New Names!! Mary Stompar and Peter Piorek's Parents, and a Mystery

This week brought the biggest discovery I have ever made in my Genealogy search to date. Upon the suggestion of a genealogist who has been helping me, I wrote to the city of Stratford, CT to request copies of the death certificate for Peter and Mary Piorek. It paid off big time. I know have the names of both of Mary's parents, and additional information to help me identify Peter Piorek's parents. As far as I know I am now the only living person to know these names! (Except of course I'm sharing it with you now).

I have a few observations to make. First, we now know the names of Mary Stompar's parents, Michael Stompar and Anna Jakubiec. They don't appear to have ever moved to America. Having their names is absolutely vital to helping me track down their vital records in Poland. It may lead to identifying any other children they had, and of course finding more ancestors further back. Secondarily, this death certificate confirms Mary's date of birth, which until now I was a little unsure whether I had it right or not. I did.

Regarding Peter Piorek's death certificate, it sets up a very interesting mystery. He died at the young age of 49, and his wife is the informant for this death certificate. SHE DIDN'T KNOW HIS BIRTHDAY OR HIS MOTHER'S MAIDEN NAME. How could that be? What wife doesn't know her own husband's birthday, or the maiden name her mother-in-law?

The obvious answer is that Mary never knew those things because Peter never knew those things. Any why would Peter have never known his own birthday or his mother's maiden name? The best idea I can think of is that she died when he was very young, and whoever raised him also didn't know Peter's birthday or his mother's maiden name. So who raised him?

She did know his father's name, John Piorek. If Peter and/or Mary knew John Piorek, why didn't they know Peter's mother's maiden name or Peter's birthday? Presumably John Piorek would have known those things, and Peter would have grown up also knowing those things from his father.

One idea is that John Piorek didn't know the maiden name of Peter's mother, or Peter's birthday. How could that be?

OK, enough questions and speculation. Here is an interesting bit of extra data I found. This is a baptismal record that I found on microfilm for a "Petrus" (Latin"Peter") in the right month and  year (Mary knew that much, at least, if not the day) and in possibly the right place (the family relocated to America from the Kolbuszowa, Poland area):

Zoom in of Petrus' baptismal record.

Petrus' baptismal record, found at bottom of page.

Record from Dolna, Kolbuszowa

In this record, there is a Peter born in a place called "Dolna" which is somewhere within the Kolbuszowa Parish ( I haven't located Dolna yet), and he is born in June of 1863. The right time and place. However, the parents for this Peter are named:

• Joanes (John) Kurda, child of Jacobi and Hedvigis Bresiadecki
• Victoria, child of Martini Maruc (?) and Maria Smolen (?)

Some of those names are hard to read, so this is my best guess at this time. Immediately note the fact that nobody here is named "Piorek".

However, this Peter has Godparents, in the far right column, named:

• Joanes (John) Piorek and Maria A---as (?) Jacobiux.

So all of this leads to the following hypothesis: Peter's parents died when he was very young, too  young to know his own birthday, and he was at least partially raised by his godfather John Piorek. Peter took the surname of his godfather, "Piorek", and was raised with little to no knowledge of his own biological mother (and probably also of his biological father). His godfather, John Piorek, was probably able to recall being at his godson's baptism in June of 1863, but wasn't sure of the exact date.

Thus we have Peter Piorek being raised by his godfather John Piorek, not knowing the exact date of his birth, and not knowing his mother's maiden name. Peter's original surname was Kurda, and his parents were named John and Victoria.

I am obviously not 100% sure of all this, but it is the best guess at this point that ties together all of the data. Further digging through the microfilm of Kolbuszowa may yield more information.

Steve Ramik's Naturalization Documents

I've struggled to find Steve Ramik's (my mother's mother's father) naturalization documents. I had them for his wife Anna, but not for him. I put out a request for help at a Genealogy Facebook group that I joined a few weeks ago, and I had immediate results. There are some seriously great genealogists there who I have learned a lot from. It was Jan Mitchell-McDermott, one of the two administrators, who helped me.

The reason I couldn't find these documents is because they are not indexed, meaning they haven't been typed up yet. However, images of them are available and you can browse through them because they are in alphabetical order at FamilySearch.

Probably the best information I found here is a confirmation of his birth date. I have conflicting data with his birthday, and this is very helpful in pinning down the right date. Also of note are alternate spellings, or even names (possibly nicknames) for a couple of his children, including my own grandmother.

I was hoping for some insight into his place of residence or birth in the old country. He wrote the same thing here that he had on other documents, so nothing new there.

Here they are (if you click on the link above each picture you can see the pictures zoomed in, and much clearer).

https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CSMW-DY37?i=957&cat=1147528

https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CSMW-DY7P?i=958&cat=1147528

https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CSMW-DPVP?i=959&cat=1147528

Where is "Moschna"?

In their Hamburg departure passenger listing (see this post), Stefen Ramik and Piotr Gemsa stated that their "last place of residence" (Google translation from the German) was a place called "Moschna". For now I assume it is somewhere near modern day Kiev, but I want to post this puzzle here for future research.

One candidate is Mosna, Romania. Here is a German language Wikipedia page for that city, translated by Google (so the grammar is weird in places:

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fde.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FMo%25C8%2599na_%28Sibiu%29&edit-text=&act=url

Stefen Ramik & Piotr Gemsa---Fellow Travelers to America, Detained at Ellis Island

Stefen Ramik, my great-grandfather, immigrated from western Europe to America in 1904. He traveled with a family member named "Piotr Gemsa". The Gemza family was his mother's family. I don't yet know exactly who Peter is, but I believe that Stanley and Walter Gemza were his 1st cousins. Peter Gemza may be his uncle, since at the time of their travel Stefen was only 17 but Peter was 32 (my current age!).

Here is the record of their departure from Hamburg, Germany. Their names are about 1/3 of the way down.





Here is the record of their arrival in New York City. Actually, this may not be the only document. This is a record of "detained alien passengers". In those days they detained people at the port of entry if they didn't have enough money to get themselves to a destination within the states. The symbol "Tel $" means that a telegram has been sent to their relatives requesting money so they could purchase fare to get to their final destination. They didn't just let people off the boat to wander around with nowhere to go. They apparently only wanted to let in people who would be taken care of or received by someone.

Stefen Ramik and Piotr Gemsa were detained for this very reason. They were to be retrieved by the "Polish Society".

This website explains it: http://www.jewishgen.org/InfoFiles/Manifests/detained/

Here is an interesting video from the History Channel that showed what it was like to stay overnight for detainees:
http://www.history.com/topics/ellis-island/videos/detained-at-ellis-island?m=528e394da93ae&s=undefined&f=1&free=false

Finally, here is the actual document. Their names are at the top:



As I alluded to above, I'm going to keep searching for the standard passenger arrival log.

St. Michael the Archangel Parish in Bridgeport, CT

The St. Michael the Archangel Parish in Connecticut was set up specifically for Polish immigrants to the Bridgeport area in the early 1900's. It is where Stefan Ramik and Anna Piorek were married, according to their daughter Ann Jaroszewski (via her daughter, Suzanne O'Connell).

I plan to write or call them sometime to ask for marriage records. These often include more, and more accurate, data regarding ancestry and places of birth.

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Michael_the_Archangel%27s_Parish_(Bridgeport,_Connecticut)
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St. Michael the Archangel Parish - designated for Polish immigrants in Bridgeport, Connecticut, United States.

Founded in 1899. It is one of the Polish-American Roman Catholic parishes in New England in the Diocese of Bridgeport.

History[edit]

In 1899 Bishop of Hartford Michael Tierney, assigned Rev. Joseph Sulkowski to the newly formed Polish parish, consisting of approximately 1,000 Polish immigrants in Bridgeport's multi-ethnic East Side. The parish was organized in December 1899 and soon after an old Roman Catholic church on Crescent Avenue was purchased. What was once known as St. Mary's became the new St. Michael's. In 1990, Bishop Tierney transferred Father Sulkowski and assigned Rev. Witold Becker as pastor. Parishioners were disturbed about the transfer of their well-liked Polish priest and some reportedly left the church when Father Becker assumed his pastoral duties. Over time, Father Becker managed to establish a Sunday school and church societies, and brought back some who had left the parish.^[1]

Father Becker died in 1906 and the parish was placed under the Conventual Franciscans of the Polish-American Province of St. Anthony and the Franciscans became responsible for finding new priests appropriate for the Polish American parish.^[1][2] Rev. Leon Wierzynski ministered to the parish from August to December 1906, when Rev. Felix Baran arrived to take over the parish. The parish members upset at once again losing a well-liked Polish priest demonstrated and even physically blocked the transfer. Police were called in to disperse the protesters and the church was locked to keep them out. Some of the dissatisfied parishioners left St. Michael's permanently, forming St. Joseph's Polish Parish under the Polish National Catholic Church in early 1907.^[1]

Buildings[edit]

In 1907, the present St. Michael the Archangel Roman Catholic Church was built on what is now known today as Pulaski Street.^[1][3] The architect for the church was George P. B. Alderman of Holyoke, Massachusetts who also designed Sacred Heart Church, New Britain, CT.

In 1989, the church was closed for a period of time when Bishop Edward M. Egan called on police to evict dissident parishioners who had occupied the church for a week. About 200 parishioners had been protesting the transfer of a popular priest, Rev. Roman Palaszewski, brought from Poland three years earlier.^[4]