Huddled masses yearning to breathe free

More on the family tree. Years ago my Uncle Bill tracked down the genealogy of my father's side of the family, all the way back to the 1600s, and found that most of my ancestors there come from Krov, Germany. He flew out one year, then many times after that, and I ended up going out for a wonderful family reunion as a result.

Lately I had been considering tracking down my mother's side. I did this once back in the '80s, interviewing all my relatives and drawing up a family tree. This still exists somewhere in my parents' house, but I wasn't able to find it last time I was home.

So recently I asked my mom to fill me in on some of this information, figuring that once I had a few names I'd be able to fill in a lot more with the help of the internet. So I was able to fill out a lot more of the family tree that I posted a link to yesterday as a result (it doesn't show you much there unless you become a member of the site).

But there's more. Searching on a few names on the internet, I found some discussion on a genealogy forum dating back to 2001 that let me fill in a few more names. But then I hit the jackpot (I think) on the Ellis Island site.

I wasn't able to find my mother's father's parents, but searching on my mother's mother's parents turned up this awesome find: the ship manifest that I'm pretty sure shows them arriving in America from Poland. Lines 4 through 9 show Agata and Jan Gasior and their entourage; these are my grandmother's parents, I'm convinced. There's actually quite a lot of information on the manifest, and combined with other information I've gathered previously and with some help from the internet, I can piece together the story pretty well:

They had already spent six years on a previous visit in Camden, New Jersey where they would eventually settle. They went back to Poland for two years, then decided to come over for good. Probably they waited until their fourth child (Wojciech) was born - he's listed as age 0. They brought along a housemaid, Kunegunda (great name), presumably to help with the children; she was twenty and shares the same last name, so was likely a relative. No doubt some tears there, leaving all of her friends and family at such a young age.

And so Jan (age 32) and Agata (age 28), their maid, and the four kids (ages 7, 4, 3, and 0) would have packed up all their belongings and taken a train from their small farming village of Będziemyśl, Poland to Hamburg, Germany to catch the transport ship, the S. S. Amerika, leaving on 8 May 1907.

Arriving in New York twelve days later, the Statue of Liberty would probably have been a familiar site to Jan and Agata, having taken the previous trip over, but the maid and the kids would have looked on with interest. At Ellis Island they would be interviewed by the guy whose handwriting you see on the manifest, and asked a number of strange questions, including, "Are you an anarchist?" Jan had the princely sum of $320 on his person. (Actually, is that a lot, for that time? I don't know.) From there it would be another train to Camden, NJ, to join their uncle Josef Pilas, according to the ledger.

The names (parents Jan and Agata, children Josef, Marianna, Anton, Wojciech) seem to match the family information supplied by my mother - though each of the names has been anglicized (parents became John and Agatha, children Joseph, Mary, Anthony, and... Walter?). It also matches that Joseph is the oldest. Combined that all with the destination of Camden NJ and I'm pretty confident this is them. They went on to have eight more children, including my mom's mother Helen.

I find this all tremendously fascinating.