Poland – Ancestors in the Archives

January 18, 2019June 12, 2019

Antoni Umienski: The First Kornaszewski

This is the story of the first “Kornaszewski”. Or at least, the first one in my family. This is the story of how Antoni Umienski became Walenty Kornaszewski. My 3rd great grandfather, Walenty Kornaszewski, married my 3rd great grandmother, Marta Marcella Piechochowska, in the Catholic parish of Strzelno, in Poland, in 1843. But the same man was born 23 years earlier as Antoni Umienski. Antoni was born on May 27, 1820, the son of Franciszek Umienski and Franciszka Kozloska. The Umienski family was one of minor nobility, in Polish known as the “szlachta”. Family lore says that a distant cousin of Franciszek was Jan Nepomucen Umiński, a famous Polish general who took part in the November Uprising.

Being a member of the nobility and living in the Russian partition, young Antoni was sent to an Imperial Russian cadet corps, a military school designed to educate and train officers in the Russian military. One day when Antoni was about 18 years old (circa 1838), one of the instructors made a disparaging remark about Poland, and Antoni, who had a reputation for being hot-tempered, hit the officer in the face. The punishment for this transgression was severe; the Umienski family was on track to be banished to Siberia. Antoni, however, ran away and escaped to the Prussian partition of Poland, while his parents immigrated to Paris, and their estates were confiscated. As part of his plan to avoid detection and punishment by the Russians, Antoni changed his name to “Walenty Kornaszewski” in any official documents, such as his marriage to my 3^rd-great-grandmother, Marta. He may have even stolen this identity from a dead man. But he then passed along the Kornaszewski surname to his descendants, who never changed the name back.

“Cholewa” Coat of Arms – Polish Coats of Arms apply to not only multiple people, but multiple families. In this case, Cholewa includes the Umienski szlachta.

After reaching the Prussian partition, Antoni…now Walenty, settled on an estate bought by his great aunt in the village of Chełmiczki, located between Inowroclaw and Wloclawek. The village was just across the border from the Russian Partition, and in the 1863 “January Uprising”, a rebellion by native Poles against the Russian government, Walenty offered aid to the rebels. Walenty, however, drank heavily, and his (mis)management of the estate led to its economic decline. Eventually he sold the estate, bought a house in Strzelno, and became a mason, which he enjoyed much more than managing a farm.

Polish soldiers of January Uprising 1863 by Walery Eljasz-Radzikowski (1841-1905)

By 1843, Walenty Kornaszewski married Marta, and on December 7 of that year, they had their first child, Antoni Ambroży, baptized in the Parish of Strzelno. On the 26 of May, 1845, my great-great-grandfather, Władysław Filip Kornaczewski was born. Elżbieta on the 7 of November 1847, Waleria, 5 August 1850, and Wincenty Bonifacy, 5 July 1852. It seems only Władysław and Elżbieta lived to adulthood, and Marta died sometime between 1852 and 1854, when Walenty married his third wife, Francisca Pawłowska. With Francisca he had five more children: Julian (4 Jan 1855), Wacław (4 Aug 1856), Ignatius, Józefat, Anna, and Kazimiera (19 Feb 1860). Wacław’s daughter Wiktoria told the story of her grandfather Antoni/Walenty in her diary and through letters to family members, which is how it comes down to me. Francisca died in 1872, and Walenty in 1888. Walenty’s son, Władysław, immigrated to the United States with his family in the late 1800s, and settled in Chicago, Illinois, and eventually shortened the stolen name down even further to just “Korn”. My mother’s Korn relatives had a family legend that Władysław was the head groundskeeper at one of Kaiser Wilhelm’s estates (which, is not true, as far as I can tell). And some of his children’s baptism records in Chicago list his name as “von Kornaszewski”, possibly indicating German nobility. I now believe that both of these probably stem from his father’s Umienski origins.

March 26, 2014June 12, 2019

Stanisław Wróbel: Polish Immigrant

I started this post on Fat Tuesday in honor of the holiday (Pączkis anyone?) and the City of Chicago’s 177th Anniversary. I thought it would be nice to do a Polish Catholic Chicagoan for that week’s ancestor profile (I’m only a few weeks behind…). My great grandfather Stanisław Wróbel was born April 14, 1882 in the village of Lutków in what is now the province of Przemysl, on the Polish side of the Polish/Ukrainian border (then Galicia, part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire…it’s always been a bit tempestuous there). Wróbel is a common Polish surname that means “sparrow” or “little bird”. His parents were Franciszek Wróbel and Marie Fąfrowicz and he had had an older sister, Rosalia, a younger sister, Mary, and possibly an older brother named John. The Podhale (“Under the Mountain Meadows”), or Polish Highland region where Stanisław was born is in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains, and is home to the Gorals, a Slavic ethnic group to which the family may have belonged.

Funeral in Galicia by Teodor Axentowicz From the Wikimedia Commons

At the end of the 19th century, Galicia was the poorest of the Austrian provinces. It was overpopulated, and land was hard to come by. The turn of the century saw almost 25% of the population emigrate from Galicia, including my great grandfather. According to the 1910 census, Stanisław immigrated to the United States in 1906 and in 1910 was living together with both his sisters and their husbands. On the 3rd of May, 1913, Stanisław married Katarzyna Szpik at Saints Cyril and Methodius Catholic Church in Chicago. I’m guessing they got married in a hurry before Katarzyna started to show…six months later Stanislaw and Katarzyna baptized their first child, John Stanley, at Saint Joseph Catholic Church in the Chicago suburb of Summit. Two years later they gave birth to a daughter, Stefania, who died after only a few months. Another daughter, Harriet Simone, my grandmother, was supposed to have been born October 16, 1916, but I can’t find any record of her birth in either the official Cook County birth certificates, or a baptism record in any of the churches the Wróbel family attended.

wrobel, stanislaw & szpik, katherine - marriage certificate — Government Marriage License

In 1918, along with the other eligible men of the country, Stanisław registered for the draft. According to his draft card he worked in the stockyards, was of medium height, and had blue eyes and brown hair. Dealing with more missing records…I can’t find the family in the 1920 census. I, however, blame the census enumerator. According to the birth certificate of their last daughter, Helena, born in July of 1920, the family was living at 2946 Farell Street, in Chicago’s 4th Ward. I manually searched for the address, and it seems as if the census enumerator skipped the end of the block. A whole section of the street was just not enumerated. By the 1930 census he was going by Stanley Rubel (the Polish “ó” sounds like the “oo” in “pool”) and had moved to Lyons, in Summit. By a strange twist of fate he is listed next door to a John Rubel, 2 years older than him, also from Poland. I had always assumed this was a brother, but I have been contacted by a descendant of John. She explained that apparently it was just a coincidence. Her John had different parents, and apparently told the story of living next to a family of unrelated Rubels. Stanley was working as a janitor in a bank at the time. In 1940 Stanley’s last name shows up again as “Wrobel”, even though Harriet used the “Rubel” spelling when she got married to my grandfather in 1943. He is still listed as a bank janitor. Unfortunately, the 1940 census is the last record I can find for Stanisław. Although I have found death notices for both his brother-in-laws in the Chicago Polish newspaper, Dziennik Związkowy, I still don’t know where or when he died. A lot still remains to be figured out about his life and death.

February 11, 2014June 12, 2019

Władysław Filip von Kornaszewski: Nobleman?

Władysław Filip von Kornaszewski was born in what was, at the time, Strelno, Bromberg, Posen, Prussia (now Strzelno in the Kuyavian-Pomeranian province of Poland) around the year 1845. Outside of his birthplace, I know nothing about his early years. I have yet to find a baptism record for him in the old country, or indications of who his parents might be. He must have moved north to the area around Putzig (now Puck) where he met his wife Antonia Grabowski. She was baptized in Putzig, and their first children Edward/Edmund and Leokadia were baptized there as well. Family lore says that Władysław was a “veltsman” for Kaiser Wilhelm in one of his palaces, and that was how he met Antonia, who was a maid in the same palace. I have yet to find any confirmation of this story, and there certainly don’t seem to be any Prussian/German royal palaces around Putzig. At any rate, Władysław and Antonia were married sometime before 1874 when their first child (either Edmund or Leokadia, or perhaps both, the records are unclear) was born. Their first four children were born in Prussia between 1874 and 1882.

On September 13, 1883 a 31 year old “Wladislaw Kornazewski” arrived in Baltimore, Maryland, having departed from Bremen, Germany on the “General Werder”. A year and half later, April 20, 1885, “Wl. Kornoszchefsky”, 40 years old and traveling with Antonia (35), Edmund (7), Leokadia (6), Stanislaus (3), and Gregor (2), arrive in New York aboard the “Martha” departing from Gothenburg and Stettin. The second record is obviously the right Władysław and his family. I’m not sure whether the first record is an entirely different person (based on the age) or perhaps a reconnaissance trip and he later came back to Prussia for the rest of the family

general.werder — The SS General Werder. Possibly the first ship Władysław arrived on.

kornaszewski,wladeslaf-immg04 — Władysław and family listed in passenger registry of the “Martha”, 1885.

The family made their way to Chicago, Illinois and only a few months later, July 5, 1885, Władysław and Antonia’s first American-born child, Helene, was baptized in St. Alphonsus Catholic Church. Sadly, Helene died in September, barely a few months old. Władysław happened to also be listed in the 1885 city directory for Lakeview (at the time just outside the city limits of Chicago) and was living at 456 Southport Avenue. Over the next 6 years, 4 more children were born; Anselm Andrew in 1886, Alphons in 1888, Elizabeth in 1889 (who also died after only a few months), and the youngest, my great grandfather Alois in 1891. All of the children were baptized at St. Alphonsus, a German parish established almost at the same time Władysław arrived in Chicago. Interestingly, in the baptism records for Helene, Anselm, and Alphons (the first three childen born in America), Władysław has the German “von” added before his last name. Although not always the case, the “von” can sometimes be an indicator of German nobility. Only in these few church records, however, is the “von” present. The earlier baptisms in Prussia do not have the “von”, although those records are transcriptions, so it may be there in the originals. It also seems as if Władysław dropped the preposition later during his time in America as the later of his children’s baptisms and his death records do not show the “von” as part of his name. This “von”, however, is the only indication that there might be a kernel of truth to the story of Władysław working for the Kaiser.

kornaszewski, anselm - baptism record (highlighted) — Anselm’s Baptism Record with Władysław’s full name including the “von”

St.AlphonsusInteriorcompressed — The interior of the second St. Alphonsus church, completed 1897, just two years before Władysław died.

On September 17, 1892, Władysław was granted his final papers and became a naturalized citizen of the United States of America. A month later he registered to vote in the City of Chicago. The 27th of November, 1899, while the Chicago Drainage Canalwas in the final stages of construction, Władysław died of Typhoid Fever. During the last half of the 19th century Chicago had one of the highest death rates from typhoid fever in the world, until reversal of the Chicago River in 1892 (during the process of constructing the canal), and the chlorination of the city’s water supply beginning in 1912.

kornaszewski,wladeslaf-family — A photograph of the Kornaszewski family taken soon after Władysław’s death. His painted portrait is included and is the only picture I have of him.