

Roger Williams was born circa 1604 at England; he married Mary Barnard 15 Dec 1629 at England; he died 1683 at Providence, RI. They had a daughter Mercy.
Mercy Williams was born 15 Jul 1640 at Providence, RI; she married Resolved Waterman 1659 at Providence, RI; she married Samuel Winsor 2 Jan 1676; she died circa 1705. Mercy and Samuel had a son Samuel.
Samuel Winsor was born 18 Nov 1677; he married Mercy Harding 7 Jan 1703 at Providence, RI; he died 17 Nov 1758 at age 80. They had a son Joseph.
Joseph Winsor was born 4 Oct 1713 at Providence, RI; he married Deborah Mathewson before 1736, then he married Elizabeth Taylor Feb 1786 at Glocester, RI; he died 4 Sep 1802 at Glocester, RI, at age 88. Joseph and Deborah had a son Abraham.
Abraham Winsor was born 7 Aug 1740 Glocester, RI; he married Roby Smith (or Keech); he died 1 Oct or 13 Nov 1813 at Glocester, RI. They had a son Ebed.
Ebed Winsor was born 5 Mar 1768 in Glocester,RI; he married Sally Rounds in 1789 at Providence, RI; he died 18 May 1842 at Franklinville, NY. They had a daughter Elizabeth.
Elizabeth Winsor was born 27 Mar 1793 in Franklinville, NY; she married Sherwood (first name unknown) probably in the early 1820s, then Paine (first name unknown); she died sometime after 1870 probably in Cattaraugus, NY. Elizabeth and Sherwood had a daughter Sully Ann.
Sully Ann Sherwood was born in 1830 in New York, NY; she married Henry W. Hitchcock about 1850 at Franklinville, NY; she died some time after 1880. They had a daughter Leona.
Leona Amiri Hitchcock was born 18 Jul 1862 in Franklinville, NY; she married Charles Walter Remore in 6 or 7 Jan 1880 at Worth, IA; she died 22 Feb 1915 at Northwood, IA. They had a daughter Manila.
Manila Faye Remore was born 5 Feb 1899 at Northwood, IA; she married Robert John Bassler, then Marion Hoyt Klinck 22 Jun 1929 or 1928 at Minden, NE; she died 11 Oct 1987 at Los Angeles, CA. Manila and Hoyt had a daughter Donna.
Donna Julia Klinck was born 15 May 1933 at Inglewood, CA; she married in 7 Jul 1953 at N. Hollywood, CA; she died 6 Apr 2004 in Chesterfield, VA. They have a daughter with three children.

I find genealogy fascinating mostly for what it tells us about common lives and the times they lived, but stumbling across a celebrity gene has its rewards as well. If you are traveling near Prospect Terrace, lift a finger in salute to Disco Roger. Whether you are descended from the early colonists or from the family of recent immigrant, whether you are religious or atheist or just seeking, we all owe him a debt of gratitude.

Watching a tree grow

noreply@blogger.com (John Duke) — Wed, 19 May 2010 04:18:00 +0000

I just added a new link in the right panel for "The Fisher-Duke Tree." If you click this, you will be taken to the complete family tree on RootsWeb, a genealogy site associated with ancestry.com. The tree is a work in progress. Things that I added earlier on in my research don't always have good source references and may have a lot of inconsistencies. As you browse through, you may find mistakes or have additional information you think should be added. I would love to see whatever you have.

One convention you will note in the tree is that I use "Living" as the first name for those still alive. This is common when publishing genealogy charts to help guard the privacy of individuals. If there are things you see that make you uncomfortable, let me know and I will do something about it. Most of my sources are taken from public records that anyone can find if they know how. The cutoff is 1930, the last year for which census data has been published.

You will see also that you can download records from my tree for yourself if you want to use your own software to explore. Most of it is inexpensive, and some of it is free. With the software I use, I have the ability to generate a number of different types of charts and reports, so let me know if there is anything in particular you are interested in.

I hope you enjoy this deeper look into the growth of a tree.

Beginning, blossoming

noreply@blogger.com (John Duke) — Sun, 09 May 2010 05:55:00 +0000

This is how motherhood begins.


Morning Herald (Uniontown, Pennsylvania) August 4, 1947

This is how motherhood blossoms.


Morning Herald (Uniontown, Pennsylvania) August 21, 1951

Happy Mother's Day!

Wild thing

noreply@blogger.com (John Duke) — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 04:46:00 +0000

Morning Herald (Uniontown, Pennsylvania)
May 25, 1942

(They must have been on their way to church.)

By the numbers

noreply@blogger.com (John Duke) — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 05:15:00 +0000

Stefan and Susa Duch immigrated to the United states ten years before the nineteenth century closed, living and working here for forty years. There should be four censuses for the couple, and an additional one for Stefan, or Steve as he came to be known. I have only found three, but they give a wealth of information. I'm still hoping to find the two missing ones, although most of the 1890 census reports were lost to fire. No likely match was found after searching through all of the 1900 census forms in the three enumeration districts for George in Fayette County. It is possible that Steve moved into the area after the 1900 census. In the 1900 census, there were a preponderance of residents in the districts who were born in Pennsylvania, as were their parents. Most of the names are Anglo-Irish, although there are a smattering of Icelandic people (yes, Darien, this is true), too, as well as names from central European.

By comparing the details in the three surviving censuses, we start to learn how the lives of Steve and Susana evolved, but also see why it is often so difficult to nail down an ancestor. Facts are murky and may change through intentional deceit, faulty memory, or transcription error. If we compare the three censuses side-by-side, it is easier to begin piecing things together.

	1910 April 29	1920 January 12	1930 April 10
Name	Steve Duke Susa Duke	Steve Duke Susanna Duke	Steve Duke Susana Duke
Age, Place of birth	49 [ca. 1861], Aust. Slovak 46 [ca. 1864], Aust. Slovak	58 [ca. 1862], C. Slovak 54 [ca. 1866], C. Slovak	68, [ca. 1862], Czechoslovakia 66 [ca. 1864], Czechoslovakia
Marriage	24 years married [1886?]	Married	[ca. 1885] married at age 23 [ca. 1885] married at age 21
Immigration	1889 1891	1889 [age 37?] 1891	1890 1893
Naturalization	Na[turalized] [blank]	Na[turalized] 1900 Na[turalized] 1900	Na[turalized] Na[turalized]
Trade	Laborer (Coal pit) None	Miner, coal None	None None
Military service			No
Language spoken	Slovak Slovak	Slovak (native) and English	Slovak (before immigration) and English
Read and write	Yes No	Yes Yes	Yes Yes
Residence	Georges Township #3, Fayette, PA	Continental No. 2, George No. 3, Fayette, PA	South Union Twp; Fayette, PA ("no street, scattered houses" near Elma Ave)
House	Rent	Rent	Own; $3000 value; radio owned
Others in house/Age	John/17, Anna/15, Henry/14, Mike/12, Katy/10, Paul/8	Mike/21, Katee/18, Paul/16	Paul

Name. By 1910, Duch had already been shed in favor of Duke. In searching for other census documents, I have tried a variety of possible variants: Dutch, Desche, Ducsh, Doosh. Any other ideas? (If you want to try your hand at it, visit ancestry.com and begin searching the census records. You can get a two-week trial subscription, or keep yourself entertained for an entire year for less than the cost of a nice bottle of wine.)

Age, Place of birth. Census workers ask a person's age but not the birth year in these documents. For Steve, the likely birth day is between April 11 and April 29. In the 1930 census (completed or "enumerated" on April 10), he lists his age as 68. In the 1910 census (enumerated on April 29), he cites 49 as his age. Susana's date is more ambiguous, since there is a two year difference between the 1920 census and the other two. I do have another document, an immigrant ship log, that appears to refer to our Susana as being born also in 1864, so for right now the preponderance of evidence suggests that is the best date to use. In all of the three documents, the place of origin varies. However, this is more a reflection of the time and how people referred to their homeland, with a progressively more nationalistic awareness of Czechoslovakia.

Marriage and immigration. The form doesn't explicitly say, but Steve and Susana must have been married in what we now know as either the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Steve was 23 and Susana 21. They married in 1886, several years before Steve immigrated.

Connie, in an e-mail to me, speculated on the different immigration dates for Steve and Susana:

A possible explanation for the Duchs leaving the old country at different times is that it was the usual way it was done among the old people whose story I knew. The reason was there was only enough money for the husband's passage. He would work in the coal mines until he earned enough money to send for his family.

For example, Stan Sikora's father arrived first, leaving his wife and two young daughters with grandparents in Poland. His wife came next and they had five other children born in the U.S. before they were able to bring over the two girls (by then, teen aged) to this country. My friend and neighbor from Uniontown has a similar account of her parent's arrival.

The naturalization record is straight forward, with the couple both becoming legal citizens in 1910.

Language. The language spoken in the Duch home is interesting. It is not until the 1920 census that English is recorded. Even more interesting is that Susana is said not to have known how to read during the first census, but later can -- one more step in the Americanization process. In 1910, Steve claims to have attended school recently. One can only imagine that this was some sort of community schooling organized by the immigrant community intended to help people assimilate into the culture.

Living. The censuses give a clear record of where the couple lived, up to the time they lived in South Uniontown. The house at that time, which was near their son Stephen Matthew's, was worth the princely sum of $3,000. They could even afford a radio by this time. The younger Stephen does not turn up as living with his parents in any of these 1910-1930 census records. In 1910 he was serving in the military in Nebraska, and by 1912 he was married and ready to start a family of his own.

Numbers can be dry, but they can also help us understand the past.

The matriarch

noreply@blogger.com (John Duke) — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 03:50:00 +0000

Sometimes things just fall into your lap.

One of the features of my genealogy software (Family Tree Maker) is to automatically search in proprietary databases and on the Web to look for likely matches to names in my tree. It was through one of these computer-generated hints that I struck paydirt. I had some information for Stephan Michael Duch (1861-1937), and I had several first name variations for his wife -- Susanna, Susa, Susan, Suzana -- but no last name and no death date for her. It so happens that a granddaughter of Anna Duch/Duke is researching her own family, the Bacchis, and had posted her own tree. It was this tree that Family Tree Maker found a match. The granddaughter lists Steve's wife as Suzana Baniak with a death date of June 18, 1930 at Continental #2, one of the mining settlements near Uniontown.

Corresponding with the author of the tree, she told me

My Grandma was Anna Duch Swinchock, her daughter, Marie is my mom. I know my mom had cousins with the name of Donald & John Duke. Some of the information I got from my grandma before she passed away. She is the one who told me her mom's maiden name. She gave me all her brothers & sisters names, birth dates, their spouses and children names. The other piece of info I have on our great-grandparents is where they are buried, which is in St. Mary Cemetery in Uniontown, PA. I have been collecting information off and on for over 20 years.

In some cases she was able to give me more specific dates than I had. In her tree, she has one more child from the union of Stefan and Suzana than I was able to locate -- Andrew, who died as an infant in 1885.

This is great information to have. It fills in some gaps for an important ancestor and will be vital if I can ever leap the Atlantic and begin to gather more information from Central Europe. For right now, I have very little information about Suzana Baniak -- mostly what I can glean from a few census surveys and the memories of family members. Even what I have varies in its details. I will explicate more of it later, but for the time being, if anyone has anything to contribute about the matriarch of the Dukes in America, I would love to have it.

Rousing Casimir

noreply@blogger.com (John Duke) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 02:52:00 +0000

I had to set this blog aside for many, many months while recuperating, but recently picked up the tools again and started researching. It has take a fair amount of time to re-orient myself to what I was doing when I stopped working, and the software was updated so I had to learn new tricks. I also migrated to this new URL, so there was a lot of fiddling to get things back on track.

I have several postings half-written, which I will start to publish soon. You can look forward to learning about the matriarch of the Dukes, a detailed comparison of three decades of census data from her household, and explicating the relationship to the tree of one of the founders of Providence and Rhode Island. There are lots more things waiting in the wings, once I get time.

I don't want to be selfish about this, however. I'm making the tree and most of the documentation available to family members through ancestry.com. You will be able to see family relationships, charts, photos, official documents, and whatever else I have that I am using to construct this narrative. Of course, this doesn't come free. You have to agree to share your own photos, documents, stories. It's not that tough, and can even be fun.

Trees on ancestry.com are normally closed if you are not a subscriber. I can give you access to my tree, however, if you ask. There are three levels of access:

Editor: File editing and viewing rights
Contributor: Viewing rights only; can add comments, photos and stories
Guest: Viewing rights only; can add comments

Let me know what level of access you would like. I can always change it later. Once you receive an invitation from me via e-mail, you will need to create an Ancestry account. Don't worry, it's free. After you do this, the tree will appear in your list of Trees in the Family Tree section of your account and under the Trees Shared with Me tab when you click on Family Trees.

Although this will give you lots of access, the system still needs some work. If I make a change in my own local file, for example, it is not reflected in the online version at ancestry.com, and vice versa. For right now, I'm considering periodically reloading my database to keep things in sync. Eventually, this should be corrected. The software will send me notices if you change something online, so I hope to be able to keep up with things that way too.

If you really want to take full advantage of the system and would like to do more in depth research and get access to all the Ancestry databases, you will need a paid subscription. Although not horribly expensive, it does require a measure of commitment. Don't think you have to do this, however. Many genealogy workers get by working with just family and public documents.

I don't want to overload you with information and frequent changes, so I am breaking the databases up into several parts. If you come from the Duke/Wolinski line, I have everything already loaded. I will load other branches as people express interest. Regardless whether you want to contribute or just look, I hope you have some fun and learn something about our families.

Brown soup

noreply@blogger.com (John Duke) — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 17:30:00 +0000

This murky photograph, of undetermined location, is of Kathryn (Smetanovsky) Duke. The child is probably her daughter Connie, which would date the picture from about 1928. The two males on the back porch are not identifiable.

Connie remembers her mother's recipe for "brown soup," said to cure all manner of sicknesses.

Brown Soup

Make zapraska (roux) until dark brown color --
1/2 butter
1/2 flour
Add chicken stock or broth
Add caraway seeds (any amount)
Add salt and /or pepper
Cook for about 20 minutes and put through strainer

Casimir's Dreaming

noreply@blogger.com (John Duke) — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 02:50:00 +0000

I want to share with you a song Marc Sanchez gave me for my birthday. A number of the family got together and wrote poems for me, but this one is especially relevant for this page. It has a poignant lyrics and a haunting melody. The song is an homage not only to Casimir, but to all the working people who came before us.

"Casimir's Dreaming"

He could have plowed the fields all day in the country
He could have been anything, but maybe president

He ended up a miner
In Union Town

He worked all day put in his years
Where the patch was like a home

Nothing phased old Casimir
When he was dreaming

He ended up a miner
In Union Town

He bought a place on Easy Street
The picture of a home

A castle built on steel
And the union's bones

He ended up a miner
In Union Town

I've since added some images to go along with Marc's evocative lyrics.

Pushing back time

noreply@blogger.com (John Duke) — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 03:12:00 +0000

Last year, my wife's aunt gave me several binders filled with family papers. I have finally had a chance to start looking at them systematically and am very excited by some of the information that is here. The papers document a good bit of history of the Remore line, going back to the Windsors/Winsors. They have already given me cause to revise an earlier essay on Manila Faye's ancestors (Faye's Clue, Part II).

Besides original source letters and photos, the papers contain genealogy work done by family member Lucille Verdene Bower Merriman in 1907. She called her typewritten manuscript of some thirty-five pages "A genealogical account of one branch of the Windsor family descended from Abraham Windsor and Rhoba Keech Windsor." She revised it several times, first in 1915 and then in the 1940s. Merriman tells us that her work was "Collected from historical libraries, family Bibles, and members of the family."

Harrison Harold Remore picked up the genealogy and began bringing it up to date to the 1960s when he was doing his work. The manuscript is annotated and corrected in a number of places, which I believe are in Remore's hand. He was also interested in pushing the Windsor lineage back to its origins in England, although from what I can tell from a cursory look, he did not have a lot of success with it.

Other than updating the earlier essay mentioned above, my plan now is to validate as much of the information in the Merriman genealogy as I can before presenting it here. It will take some time to work my way through things, but I hope to present interesting tidbits as I move along to help make the wait worthwhile.

Xtreme genealogy

noreply@blogger.com (John Duke) — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 18:20:00 +0000

Most of my genealogy noodling entails looking at old paper documents and pictures, combing through databases, and reading books. Such sources have enabled me to document different branches of the family back some 450 years.

But what if we wanted to investigate what was going on not 450 years, but 5,000 years, or 10,000, or 30,000? We don't have documents going back that far, but we do have DNA. As a gift, I was able to have my DNA analyzed by The Genographic Project, sponsored by National Geographic and others in "a five-year effort to understand the human journey—where we came from and how we got to where we live today. This unprecedented effort will map humanity's genetic journey through the ages." The project is collecting DNA samples from all over the world to find genetic markers that represent unbroken lines of progeny. In this way, the project can document the movement of the human population around the globe.

The results of my DNA test apply to all my brothers and sisters, and should be substantially correct for cousins, particularly on the paternal side. If any relative decides to participate in the project with your own test, I'd like to be able to compare results with you. A complete report of my own results is too much information to present here, but if any blood relative is interested in viewing the data, let me know and I will get you the information. For now, I will just summarize the results.

Officially, my Y-chromosome results identify me and close relatives as members of haplogroup R1a1, stretching my genetic path back roughly 60,000 years to the first common marker of all non-African men, M168, and follows it to eastern Europe with the marker M17. The Y-chromosome is the genetic material that is passed from father to son. It remains unchanged in each successive generation unless there is a mutation, which becomes known as a marker. The genetic markers in my history are laid out in this fashion:

M168 > M89 > M9 > M45 > M207 > M173 > M17

Taken together, these particular markers form my haplogroup. The mutation markers are easier to understand on a map of the migration paths my ancestors took.

We can break these markers down to gain an understanding of the history, taking information from the report on my DNA test.

M168. "Skeletal and archaeological evidence suggest that anatomically modern humans evolved in Africa around 200,000 years ago, and began moving out of Africa to colonize the rest of the world around 60,000 years ago. The man who gave rise to the first genetic marker in your lineage probably lived in northeast Africa in the region of the Rift Valley, perhaps in present-day Ethiopia, Kenya, or Tanzania, some 31,000 to 79,000 years ago. ... His descendants became the only lineage to survive outside of Africa, making him the common ancestor of every non-African man living today. ... It is likely that a fluctuation in climate may have provided the impetus for your ancestors' exodus out of Africa. The African ice age was characterized by drought rather than by cold. It was around 50,000 years ago that the ice sheets of northern Europe began to melt. ... Your nomadic ancestors followed the good weather and the animals they hunted ... In addition to a favorable change in climate, around this same time there was a great leap forward in modern humans' intellectual capacity ... Improved tools and weapons, the ability to plan ahead and cooperate with one another, and an increased capacity to exploit resources in ways we hadn't been able to earlier, all allowed modern humans to rapidly migrate to new territories, exploit new resources, and replace other hominids."
M89. "The next male ancestor in your ancestral lineage is the man who gave rise to M89, a marker found in 90 to 95 percent of all non-Africans. This man was born around 45,000 years ago in northern Africa or the Middle East. ... Your ancestors followed the expanding grasslands and plentiful game to the Middle East and beyond, and were part of the second great wave of migration out of Africa. Beginning about 40,000 years ago, the climate shifted once again and became colder and more arid. ... the Saharan Gateway was effectively closed. With the desert impassable, your ancestors had two options: remain in the Middle East, or move on. While many of the descendants of M89 remained in the Middle East, others continued to follow ... game through what is now modern-day Iran to the vast steppes of Central Asia. These semiarid grass-covered plains formed an ancient "superhighway" stretching from eastern France to Korea. Your ancestors, having migrated north out of Africa into the Middle East, then traveled both east and west along this Central Asian superhighway. A smaller group continued moving north from the Middle East to Anatolia and the Balkans, trading familiar grasslands for forests and high country."
M9. "Your next ancestor, a man born around 40,000 years ago in Iran or southern Central Asia, gave rise to a genetic marker known as M9 ... His descendants ... spent the next 30,000 years populating much of the planet. This large lineage, known as the Eurasian Clan, dispersed gradually over thousands of years. Seasoned hunters followed the herds ever eastward, along the vast super highway of Eurasian steppe. Eventually their path was blocked by the massive mountain ranges of south Central Asia ... The three mountain ranges meet in a region known as the 'Pamir Knot,' located in present-day Tajikistan. Here the tribes of hunters split into two groups. Some moved north into Central Asia, others moved south into what is now Pakistan and the Indian subcontinent. ... Most people native to the Northern Hemisphere trace their roots to the Eurasian Clan."
M45. "The next marker ... arose around 35,000 years ago, in a man born in Central Asia. He was part of the M9 Eurasian Clan that had moved to the north of the mountainous Hindu Kush and onto the game-rich steppes of present-day Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and southern Siberia. ... Although big game was plentiful, the environment on the Eurasian steppes became increasing hostile as the glaciers of the Ice Age began to expand once again. The reduction in rainfall may have induced desertlike conditions on the southern steppes, forcing your ancestors to follow the herds of game north. ... To exist in such harsh conditions, they learned to build portable animal-skin shelters and to create weaponry and hunting techniques that would prove successful against the much larger animals they encountered in the colder climates. ... Your ancestors' resourcefulness and ability to adapt was critical to survival during the last ice age in Siberia, a region where no other hominid species is known to have lived."
M207. "After spending considerable time in Central Asia ... a group from the Central Asian Clan began to head west towards the European subcontinent. An individual in this clan carried the new M207 mutation ... His descendants ultimately split into two distinct groups, with one continuing onto the European subcontinent, and the other group turning south and eventually making it as far as India. Your lineage falls within the first haplogroup, R1, and gave rise to the first modern humans to move into Europe and eventually colonize the continent."
M173. "As your ancestors continued to move west, a man born around 30,000 years ago in Central Asia gave rise to a lineage defined by the genetic marker M173. His descendants were part of the first large wave of humans to reach Europe. During this period, the Eurasian steppelands extended from present-day Germany, and possibly France, to Korea and China. The climate fostered a land rich in resources and opened a window into Europe. Your ancestors' arrival in Europe heralded the end of the era of the Neanderthals ... Better communication skills, weapons, and resourcefulness probably enabled your ancestors to outcompete Neanderthals for scarce resources. ... The culture is distinguished by significant innovations in methods of manufacturing tools, more standardization of tools, and a broader set of tool types, such as end-scrapers for preparing animal skins and tools for woodworking. ... Around 20,000 years ago, the climate window shut again, and expanding ice sheets forced your ancestors to move south to Spain, Italy, and the Balkans. As the ice retreated and temperatures became warmer, beginning about 12,000 years ago, many descendants of M173 moved north again to repopulate places that had become inhospitable during the Ice Age."
M17. "Your genetic trail ends with a marker that arose between 10,000 to 15,000 years ago when a man of European origin was born on the grassy steppes in the region of present-day Ukraine or southern Russia. His descendants became the nomadic steppe dwellers who eventually spread as far afield as India and Iceland. ... In addition to genetic and archaeological evidence, the spread of languages can also be used to trace prehistoric migration patterns. Your ancestors, descendants of the Indo-European clan, may be responsible for the birth and spread of Indo-European languages. ... Some linguists believe that the Kurgans, nomadic horsemen roaming the steppes of southern Russia and the Ukraine, were the first to speak and spread a Proto-Indo-European language, some 5,000 to 10,000 years ago. ... Today a large concentration—around 40 percent—of the men living from the Czech Republic across the steppes to Siberia, and south throughout Central Asia are descendants of this clan."

Peter Spero Conomikes, 1921-2007

noreply@blogger.com (John Duke) — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 02:45:00 +0000

Conomikes, Peter S.
WILLIAMSBURG - Peter S. Conomikes, William and Mary's fencing team coach, died at approximately 1 p.m. Saturday Nov. 10, 2007, in a car accident near Richmond, Va.

Pete was born on June 24, 1921, in Ithaca, N.Y. His family emigrated from Greece and Pete never lost his appreciation of his heritage. He graduated from Columbia University in 1942 with a degree in International Relations and a passion for fencing. During World War II, he served in the U.S. Navy in the Pacific Theater on the USS McKee (DD-575). He then joined the CIA and had numerous overseas postings until retiring in 1973. Pete spent the next 35 years working with fencing teams at the College of William and Mary, first as Varsity coach and then as the Fencing Club coach after the team transitioned from varsity status.

Pete is survived by his wife Constance; his daughter, Tiara, and her husband, George Wooley; his stepchildren, Alan Sifora[sic], Lynn and her husband, Patrick Popek, and Ken Sikora; his brother, George Conomikes and his wife, Lynne.

There will be a memorial service at 11:30 a.m. Friday, Nov. 16, at the Commonwealth Auditorium in the University Center of the College of William and Mary. Burial services will be at Arlington National Cemetery at a later date.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the College of William and Mary Fencing Club or to a charity of your choice.

Nelsen Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements. On-line condolences may be registered at www.nelsenfh.com.
--Published in the Newport News Daily Press on 11/15/2007.

Hundreds pay tribute to late W & M fencing coach
Pete Conomikes guided generations of William and Mary fencers before dying in a car crash last weekend.
By SHAWN DAY 247-4816
November 17, 2007

WILLIAMSBURG — - Nearly 200 people gathered Friday at the College of William and Mary to remember the life of longtime fencing coach Pete Conomikes, who died last weekend.

The hourlong ceremony in University Center's Commonwealth Auditorium drew family, friends, students and current and former fencing team members, who paid their respects to the legendary mentor. Conomikes died Nov. 10 after the car he was driving crashed into a tree in the Interstate 295 median near Richmond.

The 86-year-old coach was with three students heading to the final fencing meet of the semester when the crash occurred. The cause is still under investigation, according to the Virginia State Police.
--Published in the Newport News Daily Press on 11/17/2007.

W&M Fencing Coach Killed
By DAVID MACAULAY 247-7838
November 13, 2007

The College of William and Mary's fencing coach was killed and three fencing students were injured in a wreck near Richmond Saturday.

Peter Conomikes, 86, of Williamsburg was driving three members of William and Mary's club fencing team, which he had coached since 1972, to Pennsylvania where they were due to compete in a fencing event.

The vehicle crashed at 12:49 p.m. on Interstate 295, near I-95 in Henrico County. State police said Conomikes' 1992 Toyota Camry left the road and hit a tree. The coach was pronounced dead at the scene at 1:05 p.m.

No other vehicle was involved in the accident, according to state police, and the cause of the accident is unknown.

In an e-mail sent out to the campus community on Sunday, Sam Sadler, the college's vice president of student affairs, said Fencing Club members Spencer Butts and Ben Gutenberg are in a critical but stable condition at the Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center.

The third student in the wreck, Matt Peppe, has been treated and released from the hospital.

Sadler described Conomikes as a "remarkable man" and "an extraordinary athlete."

Conomikes began his fencing career at Colombia University in 1940 and became a legend at William and Mary, Sadler said. He earned numerous honors and awards during his career.

"The sense of community we share at William and Mary is a remarkable source of strength and healing," he said.
--Published in the Newport News Daily Press on 11/13/2007.

Fencing coach dies in accident, two students seriously injured
By Austin Wright, Flat Hat News Editor
11 November 2007

The College’s club fencing coach, Pete Conomikes, died yesterday in a car accident while traveling with the team to a fencing competition.

Three students were involved in the crash, and two of them are seriously injured.
The following letter was sent today by Vice President of Student Affairs Sam Sadler to the College community:

"It is with a deep sense of sadness that I write to share the news with you of a tragic automobile accident that occurred yesterday afternoon (around 1 p.m.) on Interstate 64 near the I-64/ I -295 interchange outside of Richmond. Venerable William and Mary Fencing Club Coach, Pete Conomikes, was killed in the accident and three William and Mary Fencing Club members were injured in the crash – two of them seriously. Spencer Butts and Ben Gutenberg are hospitalized at the Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center (Medical College of Virginia) and are in critical but stable condition. The third student, Matt Peppe, has been treated and released from the hospital.

"Details of the accident are still not available though it does appear that it was a single car event. The team was traveling in two vehicles, the car with its four occupants followed by a College van carrying other team members. The group was on its way to Haverford, Pennsylvania to compete in a Middle Atlantic Collegiate Fencing Association team event.

"The students in the Fencing Club join me in asking that you keep their injured teammates (and their families) in your thoughts and prayers as well as the wife, family members, and friends of their beloved coach, Pete Conomikes.

"Pete Conomikes was a remarkable man, an extraordinary athlete, he began his fencing career at Columbia University in 1940 and spent several of his early years training under the fencing master, Giorgio Santelli. During much of a long career, he was an A – rated fencer in his specialty, epee. At one point, remarkably, he was A – rated on all three of the weapons used in the sport. At William and Mary, while a legend for his fencing skills, it was his coaching and his affection for the athletes he taught and trained that defined him. He joined the coaching staff of the College in 1972, when fencing was a varsity sport, and he served as head coach until 1995 when the sport became a club. Undaunted by the change in status, he continued coaching the club and teaching a beginning fencing class until the present time, even though he was 86 years old. Perhaps a recent quote on the Tribe Fencing page says it best, 'He is a joy to learn from, and his bladework is still better than yours.'

"Mr. Conomikes reputation and influence extended far beyond the campus and his coaching skill was recognized by many honors and awards. In the fencing community, one colleague referred to him as a “giant.” Many of his fencers have continued competition beyond college and his work has helped preserve competitive fencing through his support of the Middle Atlantic Collegiate Fencing Association. He will be missed by all who knew him. Because of his efforts and dedication he leaves a proud legacy of excellence in fencing at William and Mary and more importantly gratitude, deep affection and respect in the hearts of all those whom he has taught and coached.

"We are extending care, both in Richmond and here on campus, to the members of the Fencing Club and to the families of our injured students. I know you will want to provide support for them and to remember Mr. Conomikes in your own way. The sense of community we share at William and Mary is a remarkable source of strength and healing. With that in mind, I felt you would want to know about this tragic accident."
--Published in William & Mary's The Flat Hat

There are many remembrances of Pete Conomikes by fencers who knew and worked with him in the Virginia fencing online forum.

1850	...........	2,244,602
1860	...........	4,138,697
1870	...........	5,567,229
1880	...........	6,679,943
1890	...........	9,249,547
1900	...........	10,341,276

1881	...........	Obertowski
1884	...........	Smetanovsky
1889	...........	Duch
1893	...........	Zwolinski