Salomea Kisczynska Born November 4, 1956

When checking my DNA matches on Ancestry as I started to do family history, it was hard to get started. There were very few matches to people related to Anthony Raczkiewicz. The matches I have also share very low amounts of DNA with me, meaning they are not closely related. Some currently live in Grand Rapids or had in the past so I was intrigued to find out more about them. In order to do that, I needed to build my family tree back farther and wider. ***** Salomea Kisczynska is a good example. She is my 2nd cousin four times removed. “Removed” refers to the number of generations of separations between Salomea and me. My fifth great-grandparent-- Jakub Wiciejewski and Anna nee Plebanska--are her great grandparents. I had her in my tree because I included siblings of each generation as much as I could. This helped when looking at my DNA matches. ***** One DNA match, in particular, was helpful. I discovered that we had a mutual person on our family tree--Salomea Kisczynska. The DNA match’s name is Patrice (Szymanski) Shay and she is my 5th cousin 1x removed. Salomea is Pat’s great-grandmother. Pat lives in the Grand Rapids area and her family tree was open for me to view. We corresponded and she shared some information that helped me with her “branch.” It was very satisfying to figure out this first connection! ***** Today is Salomea’s birthday. She was born on November 4, 1856, in Zawadki, Lubelskie, Poland, which is about 30 miles from the city of Tomaszow Lubelskie Poland. Her parents were Teofil and Wawrzyniec (or Lawrence.) Lawrence was a barkeeper and the two witnesses to her birth were peasant farmers from their town. Her mother died when she was 14. Salomea married Jakub Petryna on September 20, 1874, in Tomaszów Lubelski, Lubelskie, Poland when she was 17 years old. Jakub was born to a single mother, who was deceased when he got married. Jakub and Salomea had two children during their marriage, Antonina and Rozalia. Antonina married Kazmierez Syzmanski. Kazimierz is the grandfather of Pat! Hopefully, you can see the connection with the picture from the tree. *****

Michal Raczkiewicz Died November 4, 1882

Almost 140 years ago, Michał Raczkiewicz (my 3x great grandfather) died in the village of Sabaudia on November 4, 1882. He lived to the age of 80. His parents were Jan Raczkiewicz and Apolonia nee Gołębiowska Michal was their oldest child (out of 11.) The witnesses were both 45 year old farmers from Sabaudia. One witness was Jan Skurcz. The other witness was Jakub, the sixth child (out of 11) of Michal and his wife Anna nee Dominik. 1882/235 Raczkiewicz It happened in the town Tomaszów on Oct 24/Nov 5 1882 at 10am. Appeared in person Jakub Raczkiewicz and Jan Skurcz, farmers residing in village Sabaudia, both 45 years old, and declared that on Oct 23/Nov 4 of this year at 10am died in the village Sabaudia Michał Raczkiewicz, son of Jan and Apolonia, age 80. After personally confirming the death of Michał Raczkiewicz, this document was read to the witnesses, and due to their illiteracy, was signed by us only. Priest St. Skurzanowski Parson of the Tomaszów [RC parish]

Polish Halls In Grand Rapids

On September 27, 2021, my Mom, two sisters and I attended a Grand Rapids Public Museum panel presentation of the Polish Halls in our city. The panel discussed the history and purpose of the halls as well as their present status. Grand Rapids had forty or fifty “halls” owned by private societies of different immigrant groups. There were more Polish ones than any other nationality and there were eight Polish ones on the West side. ***** The event was held at The Guest House which is a frequently used place for funeral lunches and other events. The Guest House is within walking distance of where my mother grew up. The event was catered by The Polish Girl and included kielbasa, kapusta, and a few other dishes. ***** The ethnic halls in Grand Rapids served many positive purposes such as a place to meet and socialize including wedding receptions, parties and other celebrations. Card parties, concerts, and beer drinking were common activities and were popular ways for people from Poland to socialize together. They all had a bar and were allowed to serve liquor to members after paying a federal liquor tax. ***** The halls provided the fundraising to open parishes such as St. Adalbert and Sacred Heart. Some paid sick and death benefits, some were patriotic or religious, cooperating with the local parish. Some offered citizenship and language classes. ***** The history of Polish Halls in Grand Rapids stretches back to 1886 when Jackson Hall was established and was the first Polish hall in the U.S.. Up through the 1960s and 1970s, the halls were still very active and there were dances every weekend. As the population moved to the suburbs and the “melting pot” effect continued to happen, the importance of the halls to the daily life of the immigrant waned. Liquor control laws also changed and there were more options such as brewing companies for people to frequent. (Did you know that Grand Rapids, Michigan was voted “Beer City” by readers of the publication USA Today?) Originally, membership was limited to Polish people (or people who married Polish people like my father.) Now, in order to survive, that membership qualification has been lifted. ***** The need for English classes, support, death and sick benefits, aid to each other in a new country, and working to build churches may be gone but the halls strive to keep the Polish traditions alive. ***** Anthony (my grandfather) was a member of St. Hyacinth, Polish Falcon Society and Polish National Alliance Society: St. Hyacinth, corner of Ninth and Muskegon, 1886, McReynolds & Fourth St., 1908, war bonds, clothing drives, Polish Falcon Society 957 Fulton St. Polish National Alliance Society (Jackson St., west of Lane Ave., 1878, active in Poland liberation, war bonds, political causes ***** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAYui7MK4SU

Anthony & The Pool Hall

Are there any skeletons in your closet? There is one in my family that I know about. A family legend is that my Grandpa Anthony Raczkiewicz at some point had a “game room” and made $100 a day and was often raided. My mother remembers hearing these stories but it was “before her time.” She always assumed gambling was involved. It was kind of fun to try to confirm this story. After Anthony came to the U.S. from Poland in 1912, the first job I found listed him as a laborer (Polk Directory of 1914). He then got a job at Keifer Tanning Company on 260 Front St. SW and worked there a few years. In 1921, Anthony left the tannery and was a clerk at Charles (Powlski) Powlowski’s Billiards at 612 Bridge St. NW. This location had opened in 1916 as the Buddy Theater, opened by the Buddy Brothers. It seated 500 and was “handsomely decorated in old rose and white” when it was a movie theater. (The Moving Picture World, Vol. 27, p. 457.) Interestingly, at the time Anthony worked at the billiards room, Grand Rapids had been “dry” for several years, beginning at midnight, April 30, 1918 and the state soon followed with Prohibition voted in. It was not repealed until 1933. Alcohol usage during this period was illegal but definitely continued “underground.” Pool halls must have been a popular entertainment with 13 listed in the city the year that Anthony became a clerk. The owner, Charles Powlowski, was from the same part of Poland as Anthony and also immigrated to Grand Rapids and married his wife the same year my grandpa Anthony married Pauline. Powlowski also had a soft drink store at 511 Bridge St. NW. The year after Anthony began as a clerk in the billiards room in 1922, he (misspelled as: Radzkiewicz) was listed in the city directory as the owner of the one at 612 Bridge St. NW. At this point, the billiard rooms in the city had grown to 30. Anthony had five competitors on Bridge Street alone. In 1923, he was listed as co-owners with Mr. Czarnopis. This may have been Stanislaw Czarnopis who came to the US with Anthony’s brother Jan. The number had grown slightly to 33 pool halls in Grand Rapids. By 1924 the number grew to 34 but Anthony was no longer running one of them and there was no longer a listing in the city directory for this billiards room so it likely went out of business. It is unclear if gambling or alcohol contributed to the money made or the demise of his business. Apparently there was a pool hall later in this same location. A person posting on the Facebook Page “Grand Rapids History 1960 and Before” named Matthew Farage, posted that his grandfather Aman Farage owned it beginning in 1927. My sisters, mother and 1 have looked for the building but it is no longer on Bridge Street. Image: By MarkBuckawicki - Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31443698

Clothes Made by Shirley Longwell

See some of the dresses made by my Mom that we talked about yesterday. My sisters have their own pictures so I could only share ones of me. Fashions in the late 50s into the 60s!

Anthony Raczkiewicz' Siblings

The first exciting information I learned when beginning to research my grandfather Anthony Raczkiewicz was the name of his parents. Anthony’s parents, born in Tomaszow, Lublin, Poland, were Katie (Katarzyna) Kaszucka (1871-1944) and John (or Jan) Raczkiewicz (abt. 1864- 1915) When my genealogy search began in November 2019, I knew that Anthony may have had other siblings, that remained in Poland or also emigrated, that had not yet been discovered. I have found that four siblings came to the U.S. The two I originally knew about were my grandfather, Antoni who was born March 13, 1893, and his brother Joseph who was born earlier in 1891. I quickly discovered their oldest brother Jan/John who was born in 1888 also came to Grand Rapids before Anthony and Joseph. Then I found his sister Marion who was born in 1899 and ended up in Muskegon, Michigan. My mother Shirley Longwell remembers visiting her house one time. Piotr is listed as a brother on Mary’s immigration papers so I started looking for the siblings that remained in Poland. I then discovered that besides Piotr (b. 1897) there was Stanislawa (b. 1895), Paulina (b. 1901), Franciszek (b. 1904), and Boleslaw (1906.) The siblings that came to the U.S. all claimed Poland as their birthplace on various documents. For example, when the three brothers in Grand Rapids registered for the WW I draft in June of 1917, they all listed where they were born as Lublin (state), Poland (country), and Russian (citizenship.) Anthony listed his city as Tomaszow. Tomaszow is a village in the district of Gmina Pulawy, within Pulawy County, Lublin Voivodeship, in eastern Poland. It lies approximately 7 kilometers southwest of Puławy and 51 km west of the regional capital Lublin. (Wikipedia )Here is a link to the current area: https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Sabaudia/22-600+Tomasz%C3%B3w+Lubelski/@50.4513291,23.4332671,13z/data=!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x4724af60ea937279:0xa350c5b9c962ba7d!2m2!1d23.4341877!2d50.4714181!1m5!1m1!1s0x4724af11c7aacc15:0x268d7ac08cef58c!2m2!1d23.4163099!2d50.447024!3e0 John and Joseph listed Zabaldy which turned out to be Sabaudia. “Sabaudia is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Tomaszów Lubelski, within Tomaszów Lubelski County, Lublin Voivodeship, in eastern Poland.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabaudia,_Lublin_Voivodeship Photo: Piotr, Paulina, Jozefa Janina (Boleslaw's wife) and Boleslaw.

Jakub Raszkiewicz & Rozalia Grabek Marry October 29, 1843

From different branches of the family tree. . . Jakub Raszkiewicz, 19, and Rozalia Grabek, 17, married October 29 1843. Both of them lived in Majdan Gorny with their farming families. ***** Jakub’s parents were Jan Raczkiewicz and Apolonia Gołębiowska (my 4x great grandparents.) Jakub was the 7th of their 9 children. Their oldest son Michal Raczkiewicz is my 3x great grandparent and married Anna Dominik. Rozalia’s parents were Łukasz Grabek and Katarzyna Krawczyk (my 3x great grandparents.) Rozalia was the oldest of their 6 children. Their youngest daughter Marianna Grabek is my 2x great grandparent and she married Antoni Raczkiewicz. ***** The witnesses were Marcin Sidora, 31 and Piotr Raszkiewicz, 33, an older brother of Jakub.