The Pioreks Probably Came from Swierczow, Galicia, in modern day Poland.

EDIT: NO LONGER "PROBABLY", BUT "CERTAINLY". I'VE FOUND PROOF. SEE HERE.

In our interview with Aunt Ann (Jaroszewski) she mentioned that her mother immigrated to the United States with *her* mother (Mary Stompar) to meet up with her father (Mary's husband) Peter Piorek. A while back I discovered a passenger list from 1905 that includes their names. It is not easy to read, but if you zoom into lines 25-28 you can see their names:



Somehow I had overlooked the fact that one of the columns informs us of the "last residence". The word written there is almost impossible to read. However, a quick look at the Ellis Island records confirms that the word written there is "Swierczow" (At the Ellis Island website it transcribes it as Swderczow, but that is certainly a typo).

http://libertyellisfoundation.org/

So they came from somewhere called Swierczow. At this point I am not sure whether this is a residence they held for many years prior or perhaps it was a stopping point along their journey to America. It is entirely possible that Mary and her children stayed with family there while Peter went ahead of them to America.

Now, if you search for Swierczow in Wikipedia you get the following:

Here are the locations of all 5 cities on a modern map of Poland:


Which one could it be??!!

Skimming through all other "Piorek"s who came through Ellis Island there are a couple other folks who came from the same town, likely relatives. Their record specifies that they came from "Swierczow, Galicia". When I saw this I suddenly remembered that Aunt Ann, in our interview with her, mentioned that this was the place that her mother used to talk about coming from. She also specifically mentioned a town called "Bratislova".

A bit of Google-fu reveals that Galicia is the name for a region in Eastern Europe centered in western Ukraine and eastern Poland. The area has gone through many iterations of kingdoms and various flags flying over it. Relevant to our search, "The Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria" existed as an autonomous state under the Austrian crown governed by Polish ethnics from 1804 to 1918 (thanks Wikipedia).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Galicia_and_Lodomeria

The map below is from Wikipedia. I don't know the original source of the map so I can't vouch for it's accuracy, but I've placed a red star on the map approximately where one of the Swierczow's above is located...the only one in the Galicia area:

Here is the Wikipedia article for this city, there isn't much information there:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%9Awiercz%C3%B3w,_Podkarpackie_Voivodeship

As of now this is my best guess as to the city where Mary Piorek (nee Stompar) and her three children Johann, Sophia and Anna lived before immigrating to the United States. I assume that her husband Peter Piorek lived there as well, though he apparently immigrated to the US sometime before the rest of the family (probably to pursue work and housing for the rest of the family). What is interesting about this is that while they were ethnically Polish none of them ever actually lived within the political boundaries of Poland, but at the time they were born and lived in an Austrian kingdom.

I hope to next start digging through church records in that city for more records!

Regarding Bratislova, mentioned above by Aunt Ann, the closest thing I have found is Bratislava, Slovakia, about 250 miles away from Swierczow. There is still work to do to determine if that city has any significance.