Jan Raczkiewicz--more about his life

Jan died of a broken heart: I found out more about Jan Raczkiewicz (my great uncle) who I could not track after the late 1920s. I told you about his birth two days ago. Here is the rest of the story with the new information: Jan left Poland at age 21. He departed from Hamburg, Germany on February 3, 1910. He arrived in New York 15 days later. Another single man, Stanislaw Czarnopys and two married men --Jonf? Benks and Aige Riasche -- also from Tomaszow Lubelskie -- traveled with him. His brothers Anthony and Joseph came two and a half years later and also settled in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The three brothers lived with each other at various different times and their sister Marion also later moved to the U.S. Like other immigrants, Jan moved around quite a bit during the first five years he was in the U.S.. The first address I have for him is 409 Stocking Ave in 1913. All of the houses that Jan lived in are in the same general neighborhood. In the earliest Polk Directory I could find that listed him (1914), Jan is a cabinetmaker at Phoenix Furniture Company https://www.periodpaper.com/products/1920-ad-robert-w-irwin-co-phoenix-furniture-factory-grand-rapids-michigan-gf5-222755-gf5-231 which in 1988 was razed by Grand Valley State University for part of their downtown campus. A large section of the 1873 building was salvaged by the Grand Rapids Public Museum. http://www.furniturecityhistory.org/company/3773/phoenix-furniture-co In 1915, Jan was a shoemaker at Adolph Montrim (shoe repairer.) In February of that year, he was shot twice outside the house he shared with my grandfather Anthony (on Winter St.) after returning from a wedding. (For more about that story, check out: --------------After that, Jan moved to Olive Street. In January, 1916 when John (26) got married, he was still a shoemaker and his fiance, Frances Kudlicka (25), was a dishwasher. They lived on Gunnison Street. When he registered for the WWI draft the following June,1917, Jan was no longer a shoemaker and was a cabinet maker at Johnson Furniture Company. In the 1920 census, Jan is a finisher in a furniture factory and his wife Frances is a seamstress. I found out from this record they were both naturalized in 1917. In 1921, Jan and his brother Joseph were still cabinet makers. After this, there is no trace of Jan or his wife in the U.S..I was told by my newfound Polish second cousins that Jan went back to Poland. He and his wife did not have any children. They bought a farm near Poznan, which is about 260 miles northwest of Tomaszow Lubelski. (I think Bartosz Raczkiewicz told me the name of the town but I have forgotten.) Jan’s younger brother Boleslaw visited him regularly. The part of the story after Jan returned to Poland came from Boleslaw’s son Eugeniusz (my first cousin 1x removed-- and Bartosz’s father.) “I talked with my dad about Jan. Jan and his wife did not have any children. She cheated him and he went to sleep in a field with potatoes and got sick (pneumonia) and died. We don’t know which year it was.” I am not sure yet of Jan’s age when he died or where he is buried. Jan’s wife remarried Piotr Krasnicki and died at age 58 in Lublin, Poland, in 1945. Image credit: By fot. Slawek Ilski, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=54826851