Salem Witch Trials, Part 2

 From the time I was four years old I felt a connection to the Salem Witch Trials. In my bones I knew that this event in history was much more than a passing relevancy to me, there was a strong attachment to Salem in 1692 that has remained with me ever since. I always knew in my DNA that there was a link there, and my very first post about Christian Woodbury Trask was just the tip of the iceberg that my family was living in the area at the time. I knew that I would find much more, and finally, I just did.

The theory of genetic memory, the psychological belief that memories, particularly traumatic ones, can be passed from one generation to the next is the most logical explanation for complex feelings of connections to historical events in which our ancestors played a role. The study of genetic memory is fascinating, and I highly recommend looking into it further. It is my personal belief that when people have past memories that they cannot logically have they are probably experiencing genetic memory as opposed to reincarnation.

At the time of my first visit to the Salem Witch Museum in the 1980s there was no knowledge in my family of a connection to the tragedy that took place in 1692, as a matter of fact I didn’t know our family had very early colonial roots until I was a young teenager.

A decent amount of my goal researching my family history has been to prove what I always knew to be true in my bones - that my family was involved in some way with the mass hysteria of 1692. 

The most promising lines have been the Trefrys on my mother’s side and the Emerys on my father’s side, both of whom were living on the north shore of Massachusetts in the 17th century.

Researching my mother’s great grandmother Matilda Weston, I finally found what I was searching for.

In recent years I had learned that Matilda had died in Salem and was buried in the beautiful Forest Lawn Cemetery in 1896. Coincidentally, this is where I used to walk when I lived in Salem, before I even knew my great-great grandmother was interred there. But as I began to research Matilda’s line I had no reason to suspect that she had any connection to 17th century Salem, because she had been born in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada, as had two generations before her. Going back further, I was surprised to find that the third generation above her had emigrated from Massachusetts to Canada. And the timing, the era directly after the revolution suggests that they were loyalists leaving the newly founded United States to live in a commonwealth country that was still loyal to the crown. Only after a hundred years and three generations did the family finally return to the states, one again settling in the north shore of Massachusetts, where they had fled so many years prior.

The name of my 5th great grandmother, the one who fled north after America became an independent country was Edith Porter, and her name immediately peaked my interest. Could we be related to Israel Porter?!

Israel Porter was a major player in Salem Village in 1692 and I was familiar with him from watching “Three Sovereigns for Sarah” repeatedly as a child.

Another three generations of research and there he was: Israel Porter 12th February 1643 - 28th November 1706, my 8th great-grandfather. Not only am I related, he is my direct ancestor, a primary opponent to Samuel Parris and his co-conspirators who accused hundreds of innocent women and men of witchcraft in 1692 and ultimately murdered 20 of them. I couldn’t be prouder of an ancestor than I am of this one!

Israel Porter was the wealthiest man in Salem Village at the time, owning the most farmland in the village and also conducting business in Salem Town where he had political power as an elected official, serving nine terms in his lifetime. Porter was part of the committee that opposed Reverend Samuel Paris’s tenure at Salem Village, which also included Peter Cloyce, Samuel Nurse and Joseph Putnam. Young Joseph Putnam was an outlier of the vengeful Putnam family, the enemies of the Porters, who formed an allegiance with Reverend Samuel Parris and became the primary accusers in the witchcraft trials. Joseph was also the son-in-law of Israel Porter, having married his 16 year old daughter only four years earlier, and the second wealthiest man in the village to the chagrin of his older half brother Thomas, who believed their father’s will was unjust and therefore the work of the devil. Knowing of the hatred the Putnams had for the Porters, and in fear that his young wife may be accused of witchcraft by his own family, Joseph was said to warn his brother Thomas Putnam: “If you touch anyone belonging to my household with your foul lies, you shall answer for it.” He is also said to have kept his best horse saddled at all times that year, in case a quick getaway was warranted. In the end the vengeful Putnams weren’t daring enough to accuse Joseph Putnam’s nor Israel Porter’s families of witchcraft, although it certainly seems that they wanted to.

As the hysteria grew, Israel was horrified to hear that his friend and neighbor, pious and elderly Rebecca Nurse was accused of witchcraft. He wrote and circulated a petition on her behalf and was one of four people who testified to her character in court. His pleas fell on deaf ears and Rebecca was condemned to hang by Judge John Hathorne, who happened to be Israel’s brother- in-law (and the great-great grandfather of Nathaniel Hawthorne, making him a distant cousin of mine.)

Although he stuck his neck out for Rebecca Nurse, Israel Porter was primarily a “behind the scenes man” according to Salem Possessed by Stephen Nissenbaum. He refused to join Parris’s church in Salem Village and did his praying in Salem Town instead. He orchestrated meetings with other level headed villagers, and when the madness was over he was instrumental in running Samuel Parris out of town with the restored anti-Parris committee. He died in Salem Village in 1706 and his burial site remains unknown.

The background of the Salem Witch Trials is complex, based on land disputes, property lines and old grudges between neighbors. I highly recommend “Salem Possessed” if you are interested in a deep dive into the impetus of the Salem Witch Trials.

Nine Ancestors on the Mayflower

 

On my mother's paternal side (the same line that had the connection to the Salem Witch Trials), I had nine ancestors on the Mayflower, the ship that brought the pilgrims to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1620:

Captain Myles Standish - the military leader of Plymouth. His first wife Rose died in the winter of 1621. We are descendants of his son Alexander by his second wife Barbara, who arrived on the Anne in 1623.

John Alden and Priscilla Mullins - they were basically like the prom king and queen of Plymouth. We are descended through their son, Joseph.

Francis Billington and his parents John and Eleanor. The Billingtons were the troublemakers of Plymouth. John was the first person executed in Massachusetts when he was hanged for murder in 1630.

Samuel Eaton and his parents Francis and Sarah. Samuel was a baby on the Mayflower and his mother Sarah died during the sickness of the first winter. His father died when Samuel was about 13. He was apprenticed to John Cooke after his father's death and later married Martha Billington, the daughter of Francis Billington. We are descended through their son Francis Billington II. 

Just the Facts

Why do I believe Guilhelmus Jasnosz, Wilhelm Bienkowski and William Busta are all the same person? Let's go through the evidence piece by piece.

To begin with, the reason I started researching William Busta, my great-grandmother's youngest half-brother, is because I began to find inconsistencies within his records. We know that "our" William Busta was born on January 7, 1904 in Rudnik nad Sanem, Poland, and that he immigrated to Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1905 where he lived with his "parents" Anna and Ignacy Busta. 

The draft card of William Louis Busta shows his
birthplace as Rudnick, and his birthdate as January 7, 1904.

William was a full ten years younger than his closest sibling, Lewis. The month he was born, his mother Anna turned 49 years old. Looking at modern research on the internet, the odds of a woman conceiving naturally and carrying a healthy baby to term at age fifty are less than one percent. Improbable, but not impossible.

That wasn't the only problem, though. The first time I saw Ignacy Busta's ship manifest I knew there was an even bigger issue. Ignacy sailed from Hamburg on February 27, 1903. He would have had to leave Rudnik several days before that. There was no way that Ignacy could have fathered a baby with Anna that would be born over ten months later.

William Busta's petition for naturalization.
His date and place of birth again match the record of
Wilhelm Jasnosz - January 7th 1904 in Rudnik nad Sanem.

And the biggest problem of all? There is no record of a "Wilhelm Buszta" ever having been born in Rudnik on January 7, 1904. Spoiler alert: Only Guilhelmus (Wilhelm) Jasnosz was born at that time, in that place.

Try as we might, a passenger record for an infant named William Buszta has never been found. William declared on his naturalization petition that he arrived in America on "October 19, 1904 on the S.S. Unknown." Dom has searched all manifests from that date and manifests for a week before and after that date. William Buszta isn't on them.

Mary Janusz Mazurkiewicz stands behind
 her godson/half brother William Louis Busta
 in Methuen, Massachusetts, 1916

Nor did William Buszta arrive on the ship that carried both his older brothers, 11 year old John and 9 year old Lewis, and his half sister (and Wilhelm Jasnosz's godmother) 21 year old Mary. They all arrived in September 1905 on the SS Hamburg...but William Buszta wasn't with them.

Ignacy Busta's ship manifest shows him leaving
Hamburg, Germany on February 27 1903 - he could not 
have been William's father

This is where the research in Poland begins. Dom found a birth record for a Wilhelm born on January 7th 1904 in Rudnik....but Anna and Ignacy weren't his parents:

Guilhelmus, illegitimate son of Elisabeth Jasnosz,
Joannes and Agnetis nee Mieczwa's daughter,
was born on the 7th of January 1904 in Rudnik, House no. 449

As Wilhelm Jasnosz is the only Wilhelm born on January 7, 1904 in Rudnik we are confident this is the baby that Anna and Ignacy Busta raised as their own. Furthermore, in the farthest column on the right titled "Patrini" the godmother is listed as Marianna Janusz, the 19 year old  daughter of Anna Janusz Busta, and my great grandmother. William would be raised not as the godson of Mary Mazurkiewicz, but instead as her half-brother.

When we first came across this record Dom and I considered what it might mean. Could it be a ruse concocted by Anna who was ashamed of having an illegitimate baby while her husband was in America? Could the Jasnosz name be a misspelling of Janusz and this Elisabeth be a relation to Anna?

Neither of those theories was correct. Elisabeth Jasnosz was a real person and Dom was able to prove this by researching house no 449 and proving that her parents and brother did truly live there:

HOUSE NO. 449 

1. The correct number of the house where Wilhelm was born is 449 (it was unclearly written in his birth record and I took it for 440) 
2. The records I found indicate that Wilhelm was not Anna’s son. According to Wilhelm’s birth record, his mother was Elisabeth Jasnosz, the daughter of Joannes Jasnosz and Agnes nee Mieczwa. The couple also had a son Franciscus and his children were born in house No. 449 (see birth records of Theresia Jasnosz and Leo Jasnosz).  

Now, let's consider the baby named Wilhelm Bienkowski that Victoria Socha Bienkowski brought to America in 1905. As we've learned previously, Victoria was the daughter of Anna's sister and her father was a member of the Socha family. The Socha family was also related to the Jasnosz family according to passenger manifests discovered on Ancestry. Not only was Victoria Anna's niece, but Anna raised her children in the same house where Victoria lived with her husband and daughter, Adela, so they were undoubtedly quite close. Dom canvassed all of the vital records that mention House No. 216 in Rudnik between 1890 and 1905 and stated the following facts derived from the found records:

HOUSE NO. 216 

1. Francisca Janusz, Anna’s sister, married Clemens Socha and the couple also lived in house No. 216 (see the death record of Romanus Socha, February 21, 1890)  
2. Victoria Socha, daughter of Clemens and Francisca, married Andreas Binkowski on February 17,1896. Marriage record indicates that Victoria also lived in house No. 216 at the time of marriage.
   
3. Andreas Binkowski and Victoria nee Socha had daughter named Adela who was born on March 31, 1897, also in house No. 216.  
4. No birth, marriage or death records linked to house No. 216 after March 31, 1897 (the records I viewed end in December 1905, however in the case of some entries, house number was not indicated) 

There are no records to indicate that Victoria Bienkowski ever gave birth to a son named Wilhelm.

What's more, Andreas Bienkowski had immigrated to America in 1902 while Victoria had remained in Rudnik. They would not have been reunited until Victoria arrived in America in March of 1905. They could not have had any children together during this time period.

The passenger record of Andrew Bienkowski shows he immigrated 
from Rudnik to Wakefield, MA in 1902, while his wife Victoria remained in 
Poland until 1905. He could not have been the father of Wilhelm Bienkowski

At some point after January 7, 1904 and before February 1905 Wilhelm Jasnosz was transferred from his birth mother, Elisabeth Jasnosz to her Socha relative, Victoria Bienkowski.

Despite the fact that there is no record of a Wilhelm Bienkowski being born in Rudnik, Victoria and Wilhelm are listed as "mother and son" on their departing ship manifest. 

Baby William sails away from Rudnik on February 10, 1905 
on the SS Blucher. He is in the custody of  Anna's niece,
Victoria Socha Bienkowski

With the exception of Wilhelm Jasnosz's birth record, and Wilhelm Bienkowski's ship manifest there is nothing to indicate either of these children ever existed. Their respective paper trails begin and end with these documents.

The first time we ever see "William Busta" listed on an official record is the 1910 census. He is listed as the 6 year old son of Ignacy and Anna, living in the house on Merrimack Street with his parents and brothers, John and Lewis. To date, we have been unable to find a birth record or a passenger manifest under the name of William Busta.

William Busta fist shows up in an official record in 1910.
The census states he was born in 1904 and immigrated in 1905,
matching what we know of Wilhelm Jasnosz/Wilhelm Bienkowski.

To state these facts as concisely as I can:

1. There is no birth record that we have found of either William Buszta or William Bienkowski in Rudnik nad Sanem
2. There is no way Ignacy Busta could have fathered William Busta because he immigrated to America in February 1903 and William was born January 1904
3. There is no way Andrew Bienkowski could have fathered William Bienkowski because he immigrated to America in 1902
4. It is improbable for Anna to be William's biological mother because there is only a one percent chance that a 50 year old woman will conceive a baby naturally and carry a healthy baby to term
5. William Busta's date of birth matches the record of Guilhelmus Jasnosz's date of birth - January 7th 1904 in Rudnik nad Sanem, Poland. William Busta consistently uses this date and place of birth throughout his life.
6. The recorded birth of Guilhelmus Jasnosz lists Marianna Janusz (aka Mary Mazurkiewicz) as his godmother - the half-sister of William Busta
7. The infant William Bienkowski was brought to America by Anna's niece, Victoria Socha Bienkowski. Victoria was related to both the Jasnosz and Janusz families. Victoria and Wilhelm's paper trail then ends in America with no trace of what became of them.
8. William Busta first shows up in the 1910 census as the 6 year old son of Ignacy and Anna Busta. His age and immigration year (1905) match the details we know about Wilhelm Jasnosz and Wilhelm Bienkowski
9. The information that William Busta shared on his naturalization form, that he arrived in America on October 19th, 1904 on the S.S. Unknown is fabricated - there is no record of a William Buszta entering the port of New York within two weeks of that date
10. And lastly, the evidence that Ignacy did not consider William his son at all, his obituary from December 1952. Ignacy was predeceased by his wife Anna, his son Lewis and his stepdaughter Mary. He was survived by his son John, his stepson Frank and the son who passed as his own, William. His obituary lists John and Frank, but there is no mention of William, who outlived Ignacy by 27 years. Ignacy clearly did not consider William his son at all.

The obituary of Ignacy Busta, survived by his son John Busta
and stepson Frank Janusz, doesn't mention his son William at all.

A Deep Dive

The following morning after sending Dom my discovery regarding the Socha and Jasnosz families I received a surprise reply: Dom had found William's ship manifest! 

Success was attained by continuing to look for family members connected between the Janusz and Jasnosz families who could have facilitated the transfer of William between his birth mother Elisabeth Jasnosz and his adoptive mother, Anna Janusz Busta.

(Side note: Dom has confirmed for me that although the surnames of Anna and Elisabeth are nearly identical, they are in fact two entirely different names and we can find no reason to believe Anna and Elisabeth were related. The name Janusz derives from the given male name John (Jan in Polish), and the name Jasnosz derives from the word "Jasny" meaning light or bright.)

My preconceived notion that William had been "adopted" by Anna back in Rudnik nad Sanem turned out to be untrue. William arrived in New York on February 22nd, 1905. He was in the custody of Victoria Socha Bienkowski, Anna's 35 year old niece who was raised in house 216, the same house where Anna grew up and had given birth to her first four children. Victoria declared that she was traveling to join her husband Andrew Bienkowski in Lawrence, Massachusetts, although that text was overwritten, seemingly with the location of "Brooklyn, NY"...

The ship manifest shows Victoria Socha Bienkowski from Rudnik traveling alone with baby William in February 1905. The intended destination of Lawrence, Massachusetts has been overwritten with "Brooklyn NY"

Andrew had been in America since 1902, so the infant William that Victoria traveled with could not be his son. All indications point to the William on this ship manifest to being "our" William Busta. Conspicuously absent from the ship manifest is Adela, the Bienkowskis 7 year old daughter. If Victoria was planning to bring her family over to live with Andrew, surely she would bring her daughter as well? Further searches of American records don't show a paper trail for Victoria or Adela Bienkowski. Did Victoria bring William across the sea specifically to leave him with the Busta family and then return to Poland? Or did she plan on raising William as her own but died shortly after arriving and her aunt Anna took him in as the closest relative this side of the Atlantic? Hopefully more research will uncover these answers. So far, there is nothing to indicate that Victoria died in the United States, and nothing to indicate that young Adela ever immigrated here.

At this time we still have no idea of how Anna reached America, and now, very oddly, it seems that perhaps she had traveled alone, as we have accounted for her husband and all five of her immigrant children on ship manifests with Anna nowhere to be found.

After pondering the overwritten text of "Brooklyn, NY" on Victoria's manifest, I began to have a hunch. With the exception of passing through Ellis Island, our Janusz/Busta/Mazurkiewicz family has never had any connection to New York City. But what about William's birth family? A quick search on Ancestry revealed that the Jasnosz's of Rudnik chose to settle in...Brooklyn, NY! 

The ship manifest of Maria Jasnosz of Rudnik shows her final destination to be Brooklyn, New York. Maria immigrated in 1902

Could Victoria have been trying to connect William with his birth family in Brooklyn before she settled on leaving him with her own family in Massachusetts?!

The draft card of Karol Jasnosz from Rudnik Poland shows him living in Brooklyn New York. Karol was the son of Jan and Agnes (Mierzwa) Jasnosz, making him the brother of Elisabeth, and therefore William's biological uncle. Also of note, Karol was working at "City Reed Co", potentially a wicker industry business.

One other major breakthrough happened this week as I was searching for Frank Janusz's wife's ship manifest. The only reason I sought out this ship manifest was because I had an inkling that my grandmother, who always went by Jane but is listed as Janina on her formal birth register, was named for her aunt, Frank's wife, Jennie. All of Jennie's formal records in the USA have been under the name Jennie, it is even the name listed on her headstone. I searched for her ship record to prove my belief that she went by the name Janina in Poland. I was correct! Janina Michalska arrived in December 1906 and she and Frank were married only two months later. The curious thing about Jennie's ship manifest is that she lists Frank Janusz, the relative she is traveling to in the US, as her own half-brother. Moreover, a few lines above Jennie another woman, Anna Olacz, claims that Frank was her half-brother too! Frank paid for the passage of both of these women, who named their birth city not as Rudnik but as Lemberg, the city Stanley Mazurkiewicz hailed from (yes, the same city, even though he referred to is as L'wow.

The passenger manifest of Janina Michalska and Anna Olacz. Both claimed to be the half-sister of Frank Janusz.
Janina would marry Frank two months after she arrived in America.

So, why did Anna Olacz declare Frank Janusz was her half brother? Was she also an illegitimate child of Count Hompesch (or another man, as we have not yet established a direct connection between Anna and Count Hompesch)? That didn't seem to be very plausible, as Anna Olacz hailed from L'wow/Lemberg, and not Rudnik nad Sanem. Still, an intriguing possibility.

I had better luck following Anna Olacz's paper trail in America than I did with Victoria Bienkowski. Anna moved into 38 Concord Street, in Lawrence, the home of Mary and Stanley. Was she living there because she was Mary's half sister? Anna married a man named Pawel Haladej who, to my surprise, was also a Rudnik native. He would later Americanize his name to Paul Haladay.

Anna and Paul were married on the 4th of July, 1908 in Lawrence. The date of their choosing, Independence Day, makes me wonder if it was simply a convenient date, or if marrying on the 4th of July held special meaning to Anna and Paul, two immigrants who would both seek and attain naturalization.  

But the date of the marriage isn't the most interesting thing about this record. It took me a moment after finding Paul and Anna's marriage record to realize that the mother of the groom, Katarzyna Kowalska, was also the mother of Stanley Mazurkiewicz!

The marriage index of Pawel Haladej and Anna Olacz showing Katarzyna Kowalska is Pawel Haladej's mother. Pawel's parents are also duplicated in Anna's column, so we don't know if she truly could have been Frank's half sister as she claimed on her manifest.

On my digital family tree I had logged Stanley's mother in under the Latin version of her name, the name recorded in the church records, Catharina. But her name in Polish would have been Katarzyna, and that is what was recorded in this American marriage record.

For many months I have pondered how Stanley from L'wow came to meet and marry Mary from Rudnik. A search on google maps shows the distance between the two cities to be nearly three hours, in a modern car, on modern roads, in light traffic. I have no idea how long that journey would have taken in 1904, the modes of transport available, or even if Poles were freely able to travel in their own land during the partitions of Austria and Russia. We know that Stanley was baptized in L'wow, and we know that he and Mary were living there immediately prior to their immigration. But did Stanley's mother move him to Rudnik where he was raised with her younger children whom she had with her new husband Stefan Haladej? Did he and Mary meet when they were both children?

For my theory to be correct Katarzyna would have had to have married for a second time when Stanley was quite young, as he was only four years old when Paul was born. At this time we do not know when Stanely's father Simon Mazurkiewicz died, but we do know that he was deceased in 1904 but Katarzyna was still living, according to the marriage record of Stanley and Mary.

In 1898 Stefan Haladej left Rudnik and immigrated to Wakefield. To date, this is the earliest I have seen an immigration record for our tribe of Polish basket weavers from Rudnik to have arrived. Stefan Haladej seems to be the first to blaze a trail from Rudnik to Massachusetts. But the question of his being Stanley's stepfather is going to require further research.

In addition to Paul, Stefan Haladej and Katarzyna Kowalska had two daughters, Monica and Regina. They also immigrated to Wakefield and were living with their father on the 1910 census records. It doesn't appear that Katarzyna ever made the crossing to America. Stefan does list himself as married, but his wife isn't included in the census report.

One last thing really stuck out in these newer records we were finding: An exodus of family and friends from Rudnik were immigrating not to Lawrence to work in the textile mills, but to Wakefield, Massachusetts. What was bringing everyone to Wakefield? A quick google search answered the question: 

The Wakefield Rattan Company was the world's leading manufacturer of rattan furniture and objects in the second half of the 19th century. Founded by Cyrus Wakefield in 1851 in South Reading, Massachusetts. It perfected machinery for working with rattan, developing looms for weaving chair seats and mats. Its products also included wicker furniture and baby carriages.

 

Surprise! It's a girl

During the past few months I've learned a lot about my family in Poland with Dom's help. I thought that I had a pretty good understanding of Anna's life, but there was one more surprise in store.

In July Dom visited the State Archives in Przemsyl while at the same time the Archdiocese records, also in Przemsyl, were searched. The focus on the search was specifically to find a link between Anna and Count Hompesch, or any information that would indicate for certain who the father of Frank and Mary Janusz could be.

Piles of records searched by Dom in Przemsyl

No information like that was found in the state archives. There were no deeds that would indicate that Count Hompesch awarded Anna any land in Krzywdy ("The Wrongs"), but also no indication that he did likewise with any other women.

But something very surprising was found by the researcher at the Archdiocese Archives. The record of a birth of Anna's third illegitimate baby!

The birth record of Brygida. The left-hand column for the father's name is left blank

The baby was a girl, named Brygida and born January 27, 1887 in the house in Rudnik where Mary and Frank had both been born. Records were then searched up to 1905 to see if Brygida had died in her youth, but none were found. The conclusion we have made at this time is that Brygida elected to stay behind in Rudnik while her mother, stepfather and five siblings all immigrated to America. Brygida would have been 17-18 years old at the time her family left. Hopefully further research will tell us what became of Brygida and why she chose to stay behind. It is possible that Brygida is the one who sent letters to family in America. Our relatives in New England were sending letters back to Polish relatives up until the 1950s, a full 50 years after immigration.

In addition to Anna's new daughter, we learned more about Anna's childhood: She had three sisters Franciszka, Catharina and Maria and one brother, Franciszek. In addition to her parents, we now know the names of all of her grandparents as well.

More information regarding William has also been learned. William was Anna's last son whose parentage was a mystery as he was born in 1904, eleven months after Ignacy sailed for America, when Anna was nearly 50 years old.

William's birth record lists him as the illegitimate son of Elisabeth Jasnosz, whose surname is so similar to Anna Janusz's it seems that they must be related and the name simply misspelled. In America we are used to seeing our names in census records misspelled year after year by sloppy census workers, but in Poland the records were kept by parish priests, and they were done meticulously. There were no miss-spellings with their last names. A familial relationship between Anna and Elisabeth could not be found.

For a time we considered that William may be Anna's fourth illegitimate child, born during her marriage to Ignacy but at a time when he couldn't have possibly fathered her baby. The similar names made it seem the birth record was possibly fabricated to disguise Anna as the baby's mother and protect her from the shame of having another man's baby while her husband was away, blazing a trail for a new life in America.

Cleverly, Dom reverse engineered the search for William's parentage by looking up information on the inhabitants of House 449, which was the home he was born in, according to the church register. The home was occupied by the Jasnosz family, Elisabeth's parents Joannes and Agnes. Her brother Franciszek continued to live in the house in adulthood and raise his own children there.

So, if the Janusz and Jasnosz families simply have very similar names as nothing more than a mere coincidence, how did Baby William end up leaving Poland in the possession of Anna Janusz Busta?

The answer may be found in the research Dom has done on the Janusz family homes. There are three homes mentioned in the records: House 216 is the family home where Anna was born and grew up with her siblings. Anna's first four children were born in the same house, Frank in 1881, Mary in 1884, Brygida in 1887 and finally John in 1892 after Anna had married Ignacy. Anna's second legitimate son and last biological child Lewis would be born in House 242.

But there was another family living in the home where Anna had the majority of her children, too. Anna's sister Franciszka and her husband Clemens Socha also raised their own family in House 216. 

After I received the information from Dom regarding William's parentage, I had a thought that perhaps Anna and William had traveled to America under his birth name, Jasnosz. We have never been able to find the manifest of the ship that brought Anna and William to America, and it always seemed odd that she would choose to travel alone with the baby while Mary and Stanley brought over 11 year old John and 9 year old Lewis.

A search on Ancestry didn't reveal Anna and William, but I did find that at least 6 members of the Jasnosz family from Rudnik immigrated to America about the time that the Janusz/Busta family did as well. And the manifest of one Michael Jasnosz revealed something else interesting. In the column where the immigrant is asked to whom and where they are traveling he answered that he was immigrating to Wakefield Massachusetts, to live with his brother in law Ferdinand Socha.

Michael Jasnosz's ship manifest, showing his intention to move in with his brother-in-law Ferdinand Socha in Wakefield, Massachusetts.

I had just learned from Dom earlier in the morning  that Anna Janusz Busta was raising her family in the same home where her sister was raising her own family with her husband Clemens Socha, and now here was the evidence that Clemens Socha and his family were also related to the family of William Jasnosz.

It seems that quite possibly Baby William was passed from the Jasnosz family, to the Socha family, and then to Anna, who took him to America in order to guarantee a better life for both William and Elisabeth, his mother, who remained in Poland.

 

The things we have in common

 I love a good obituary.

Not the ones that list just the facts, the kind that really give you insight in to who a person was.

Fred Deane had a great obituary:

Fred was my great-great grandfather on my father's side. His obituary tells us of the great accomplishments of Fred's life: Not only was Fred a well known banjo player, he was also the head of the drapery department at R.H. White and he traveled throughout New England and further afield to designs homes, hotels, yachts and ocean liners, including, while he was with the firm A.H. Davenport and Company, the interior of the luxury liner Leviathan, his piece de resistance. 

The list of architects whom A.H. Davenport and Company collaborated with is impressive: H.H. Richardson, and McKim Mead and White. In the earlier half of the 20th century "Davenport" was slang for sofa, such was the strength of their brand.

Fred married Marcia Emery, my-great-great grandmother in Maine in 1896. They had three sons, Richard, George and Russell. Richard died in infancy, but George and Russell grew up to get married and have children of their own. 

I am the great-granddaughter of Russell Emery Deane, who followed in his father's footsteps in the design and build trade. My great-grandfather was an architect with a degree from Wentworth. He went on to work for A&P where he designed their retail locations. In the middle of the last century he was on Nantucket Island, supervising the building of the A&P there. In 2005 when I moved to Nantucket Island to work for BPC Architecture I shopped for my groceries in the store he designed, albeit rebranded to a Grand Union supermarket at that time. Today it's a Stop and Shop. 

Russell's daughter, my grandmother Dorothy was a Fine Arts major at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Art, architecture and design are in our blood. 

After Marcia and Fred divorced my great grandfather Russell moved in with his mother's father. He is a 7 year old on the 1910 census, living with his grandfather Ezekiel Emery (another fascinating man), in Biddeford, Maine. Also living in the home were his grandfather's much younger wife and his 16 year old step-uncle. His mother Marcia and brother George are not listed on this census and were presumably living elsewhere.

I was blessed to know my great-grandfather Russell, a very good and kind man. He lived in the same town where I grew up, and I knew him better than my actual grandfathers, both of whom had retired out west. He passed away when I was 16 and he was 93. His drafting equipment was passed down to me, some of which I used in my college studio classes, shortly before hand drafting became entirely obsolete.

Back on Nantucket, the firm I worked for when I was fresh out of college had a very important client, Jennie Mellon Scaife. She was descended from the influential Mellon family of Pittsburgh. Reading through Fred's obituary I noticed we had something in common, he had also designed homes for the most elite of families during the gilded age, including the Rockefellers, Vanderbilts and the Mellons.

Realizing we both worked for the same Mellon family, a century apart, in the same capacity of architectural design feels a bit like destiny.

R.H. White, the company where Fred worked as head of the drapery and design department is still in business to this day and, being in the industry, I receive regular alerts from Indeed telling me they are hiring and my qualifications would be a good fit. I also see their trucks on the road quite often, one even pulled in next to me during my lunch break recently. I considered approaching the man who stepped out of the company vehicle to tell him about my great-great-grandfather and his career at R.H. White, but then I reconsidered: Too weird! 

Although Fred had a stellar career, his family life was not as good. His obituary reads "Only survivor was believed to be a son, John, address unknown." There was no son named John. By 1953 when Fred died he only had one living son, my great-grandfather, Russell. 

I once made the mistake of asking my great-grandfather about his father (I was interested in family history even as a child). He clearly did not want to talk about him. 

I cannot find a burial location for Fred, and I do not know what became of his body. Since he had no surviving family to speak of when he died it's also a bit of a mystery how such a long and detailed obituary came to be placed in the New Bedford paper.

A few weeks ago I received a messge on Ancestry, my long-lost cousin Lisa, granddaughter of George and great-granddaughter of Fred. Lisa lives in California and sent me the photo of George with the banjo that was mentioned in his obituary. Not only did Lisa have the photo, but she also has the original banjo in safe keeping! Amazing.

If I had never found Fred's obituary, if it had never been published, I would never have known about the strange connection we have, two interior designers working for the same elite family an entire century apart.

Imagine all the things that we have in common with our ancestors that we'll never know about, because the information was lost to time or never recorded at all.

Many thanks to my "new" cousin Lisa for sharing the photos of Fred! I'm so glad to meet you :)

 

William and Frank

On January 4, 1904 Frank Janusz, Anna's oldest son, boarded the SS Deutschland for his voyage to America. Three days later, back in Rudnik nad Sanem, Anna's youngest son, William Busta, was born. There was 23 years between Anna's oldest son and her youngest one.

Anna's husband, Ignacy had left on his own voyage to America 11 months prior. He could not be William's father. But was Anna even his mother?

Anna was 48 years old when William was born. She had been apart from her husband for nearly a year. Count Hompesch, the possible father of her first two illegitimate children, had been dead for seven years.

Guillhelmus, illegitimate son of Elisabeth Jasnosz, Joannes and Agnetis nee Mieczwa’s (?) daughter, was born on the 7th of January 1904 in Rudnik

Back in Poland, Dom identified William's birth record. It only raised more questions: Why were three out of five of Anna's children illegitimate?

The only thing that seemed to be correct about the record was the maternal grandfather listed, Joannes Janusz, Anna's father. The mother of the baby was listed as Elisabeth, not Anna and the maternal grandmother was Agnetis, not Victoria.

Additionally, the last name was spelled wrong, instead of Janusz it was Jasnosz. To those of us researching our Polish relatives in America this discrepancy is easily dismissed, we are accustomed to seeing our relatives names spelled differently on each official document. But in Poland the records were kept by parish priests, and they were kept meticulously. A misspelling that I was willing to overlook was to Dom a serious red flag when it came to this document.

There were two ways to interpret this record:

Either the mother (Anna) went to great lengths with the priest to disguise the birth record as not to be outed as having a third illegitimate baby while her husband was in America, or the baby wasn't hers at all.

My first thought was that Elisabeth was Anna's half-sister through their father Joannes Janusz. But he couldn't have had a second wife, he had pre-deceased Anna's mother, leaving her a widow. Maybe Joannes Janusz mentioned on the record was Anna's brother, making Elisabeth her niece...

Dom suggests that the house where William was born, #440 may prove to be a clue in finding the identity of his parents - the house number is different than the one where Anna gave birth to her children John and Louis whom she had with her husband Ignacy. If we can determine who lived in that house we may find out who William's parents were...or was the house number a ruse from Anna to further complicate things?

Did Elisabeth truly exist and why did she give her baby to Anna to take to America? What became of her back in Rudnik? Was she caught up in the conflict of 1914 when the Russians invaded and destroyed 80 percent of the town?

Or was Anna the mother of this baby after all, and if she was, who was William's father?

We are still waiting on the birth records of Mary, Frank and Anna, and Dom has also contacted family geneaologists in Poland who claim that Hompesch fathered their illegitimate ancestors to see how they came to that conclusion. He has also reached out to historians in Rudnik to find out if they can be of any help to us. 

And Frank's passenger record also leads to more questions: Was the family narrative of him spitting at a portrait of Czar Nicholas even true? The story was that Frank was released from jail when Alexei Romanav was born and Czar Nicholas freed political prisoners in celebration - historically, this really did happen. 

But Frank's Ellis Island records show that he was on his boat by January 4 1904, and Alexei wasn't born until August 12, 1904. The Ellis Island records also ask if the passenger was ever incarcerated and Frank answered "No".

To be continued  

Many thanks to my cousin Anna for kindly contributing to the cost of research! I'm so glad we're on this journey together! 

Many thanks to our amazing researcher/geneaologist/translater: Dom of  mypolishancestors.com. We would be lost without you!