My Aunt and Uncle let me scan this photo from my grandfather’s collection. It’s a photo of his 8th grade class at St. Casimir’s School in northeast Milwaukee in February 1936. As you can tell by the names, if you can see them, it was a very Polish-heavy area. I’ve magnified my grandfather’s photograph. The original image is very large, so I didn’t want to put the whole thing on the site. The girls got the top area of the photo, the boys on the bottom, and the teachers in the middle.
On a side note, I plan to start posting more often again. I’ve been busy recently, with a new baby on the way and all, and have also not had the genealogy bug for a bit.
This man originally purchased the house that my grandparents lived in from 1955-2005, until I bought it. He actually wanted the brick version of the house, so he purchased another one. He is pictured here on the land where his house is being built. Way in the back is his original purchased house, my grandparent’s house..my house. It turns out that it was the first house built in this subdivision in 1955. It looks a bit different today.
This is from my grandparent’s wedding, Richard & Mary Jane (CORRIGAN) ZALEWSKI on October 11, 1947 at St. Gall’s Church in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I particularly enjoy the two kids on the sides of the church. I’m not even sure if they’re part of the family.
Thanks to a higher amount of Polish records online and the help of some of the usual friendly genealogists (Thanks, Al and Rita!) I have traced a few of my Polish ancestors back to Poland.
I now have the baptism location of my 3rd-great-grandparents, Ignatz Peter SZULTA and Nepomuncena SYLDATK. Ignatz was born in Bukowa Góra in the SulÄ™czyno Parish of Kartuzy County, Pomorskie, Poland. Nepomuncena was born nearby at Gowidlino in the Sierakowice Parish. Their first three children, including my great-great grandmother Clara SZULTA, were all born in SulÄ™czyno before the family emigrated to America. I also found Ignatz’s parents, who are Anton SZULTA and Marianna MALSZYCKI and also Nepomuncena’s parents, who are Jacob SYLDATK and Tecla KREFFT.
Rita also found information that my great-great-grandfather, Joseph TROKA, was probably from Lipusz which is a village in KoÅ›cierzyna County, Pomeranian Voivodeship, in northern Poland. The one family that still eludes me is my ZALEWSKI family. I have not yet been able to trace them back to Poland/Prussia. All I have is that Frank and Anna ZALEWSKI were married in the Poznan Province, but I have no source information on that besides it being listed on a family tree I have. I also know that they immigrated from the Port of Bremen, Germany, but that doesn’t really help pinpoint anything. I’ve checked the Poznan Project website and haven’t run across anything, but hopefully someone indexes their records at some point.
Breaking down these brick walls piece by piece, while aggravating at times, is really very fun. Plus, I am meeting some great people. Hopefully we will help each other more along the way.
One of the big mysteries I am trying to solve in my genealogy is to find more information on my great-grandfather, Joseph Zalewski’s, military history. According to a previous family researcher, all of his military files were burned in the extremely destructive 1973 National Personnel Records Center fire. So, all the information I had was that he served in World War I, possibly in France at some point. By sheer luck, during a random Google Books search, I found him listed in a book about the 86th Division headquartered at Camp Grant in Illinois. From there I was able to determine that they were shipped to France in 1918, but never saw combat due to the Armistice. Though, it did mention that a lot of the division was broken apart and used in other divisions at the time. I did a more in-depth post about this find about a year ago.
In this huge collection of photos and documents that I currently have from my grandmother, there are some documents about my great-grandfather including a military record. It looks to be his “Honorable Discharge” papers. About half-way down on the “Enlistment Record” side it has a hand-written line that says:
5th Co. 161 Depot Brigade. Last assignment to 323rd Machine Gun Bn.
Unfortunately, it looks as though the previous line may be missing, but I do now have more information on where he may have went after the 86th Division broke apart. I have yet to find much information on the 323rd Machine Gun Battalion, which looked to be part of the 83rd Division. I mostly find information on Ohio, since it looked to be originally stationed there.
Here are the two documents. Click the for larger versions.
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
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.
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.
This is a photo of my grandfather, Richard Zalewski, from when he was in the navy. He never saw combat, but was stationed in a few places, including Hilo, Hawaii as seen above.
This is a photo of my great-grandfather, Joseph Zalewski, and my grandfather, Richard Zalewski. The photo says it was taken in 1927-28 on Richards St. in Milwaukee. There are a few photos of my grandfather and these puppies.
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.
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.)
