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seananthony

Joined: 09 Jan 2018
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Posted: Thu Feb 13, 2025 5:10 pm Post subject: A very difficult case ...

Hi everyone,

Back in 2018 I posted in the "Finding relatives" forum, hoping that someone might be able to help me trace my great-grandfather's Polish origins. Here's the link to that post: https://forum.polishorigins.com/viewtopic.php?p=53043

I posted again in 2020: https://forum.polishorigins.com/viewtopic.php?t=7102&highlight=suleski

Unfortunately, my great-grandfather remains a phantom. Every time I think I'm getting onto his trail it turns out to be a dead end. Over the years I've been in touch with numerous researchers and genealogists, but nobody has been able to crack the code. It's a very difficult case for some reason.

I'm hoping someone might be able to read my old posts and offer some fresh suggestions. I'm attaching my great-grandfather's Alien Registration Form.

Thank you,
Sean

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BarbOslo
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Posted: Fri Feb 14, 2025 8:29 am Post subject:

Hi Sean,
Sent you a PM.

-Barb

Sophia
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Posted: Mon Feb 17, 2025 8:13 am Post subject: Re: A very difficult case ...

seananthony wrote:

Hi Sean,

Yes, a difficult case indeed. You have assembled a good array of documents. The Alien Registration Form that you posted is the most significant of them. As the second world war broke out, the US made immigrants who had not become citizens fill out this form. It is a sign that there is no need to go looking for naturalization documents.

For someone like your Antoni, who was 50+ years old when he was asked these questions, it would have been a stretch of memory. In particular, I am drawn to the question he was asked about the name of the ship he had arrived on. He seems to have remembered that the name included "the Grose" [sic] but not the full name of the ship. You can tell that the full name "Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse" was added by a government official in red pencil so that they could "code" the information for their statistical purposes. You see the coding in the column on the right, where his date of arrival is coded as 061102 and his ship as K-W-D-G. But what if the ship was not the Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse? What if it was the Grosser Kurfurst, or the Friedrich der Grosse? I have looked at manifests from all three of these ships, arriving at Ellis Island in and around June 1902, and the image quality and handwriting are both very poor. For that reason, relying on Ancestry or Family Search or whomever to have accurately indexed the names from those manifests is sketchy. If you would like to look at those three ships for the entire year of 1902 and see each page for yourself, here is a good link for you:

https://stevemorse.org/cgi-bin/boat.php?series=&rollStart=&rollEnd=&monthStart=&yearStart=1902&monthEnd=&yearEnd=1902&boatkind=contains&boat=gross&offset=1&pageSize=50&database=ny

When you choose one ship to look at and click on its name, up will come an image of the manifest. They tend to begin with the page of Aliens Held For Special Inquiry (handwriting not so bad) and then Detained Aliens and finally the manifest pages themselves. You can navigate forward and backward with the "Frame +1" etc. buttons at the bottom of the page.

I would like to comment a bit about the fuzziness surrounding Antoni's birth date. It is not that unusual. In our culture, we have many reasons to know our birth date. It determines when you can start school, when you can get a driver's license, when you can vote, when you can receive social security payments, all kinds of things. In Antoni's day, it did not matter very much. His year of birth would have been used to determine when he was able to be taken into the army of his birth country, but not a lot else. On a ship's manifest, he may have wanted to appear to be a little bit older, since boys younger than 16 travelling alone would have been detained at Ellis Island. As for the actual date of birth, this is not as important in Polish culture as your name day. There is a calendar of which saints are celebrated on which day, and this would be the day you would make note of every year, rather than the actual day of your birth. The name Antoni appears on that calendar multiple times throughout the year. I recall seeing on a WWI registration form a notation to the effect of "he knows his birth year but does not know the day so I put it as January 1."

Frequently the WWI registration and the Alien Registration were filled out by someone other than the immigrant -- you can tell by the handwriting. I feel the same way here with "Rickwell" and "Calais." Clearly someone trying to capture the sound of the place names without verifying that they exist. I see in prior posts that Rychwal, Kalisz was proposed and I think that is still your best bet. I will also add the comment that had Antoni been filling out documents for naturalization, there would have been a step where a clerk had to go and verify exactly what ship he had arrived on. You see these attached to some peoples' naturalization files. It seems that this step was not required for the Alien Registration Form.

I hope some of this is helpful to you as you think about next steps to pursue.

Best of luck in sorting it all out,
Sopha

Trish
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Posted: Mon Feb 17, 2025 4:33 pm Post subject:

Hi Sean, Sophia, and Barb,

There has been a lot of work going on behind the scenes for finding Antoni Suleski. I’m sure Barb has been sending you everyone’s responses. I just wanted to add a few things. Plus the more eyes that read the post, the better of getting other ideas from other people.

I was told you already contacted the Church for marriage and baptismal records, but you did not receive the actual record, is this correct? You can always write to the Archdioceses for the record. There is a fee involved, but you should be able to obtain a copy of the actual certificate. You need to be specific and ask for a Xerox copy of the record along with any notations. The good thing is that you already have the names, dates, and book information so it should be easy for the Archdioceses to find the record. You never know what kind of clue could be on the records.

Per the WWI Draft card, it lists the next of kin of Antoni as Rosa. Who is Rosa? Do you know of any relatives that were related to Antoni?

WWI Draft Card
Name Antony Suleski
Race White
Birth Date 20 Jan 1887
Residence Date 1917-1918
Residence Place Cheshire County, New Hampshire, USA
Physical Build Medium
Height Medium
Hair Color Brown
Eye Color Blue
Relative Rosa Suleski

I found this possible 1910 census. There is a Toney Saleski on line #16. Did anyone ever say Antoni was living somewhere else before he moved to Winchester?

1910 Census
Name Toney Saleski
[Tony Saliski]
[Anthony Suleski]
Age in 1910 24
Birth Date 1886
Birthplace Poland
Home in 1910 Charlestown, Sullivan, New Hampshire, USA
Sheet Number 7a
Street Briggs Lance
Race White
Gender Male
Immigration Year 1904
Relation to Head of House Boarder
Marital Status Married
Father's Birthplace Poland
Mother's Birthplace Poland
Native Tongue Polish
Occupation Laborer
Industry Box Shop
Employer, Employee or Other Wage Earner
Naturalization Status Alien
Able to read N
Able to Write N
Enumeration District Number 0306
Years Married 4
Enumerated Year 1910

You can always play around with the Stevenmorse.org website. https://stevemorse.org/ellis2/ellisgold.html
There you can try different ways of finding a manifest.

Does anyone recognize the name of the town listed for Zofia on the divorce record?

Regards,
Trish

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seananthony

Joined: 09 Jan 2018
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Posted: Mon Mar 03, 2025 8:53 pm Post subject: Thank you

Hi Barb, Sophia, and Trish,

Thank you for your help. I apologize for not responding sooner, but I never received notifications about your responses here.

Anthony never became naturalized. However, in the 1920 census he is listed as having filed first papers ("Pa"). I reached out to the National Archives in Boston, and they did a search (in NH, VT, and MA) for Anthony's Declaration of Intention, but they couldn't find anything.

For the past two weeks I've been searching, page by page, all the manifests (from 1902 on) for the Kaiser Wilhelm Der Grosse, the Friedrich Der Grosse, and the Grosser Kurfurst. I haven't found anything yet, but it seemed like something that needed to be done given the stories we all hear about transcription errors.

Regarding Rychwal, Kalisz as Anthony's possible birthplace, I've been in touch with the Polish Archives, and they sent me the link to their digitized parish birth books. Unfortunately, no books are available for the years 1884 or 1885. So, even if we knew for fact that Anthony was born in Rychwal in 1884 or 1885, it seems no birth record would be available. So far I've looked through the 1883 and 1882 books. The books are written in Polish, so I look for names, and so far I haven't found any Sulewski entries.

Two years ago I was in touch with Anthony's church in Keene, NH, and they sent me a scan of the 1919 marriage book entry, as well as photocopies of the baptism registry entries for Anthony's eight children. Unfortunately, the entries are very basic and contain no information about Anthony's birthplace or age. About two weeks ago I reached out to the church again to inquire if they might look again for the actual records which would likely contain information about Anthony's birthplace. I haven't yet heard back from them on that. I never thought of reaching out to the Archdiocese, but I'll do that if the church is unable to locate the original records.

"Rosa Suleski" is yet another frustrating dead end. I reached out to the Worcester Historical Society and the Worcester Public Library, and I asked them to search their city directories and records for a woman by that name at that address. They were very helpful and thorough, but they could find no such person. Even more strange, they told me there was no such address (66 Lafayette St).

The only indication I have about potential relatives of Anthony's comes from his last surviving child (my great-aunt). She tells me that her dad rarely spoke about his Polish family or his childhood. She remembers him telling a story about his mother dying when he was quite young, and that his father left him alone in the house with his mother's dead body, which was traumatizing for him. She also seems to recall Anthony mentioning that his father died when he was a teenager. She believe that Anthony might have had two brothers, one of whom came to America before Anthony. Lastly, she believes her father had some connection to Worcester, MA, or that she had/has cousins there. This leads us back to "Rosa Suleski", the no-paper-trail phantom of Worcester.

Regarding the 1910 Charlestown census -- I've always assumed that "Toney Saleski" is my grandfather. However, the census lists his arrival to America as 1904, and his marriage as being "4" years old. This would mean that he got married (to "Zophie") in 1906, AFTER he arrived to America. But of course that contradicts the 1919 divorce record which lists the marriage as taking place on January 16, 1902 in Wiecz (no such place), Poland.

I've invested hundreds of hours of research over the years to finding Anthony on a manifest. You've all probably seen the manifests that have the bottom left corners torn away. I suppose the names on those torn away pieces of paper are lost forever to history. If Anthony was one of those "lost" names on a manifest, and if the two most likely Rychwal birth books (1884 and 1885) are also missing, I may never be able to trace his immigration or his Polish origins.

For two years I've been trying to obtain the complete 1919 divorce record from Cheshire County (NH). It would be interesting to see what information it contains. If I receive that record, or any other records, I'll post them here.

Thanks again to everyone who has helped me over the years!

Sean

seananthony

Joined: 09 Jan 2018
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Posted: Wed Apr 30, 2025 7:20 pm Post subject:

Hi everyone,

Today I got more information about Anthony’s first marriage to “Zophie”.

The court records name the January 15, 1902 marriage location as “Guberna, Kalis, in the province of Sukea, Poland”.

Any ideas for “Guberna”?

Thank you,
Sean

Sophia
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Posted: Wed Apr 30, 2025 8:03 pm Post subject:

seananthony wrote:

Hi Sean,

The word is gubernia, a type of administrative district, so the marriage was in the Kalisz governorate.

Sophia

seananthony

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Posted: Wed Apr 30, 2025 9:16 pm Post subject:

Thank you, Sophia!

In the court record, Zophie’s brother is named as “Charles Michalan”. Her sister is named as “Rose Michalan”. Both living in Worcester, MA in 1918.

Any ideas for which Polish name “Michalan” could be? Apparently that was Zophie’s maiden name.

Thank you,
Sean

Sophia
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Posted: Thu May 01, 2025 4:55 am Post subject:

seananthony wrote:

Hi Sean,

Best guess: Michalak

See if that helps,
Sophia

BarbOslo
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Posted: 4 Days ago at 3:15 pm Post subject:

Hello Sean,
Did you get my email with children of Antonis' brother? My mailbox doesn't show delivery.

Regards,
-Barb

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