Harriet and the Berky

In my 20s, or even earlier, I disowned parts of my life, particularly my Polish and German ancestry and the town where I grew up. I was ashamed, or I was disillusioned, or I wanted something better. And eventually, after college and the disappointment of having chosen the wrong profession, I moved away from that city. My mother had died before I even thought of college, and in some ways, I wanted to be far from all of it, all the family messiness and unexpressed grief and all the things I chose by default. Not knowing what I wanted or who I was.

Years passed and as I worked, pursued graduate studies, and embarked on relationships, I started discovering “myself” and my interests and goals, hopes and dreams. I made friends in Philly (which felt like my true hometown during the years I lived there) and more recently in DC, and I felt like I belonged. At times, I wanted nothing to do with where I came from; at other times I missed what I had identified with or had been attached to during my younger years — home and family — a sense of place that only Pennsylvania could provide.

Now I feel a shifting … back to beginnings … wanting to reconnect with family and know more about where we came from. Feeling proud of my immigrant ancestors for realizing their ambition of a better life in America, in spite of hardships during their long journeys, negative stereotyping in the U.S., or poor working conditions in factories in Pennsylvania. No longer embarrassed to say that I’m part Polish, which was a grade school concern, and no longer hesitant to say I have German blood too, since Germany had a rich culture that was there long before the word Nazi was ever uttered (although I am still learning about German intellectual and cultural history).

Continue reading “From personal history to Reading’s history (& beyond)”

As I mentioned in my very first blog post, my grandmother worked at the Berkshire Knitting Mills (nicknamed the Berky) when she was young (probably in her 20s, sometime in the 1930s). According to the Reading Eagle, Vanity Fair Corporation acquired Berkshire in 1969. Years later, in the late 1980s/early 90s, both my sister and I (around the same age as our grandmother had been) worked at the VF Outlet as cashiers, on the site that had been the mill. Large pictures of women who worked in the mill were displayed in the large buildings housing the outlet goods (the Red Building and the Blue Building), although, disappointingly, I never saw my grandmother’s face in any of those.

Today, I read that part of the former mill and current outlet are to be demolished:

Earlier this year, the VF Outlet buildings and land were acquired by a new owner. There are currently development plans in the works to turn much of the area into a campus for UGI and home to new restaurants and shops. Most of the “Blue” building and the entire “Red” building are set to be demolished late 2017.

See: http://berksnostalgia.com/berkshire-knitting-mills/

Now that I’ve read this, I need to go see the mill/outlet one last time and take some pics. I’ll be planning a trip to Reading, PA soon!

I’m continuing to expand my family tree on Ancestry.com. I’m having better luck with my female ancestors and the families they married into than my blood relatives. I’m especially interested in immigration records, so I grab those whenever I see them online.

So, I started with the Menets, my great-grandfather being my focus. I remember my grandmother telling me about her father and that he never learned English. Of course, my grandmother was born in the U.S. and was fluent in both Polish and English. I wish she had taught me some Polish words, but other than the words for certain foods, I never heard her speak Polish. My grandmother displayed her parents’ wedding photo in her home, not her own wedding photo. I was struck by the dark clothes worn by her mother, the bride. However, this is from memory, as I have not been in her house since she died in 2001. I hope to get a copy of that photo someday when I am back in Pennsylvania for a visit.

Continue reading “Expanding the family tree”

I’ve been “geeking out” on old family pictures and old maps of Poland (Galicia or Austrian Poland). I’m hoping to get more family photos, but I’m glad of the photos I do have. Meanwhile, the Internet has been a great source of antique maps. I will share a couple here.

First, a photo taken at the time of my maternal grandmother’s First Holy Communion, probably around 1919.

From L-R: Agata (Agnes or Agatha) Menet (née Kolanko), Stanislaw (Stanley) Menet, Frank Menet, Mary Menet (later Uliasz), Anna Menet (later Siatkowski), John Paul Menet, Harriet Menet (later Schneidenwind), and Hieronim (Jerome or Henry) Menet.

Next, a map of Galicia from 1897, around the time my great-grandparents emigrated to America. All or most of my ancestors came from the western part of Galicia, in villages, towns, or parishes named Sanok, Tarnow, Zmigrod, Krosno, and Dembica, among others.

Well, I’ve traced back to my 4th great-grandparents on the Polish side. Most of their records list their birthplace as Rogi, Krosno, Poland, which apparently is in the Podkarpackie Voivodeship or Podkarpackie Province (aka Subcarpathian Voivodeship). Thanks, Wikipedia (for help w/my preliminary research). I’m still learning the geography, which seems complex, esp. considering the history of the region and the redrawing of boundaries in central and Eastern Europe. Rogi is not included on the list of towns in that province, which added to my confusion:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podkarpackie_Voivodeship#Cities_and_towns.

Then I realized that it’s a village, not a town! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Villages_in_Krosno_County

Other areas referenced in records include Ostrava, which is actually in the Czech Republic; Równe; Poznań; Galicia; and Austria (Austrian Poland, probably).

More to learn, I’m sure …

I found the actual ticket for my great-grandmother’s passage to America. Thank you, National Archives!

In the ticket, she lists her birthplace as Galicia and her nationality as Galicia-Austrian! Wow. I read a bit about Galicia on Wikipedia:

The Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, also known as Galicia or Austrian Poland, became a crownland of the Habsburg Monarchy as a result of the First Partition of Poland in 1772, when it became a Kingdom under Habsburg rule. From 1804 to 1918 it was a crownland of the Austrian Empire. After the reforms of 1867, it became an ethnic Pole-administered autonomous unit under the Austrian crown. The country was carved from the entire south-western part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Among the many ceremonial titles of the princes of Hungary was “ruler of Galicia and Lodomeria”.

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

I’ve been thinking more about family secrets and unearthing family skeletons. I discovered something today while searching an index for records in the county where members of my mother’s family (the side I’m researching) lived, worked, and died. It’s related to a family secret that wasn’t that much of a secret, really. In fact, it’s related to something my own mother told me when I was a teen. Now I just have to wait for the records to confirm what I think I discovered today.

My research is taking me in all kinds of directions, which I love. Not just genealogy, but the larger history of a place or a period of time (even a house), and what it means to write a family history memoir, the end goal of my project. I’m fascinated by how families tell their stories, to reveal or to conceal, to uplift or to discourage, to celebrate life events or to regret what happened or what could have been.

I don’t expect to learn everything I want to know, especially as the older generation ages and dies. But I’m starting to feel like this is my life’s project and is the book I am meant to write, not for any direct descendants (as neither my siblings nor I have children), but for me. Perhaps it’s a sort of vanity and a way to live in a past that I never experienced. But really, it’s more about wanting to know my mother, who died when I was 19, and whose life was a closed book in many ways, as well as knowing better the grandmother who meant so much to me and whose loss I still mourn.

As I prepare to move next month, I am working on my memoir project sporadically. However, I am trying to gather photos, documents, etc. Yesterday I was very excited to receive a precious photograph of my grandmother circa the 1930s, when she would have been in her 20s, from my aunt, who is helping with my research. I only have one photograph that is older, from 1927 (when my grandmother was 16) ~ it’s a very small picture and has yet to be digitized. I do not possess many photos of my grandmother when she was young, so I’m happy to add this one to my collection, which may end up being the cover of my book.

I read an interesting op-ed in the New York Times this morning:

I Loved My Grandmother. But She Was a Nazi.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/03/24/opinion/i-loved-my-grandmother-but-she-was-a-nazi.html

It makes me think about what I may discover during my own genealogical research. I do want to know everything, the good and the bad. It reminds me, too, of how for years I disowned aspects of my own heritage, first the Polish side, because of how my classmates teased me once they discovered I was part Polish during a family tree assignment (we’ve all heard the jokes). Then the German side, because I equated Germans with Nazis, or at least, authoritarian behavior. However, the more I learned about German culture and intellectual history before the Nazis ever came to power, and how progressive the country seems today, the more I wanted to reclaim that part of my ancestry.

Reclaiming my Polish heritage was easier, esp. after I got past the juvenile stereotypes perpetuated by my classmates. My maternal grandmother was a very loving presence in my life, whereas I did not always feel that in my own nuclear family. That I should want to research the Polish side of my family is therefore not surprising.

What skeletons will I uncover, if any? Perhaps none, but my research will continue undaunted.