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.