52 Ancestors, Week 10: Translation

I'm several weeks late in keeping up with Amy Johnson Crow's "52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks" challenge. While the project is entering Week 16, I'm catching up on Week 10: Translation.

Or, more accurately, "Lost in Translation."

Fifty percent of me is Polish. And I don't speak or understand a word of it. 

Thankfully, my second cousin does. Jay Orbik is a genealogist who's done all the work on our Orbik and Pyterek lines, and has taken the Orbik line into the 1600s. He's fairly fluent, and travels to Poland a couple times a year where he works with a group of genealogists there, Jamiński Zespół Indeksacyjny (JZI), on indexing and publishing projects. It was through this group that he's published two family histories so far: The Orbik Families from Tajno, and One Hundred Percent Polish: A South Chicago Family History.

So thanks, Jay, for all the work you've done! 

The Pytereks were from Gulcz, in west central Poland. Several members of the family came to Chicago shortly after the Great Chicago Fire in 1871. They lived in what was called the "Polish Downtown" anchored by St. Stanislaus Kostka Church, which was founded in 1867 by Rev. Vincent Barzynski. He performed the marriage of my great-great grandparents, Alexander Pyterek and Helena Murkowska, in that church in 1876. 

Chicago claims the largest population of Poles outside Poland itself. So the Polish neighborhoods of Chicago would have been fairly self-sustaining, with Polish-speaking residents patronizing Polish-owned stores and shops, attending one of a number of Polish churches, and whose children perhaps attended Polish parochial schools. They read Polish newspapers published in Chicago. In this setting, the Pytereks learned a new language. 

By 1900, Alexander, Helena, and their family relocated to South Chicago; the frame house they owned in the 8600 block of South Baltimore Avenue still stands. Alexander could read and write, and could speak English, according to the 1900 census. His brother Valentine (Walenty) appears on the voter rolls in Chicago in 1890, and is listed as having naturalized in 1878, so presumably he also could speak English. 

An upcoming exhibit at the Chicago History Museum, "Back Home: Polish Chicago" will open May 20. I hope to check it out and discover more about the Poles of Chicago, and my ancestors' contributions to it.

52 Ancestors, Week 7: Outcast

Week 7's theme for Amy Johnson Crow's "52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks" is Outcast.

My great-grandmother Iowa Hale Speed had a brother, Landon, nicknamed Landy. Landy was named for Iowa's grandfather, Landon Ballinger. Censuses from 1870-1900 indicate that he could read and write, and was eligible to vote. All extant Iowa State Censuses that ask about education indicate the same. However, the answers for the 1910 census questions "Whether able to read" and "Whether able to write," are both "No." Landon was employed mostly as a teamster, and also hauled coal. He never married.

A cousin of my dad's told us that her father would visit Landon at the County Home, and staff had to take his shoes because otherwise he would run away. When Landon died in 1937, a secondary diagnosis was dementia praecox, today known as schizophrenia.

__________

My Polish maternal grandfather had a brother, Bronislaw, whose name was Americanized to Barney. Barney's World War II Draft Card shows him as age 38, unemployed. His penmanship is very poor as compared to his older siblings, so the penmanship does not appear to be related to the amount of education he received. He did not marry.

In a newspaper article from 1951, Barney appealed to the South Chicago Police to give him a bunk for the night. He testified that he had no home, and said "I have a few relatives, but they have their families to take care of." He stated that he used to stay at a mission on 92nd Street. Three years before, he was beaten up in a local park, and his kneecap was broken. He stated that since then, he's spent seven or eight months of every year at the County Hospital. 

Barney died in 1957 of a heart ailment.