Category: Surname

Posts on the surname information

CategoriesZalewski

Smile for the Camera, 19th Edition

Posted on 8 December 2009by Brian Zalewski

The word prompt for the 19th Edition of Smile For The Camera is “Gift.” It is the holiday season and a time for giving. So give Smile readers the gift of sharing, sharing a family photograph. It can be a gift given or received, it can be the gift of talent, it can be the gift of having the photograph itself. The interpretation of gift is yours. Admission is free with every photograph!

Frank Zalewski & Family - 1909
Frank Zalewski & Family - 1909

I think of this photo as a gift. This photo was the first family history photo that I saw. I see it as a gift of the genealogy bug (it’s not always a bad thing, right?) To this day, I am still working on Frank’s family history trading emails with his possible great-nephew.

CategoriesFamily TreeFeaturedSiteZalewski

Everything I Know About Frank Zalewski

Posted on 9 November 2009by Brian Zalewski

I have a new site to show all of you. But, first, how it all came to be.

While I was searching for more information on a passenger ship from one of my ancestors a few months back, I ran across a site called “Everything I Know About Hyman Victor.” The site is basically one man’s story about his great-grandfather. It shows off all of the vital records, memories, and information about Mr. Victor.

I was very impressed by both the idea and the layout of the website. Since I noticed the site was built using WordPress, just like this site, I emailed the owner of the website and asked him about how he put it together. He was a very nice guy and said that he would send me some of the files I would need. Recently, I received these files and started putting together a site for my great-great-grandfather, Frank Zalewski.

I wanted to do this for a few reasons. First, I wanted to create a nice site dedicated to Frank and his life. Secondly, going back over a lot of this information may bring me new discoveries. Sadly, I didn’t find anything new, but now all my information is better organized.

I can’t take too much credit for the site, since most of the work was done by Elliot Malkin at Everything I Know About Hyman Victor. Thank you Elliot for the help. Though, I did tweak a few things for my own use.

Without further delay, I bring you Everything I Know About Frank Zalewski.

CategoriesTell Me ThursdayThielke

Tell Me Thursday: Wedding

Posted on 5 November 2009by Brian Zalewski
Click for larger
Click for larger

This is a photo from my grandparent’s wedding on August 28, 1948 at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Port Washington, Wisconsin. The church is known for it’s large decorations and ceiling. It’s also frequently painted along with downtown Port Washington as it sits on a high hill overlooking the downtown area. You can see it in the third photo down on this page.

CategoriesMilwaukeeZalewski

Did You Hear the One About the Polish Flat?

Posted on 4 August 2009by Brian Zalewski
Courtesy of britmum@Flickr
Courtesy of britmum@Flickr

I tried, but I couldn’t come up with a joke for that. “Polish Flats” are common here in the Milwaukee area. I’ve recently been exploring the area where my great-great-grandfather, Frank Zalewski, and his family resided when they immigrated to Milwaukee in 1891. Frank and his family’s first house was located at 902 Pulaski Street in Milwaukee. They are noted to live there until about 1898 when they moved to 900 Fratney Street.

According to researchers at UWM in Milwaukee, “A “˜Polish flat’ is an American workers’ cottage that has been raised to create a new basement floor, thus becoming a modest two-story flat.” [More information here.] The Pulaski street area is full of these types of houses. They even built them two or three-deep at certain points, so it makes finding the right house a mess. You can see on this Google Maps link just how crowded they built these houses.

I assume the house on Pulaski street is still standing. Unfortunately, the city of Milwaukee underwent a massive address overhaul in 1931 and most of the addresses in that area have changed. There is no common mathematical equation used to figure out the new address, since they based it on measurements. I did find a guide on how to find the general range of the new address, which should be in the 1800 range now.The 1930 census still lists the old addresses, so that doesn’t help.

From the 1900-1930 census, the family of Jacob Zalewski lived at 902 Pulaski. This is the man I assume is some relation to Frank, possibly a brother, since they both lived there for years. Jacob passed away sometime between 1913 and 1920 according to census records. His wife Pauline was living there in the 1930 census with her children. The earliest city directory available at Ancestry after 1930 is the 1937 directory. I checked under Zalewski and it lists Pauline as passing away on December 30, 1936 and lists no address. There are three listings for Zalewskis on Pulaski street: Jacob G, Leo, and Joseph. These are three names of Jacob and Pauline’s sons, though they are also popular Polish names. They all live from 1758 to 1762 Pulaski Street. If I had to take an educated guess, this is probably where Frank Zalewski lived when he came to Milwaukee. Here is a view of it at Google Street View (you’ll need to find the house pushed way back, Google doesn’t automatically point at it.) I also happened to find another photo of it while searching for Pulaski Street information.

I drove through the area at my lunchtime on Monday since it’s only a few miles from where I work. It’s very hard to get around if you don’t know the area due to a lot of one-way streets. Now that I have a better idea, I may make another trip for some photos.

Photo:

CategoriesBig NewsMilwaukeeZalewski

Tracking the Zalewski

Posted on 22 July 2009by Brian Zalewski

I know it sounds like a show on National Geographic, but it’s not. I’m not sure why I didn’t this earlier, but it’s never too late to try. After finding my ZALEWSKI family’s passenger record, I originally decided to see if I could find them in Baltimore city directories since it seems like they spent a few years there. This finally took me back to the Milwaukee City Directories since there are no online versions for Baltimore from 1889-1892.

Ancestry has a lot of Milwaukee City Directories online scattered from like 1880 to 1939 with most of 1880-1900 available. I started with 1889 to see if the ZALEWSKI family made it there yet, but they did not. I first found Frank ZALEWSKI in the 1892 (well, two actually, go figure.)

Continue reading “Tracking the Zalewski”
CategoriesBig NewsZalewski

I’m on a Boat: Passenger List Found!

Posted on 21 July 2009by Brian Zalewski

One of those documents that I had my sights set on for the last 10 years of genealogy research is the passenger list containing the ZALEWSKI family when they left home and came to America. According to notes I had from a previous researcher, “…[Frank and Anna] left Poland from the Baltic port of Danzig and entered the United States through the port of Baltimore, Maryland…in 1890.” I’ve searched everything I could find online for this since I’ve been researching. I’ve tried every possible spelling of Frank’s name (Franz, Francizek, etc) and don’t even get me started on the different ways to spell ZALEWSKI (add in the many different ways to pronounce it.)

I decided to give it another try by locking down certain items using Ancestry.com’s search box. I tried locking in “Frank” and then locking in “1888-1892” then I tried locking down “Baltimore” and so on. I dare not lock in “Zalewski” since it never works. I then tried his wife, but nothing. Next I tried their first child “Martha” since her name is more than likely the same. Their next child Angeline has been written many different ways from Amelia to Angel. No hits on “Martha Zalewski.” Next, I thought I’d give “Salewski” a shot since I’m pretty sure ZALEWSKI and SALEWSKI don’t have the same soundex code. Guess what my first hit was? “Martha Zalewski, Baltimore, November 1889, age 3.” Dead on.

I’ve conditioned myself not to get too excited until I can strongly prove it’s the correct document. As soon as I saw the list of family members: Franz, Anna, Martha, Amela, I knew it was the right family. Everything matches up from ages to names. Plus, there was one more name: Elsa Salewski, aged 6 months. According to later census records, Anna is listed to have has 9 children with only 8 living. Also, looking at the order of children, there is a larger gap from Angeline in 1887 to Marianna in 1891. Frank and Anna seemed to be working off of the one child every two-years plan throughout their lives. Elsa must not have lived much longer since she is never listed with the family outside of this listing.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t get me much more information except much tougher evidence for their arrival and departure. The list just has them come from “Germany” and go to the “U.S.A.” and Germany could mean anything back then.

The ship was the “S.S. Weser” which departed from Bremen, Germany. This looks to be the ship here with a photo. Here is their snippet:

Zalewski Family - 23 Nov 1889
Zalewski Family - 23 Nov 1889

So, I guess the moral of this story is that it does pay to go back over everything you’ve searched. Try looking at it from another angle.

CategoriesBelgianDeBrouxFamily Tree

New DeBroux Info and Some Belgium Questions

Posted on 5 July 2009by Brian Zalewski

Just spent some time today browsing around random Dutch and Belgian websites looking for that one clue to break open some information. I have listed that my 3rd-great-grandparents, Desire and Desiree DeBroux (that’s a mouthful), were both born in Belgium. It specifically lists it as Brussels, Belgium, but that was a major city, so who knows. I ran across a Belgian site called “Netradyle,” and with some help from Google Translate, was able to figure out how to use it.

I originally got there while doing some random searching for some of my wife’s ancestors, but I thought I’d give the DeBroux family a shot. They both had pretty unique names, even if it was a somewhat normal Belgian name, it still sticks out. I searched birth records for DeBroux and found a lot and checked all of the Desires with no luck. I then figured out that I was only searching birth records, so I tried the marriage records. Fortunately, I did have an idea of when they were married due to census records and I had their birth dates from their headstone (as much as I could read it.) Using all of these dates, I ran across an entry for a marriage between Joseph Désiré DEBROUX and Marie Désirée LOOD on 30 Nov 1854.

A few things match up here. Désiré and Désirée both match their names in the census records. I also have their marriage as being in about 1855, due to math using the census records, and it says there were married in Wallon Brabant, Belgium, which is the same province that Brussels is in.

Using that info, I then looked up their birth records and I found Jean Joseph Désiré DEBROUX born on 16 Feb 1830 in Piétrebais, Walloon Brabant, Wallonia, Belgium. Piétrebais is a small village southeast of Brussels. Well, look at that, another match. I have that Desire DEBROUX was born on 16 Feb 1830 from both the census records and his headstone. The same thing happened with his wife. I found a Marie Désirée LOOD born on 1 Apr 1829 also in Piétrebais, Walloon Brabant, Wallonia, Belgium. I didn’t have her exact birth date, but I did have Apr 1829 from the census and the readable parts of her headstone.

Obviously, I can’t guarantee a perfect match, but this does seem to fit a lot of the required fields. Along with this information, it also lists Desire’s parents as Jean Joseph DEBROUX and Anne Catherine LANGELE (LENGELE). It also lists a village after their name in parenthesis. I’m not sure what this means exactly, but Jean has (Corroy) and Anne has (Gistoux) which are both in the same province. It then lists Desiree’s parents as Francois Eugene LOOD and Marie Catherine DUPONT. This one only lists a village after her mother’s name, Opprebais.

This brings me to my question. While typing in some other names from this search, it seems that one family gave every child the middle name of Joseph (Josephe for the girls.) But, besides that, I see Joseph an awful lot in these searches. Was there anything special about the name Joseph, or do you think it was a family name of some sort?