Zalewski Family Genealogy

Not much going on this week, but there are still a few important dates. As always, you can find them on the Dates & Anniversaries page.

August 5th

1845 – Married – Robert MORAN & Dorothea COOK – Robert and Dorothea are my wife’s 3rd-great-grandparents on her father’s side. It is not exactly known where they were married, but it is possible that they married in Quebec, Canada as they had their first born child there in 1846. They later moved to Wisconsin where Dorothea passed away in 1872. Robert re-married and passed away in 1897.

August 7th

1853 – Born – Nepomuncena (SYLDATK) SZULTA – Nepomuncena, also known as Annie, was born at what is now Gowidlino, Sierakowice, Kartuzy County, Pomeranian Voivodeship, Kashubia, Poland. She was baptized there on August 14th. She married Ignatz SZULTA in 1875 before she emigrated to Wisconsin in 1881 after Ignatz had found a place. They had 9 children, the first 3 in Poland. She passed away after Ignatz on 22 Dec 1925 and is buried with him at Holy Cross Cemetery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

The history for this week in my family tree. As always, you can find this on the Dates & Anniversaries page.

Clara (Szulta) Troka and her daughters.

July 19th

1959 – Died – Clara (SZULTA) TROKA – Clara is my great-great-grandmother on my father’s side. She was born 6 Jan 1876 in Sulęczyno Parish, Kartuzy County, Pomorskie, Poland. She immigrated with her mother and siblings in 1881 and met up with her father in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He had come over earlier. She married Joseph TROKA in 1894 and had 4 children. She passed away in Milwaukee and is buried there with her husband at Holy Cross Cemetery.

July 20th

1817 – Born – Charlotte (STRASSMAN) LAST – Charlotte is my 3rd-great-grandmother on my mother’s side. She was born somewhere in Germany and married her husband, Johann LAST, there before coming to Wisconsin in about 1857. Together, they had 4 children. She passed away on 20 Apr 1900 at Grafton, Ozaukee Co., Wisconsin and is (supposedly) buried at Union Cemetery in Port Washington, Wisconsin. I recently found her husband’s headstone, but have yet to find her’s as I talked about in a post.

1848 – Died – Charles PIETTE – Charles is my wife’s 5th-great-grandfather on her mother’s side. He was born 4 Mar 1773 in Malèves, Wallon Brabant, Belgium. In 1797, he married Marie RENIER and together they had 6 children. He passed away at Thorembais-les-Beguines, Brabant Wallon, Belgium.

July 22nd

1845 – Died – Leonardus CRAYBECK – Leonardus is my 5th-great-grandfather on my mother’s side. He was born on 25 Oct 1782 in Genk, Limburg, Belgium. He married Florentina Francisca KNUDDE in about 1812. They had 6 children including my ancestor, Jacobus KREBBEKX (not sure why the name changes.) He passed away at Hoofdplaat, Zeeland, Netherlands.

My family history for this week. As always, you can find this information out at any time on the Dates & Anniversaries page.

May 25th

1922 – Died – Ignatz Peter SZULTA – Ignatz is my 3rd-great-grandfather on my father’s side. He was born 30 Jan 1849 in Bukowa Góra, Sulęczyno Parish, Kartuzy County, Pomorskie, Poland, a small parish near Gdansk. In 1870, he married Nepomuncema SYLDAKT before emigrating to Wisconsin in about 1881. He passed away in Milwaukee and is buried there at Holy Cross Cemetery.

May 26th

1770 – Died – Andreas UHL – Andreas is my wife’s 7th-great-grandfather on her father’s side. He was born in Rothenburg, Obdertauber, Bavaria. He married Elisabetha FABER in 1728. He passed away in Neipperg, Baden, Germany and is buried there.

May 27th

1879 – Born – Mary (DAKINS) SHANNON – Mary is my wife’s great-great-grandmother on her mother’s side. She was born in Dayton, Waupaca Co., Wisconsin. In 1899, she married George W SHANNON and had one child, Marie R SHANNON. Mary suddenly died in 1904 in Keene, Portage Co., Wisconsin. Little Marie was sent to live with Mary’s parents and George, it seems, went off to Colorado.

2006 – This is also our 4th wedding anniversary.

May 28th

1842 – Born – Mary Jane (LINT) DIETER – Mary Jane is my wife’s 3rd-great-grandmother on her father’s side. She was born in Ohio. She married Frederick DIETER in 1868 in Fox Hollow, Wisconsin. They had 12 children including her ancestor Emma DIETER. She passed away on 20 Oct 1913 at Fox Hollow and is buried at Emmanuel Cemetery in Richland Co., Wisconsin.

May 29th

1816 – Born – Nathaniel SHANNON – Nathaniel is my wife’s 3rd-great-grandfather on her father’s side. He was born in Gilmanton, Belknap Co., New Hampshire. He married Rosina ARNOLD in 1838. They had 8 children together, including the above-mentioned George W SHANNON. He passed away on 26 Oct 1878 in Stockton, Portage Co., Wisconsin and is buried nearby in Whiting.

Troka/Zalewski/Szulta

This is a picture of the men of the Troka, Zalewski, Szulta, and other families. The photo includes both my great-grandfather and his father-in-law, my great-great-grandfather. Also included are some great uncles and some other family members. Here are the names of everyone in the photo. Back row: Joseph Zalewski (my great-grandfather), Leo Troka (my great-granduncle), Steve Kolasinski, John Szulta (my great-great-granduncle), Roman Troka (my great-granduncle) – Front row: Barney Kuszewski, Jos. Malzewski, Joseph Troka (my great-great-grandfather), Ignatz Urmanski.

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 Sulęczyno 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 Sulęczyno 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 Kościerzyna 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.

I’ve decided to start putting the descriptions with my Wordless Wednesday posts instead of posting them the next day. I feel it’s sometimes confusing and more work to post the same thing twice rather than just saying it all on one day. I will still call it Wordless Wednesday, since that’s the name that everyone uses, but it will have words. Sue me.

Click for larger

This is a photo of my great-great-grandother, Clara (Szulta) Troka and her two daughters, Francis & Emily. Emily is my great-grandmother who married Joseph Zalewski. Francis was better known as Sister Mary Clarentine when she joined the convent. There is no exact date written on this photo, but if I would have to guess I would say it was taken around 1910-1911 since Francis looks very young.

February 1st

1849 – Born – Ignatz Peter SZULTA – Ignatz is my 3rd-great-grandfather on my father’s side. New evidence that I found may actually move his birth date to January 30th. Recently, I had found that Ignatz was born in what is now Sulęczyno Parish, Kartuzy County, Pomorskie, Poland. He married Nepomuncena SYLDATK in 1875 and immigrated to Milwaukee. He passed away on 25 May 1922 in Milwaukee and is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery. Here is part of Ignatz’s birth record showing what looks like 30 Jan for his birth and 31 Jan as his christening.

February 4th

1903 – Born – Agnes Catherine BRAATZ – Agnes is my great-grandmother on my father’s side. She was born in Mellen, Ashland Co., Wisconsin to Frank & Margaret (STEARNS) BRAATZ. She married Maurice CORRIGAN in 1923 and had 5 children. I had the pleasure of knowing my great-grandmother, since she was alive for all of my childhood. She was my last great-grandparent to pass away when she died on 9 Apr 1998. She is buried with her husband at St. Agnes Cemetery in Ashland, Wisconsin.

Richard Zalewski, Miami, Florida, Sept 1941

This weekend I picked up the mother lode of photos, documents, and information on my grandparent’s families. My aunt and uncle were holding on to my grandmother’s heirlooms, which included my grandfather’s stuff after he passed away. I knew my grandmother had a few photo albums since I previously borrowed them and scanned some photos. I was pretty surprised at all of the other items in the boxes. There were old documents, death certificates, baptism records, funeral cards, old Navy photos, and even film/video from the 30s and 40s (fortunately, on VHS.)

I only scanned a few things so far, but I have a lot of work ahead of me. I’d like to get everything scanned just as a way to digitally back it all up. I also happen to have a VHS-to-DVD machine that I bought to transfer my parent’s home videos to DVD as a Christmas gift one year, so that makes backing up the video pretty easy. One problem there, I can’t find the remote control for it and it has a lot of little important buttons on it. One of the cats probably stole it and made a bed out of it or something.

That does bring me to a question for somebody out there. My paternal grandfather served in the Navy during World War II. He didn’t see combat overseas, but he was stationed “overseas” in Hilo, Hawai’i. From what it sounds like from stories, photos, and some news articles is that he was there for the 1946 Hilo Tsunami and helped rescue people. Along with his Navy stuff, he has dozens of photos of fellow Navy men, including their last names and which group they served in. What would be the best way to go about possibly scanning these photos in and getting them to family members? Is there a “Navy Veterans” message board or something similar? I think it’d be very nice to get copies of the photos to some of these people’s families.

Along with that, a very helpful fellow Polish researcher sent me some copies of the baptism record of my 3rd-great-grandfather, Ignatz Szulta, from 1849 and also his marriage record with Nepomuncena Syldakt in 1875 that he happened to run across. Ignatz’s parent’s names are listed on his baptism record, which is new to me. I now just need to try to transcribe it. Those were extremely helpful and very interesting to read. Thanks, Al.