This morning I feel like a genealogical Joshua at the battle of Jericho, because there are brick walls crumbling all over the place. It’s amazing how one discovery can lead to seven more. So many pieces are falling into place that I’m positively giddy, but each answer leads to another question. Today I’d like to tell you about some new discoveries that came about over the past few days as a direct result of the marriage record I found last week for my great-great-grandparents, Andrzej/Andrew Klaus and Marianna/Mary Łącka, in Buffalo, New York. Previously, I wrote about my erroneous assumption that they’d married in Texas, based on the family story (still unproven) that their oldest sons, Joseph and John, were born there. It turns out that their marriage record is already available online, thanks to a recent efforts to digitize all the microfilms from the Family History Library. So without further ado, here is the record for Andrew and Mary Klaus’s marriage (Figures 1a-b).¹

Figure 1a: Marriage record from St. Stanislaus parish, Buffalo, New York, for Andrzej Klaus and Marya Łączka (sic), 21 January 1891, page 1.¹

Starting with the information on the left side of the register, the record states that the bride and groom were married on 21 January 1891 by Fr. W. Sułek. The groom’s name was recorded as Andrzej Klaus, and he was reported to be the son of Jakób Klaus and Anna Słowik of “Maniowo, Gal.” The page on the right (Figure 1 b) reports that the bride was Marya Łączka (sic), daughter of Jakób Łączki and Anna Ptaszek of Kołaczyce, Galicia. Witnesses were Ludwik Cebulski and Aniela Kośmider.

Figure 1b: Marriage record from St. Stanislaus parish, Buffalo, New York, for Andrzej Klaus and Marya Łączka (sic), 21 January 1891, page 2.¹

Most of this information is nicely consistent with other evidence for this couple. Although the maiden name of the bride’s mother is more often reported as Ptaszkiewicz in records from Poland, the variant form Ptaszek is a close second, used almost as freqently, so it’s not surprising that Mary Klaus might not have been too particular about which form she reported. In fact, she reported her mother’s maiden name as Ptaszkiewicz, rather than Ptaszek, on her second marriage record when she married Władysław Olszanowicz in 1916 after Andrew Klaus’s death in 1914.^2,3 In this case, the civil clerk recorded it with an approximately phonetic spelling as “Taskovich” (Figure 2), just as he or she recorded Mary’s maiden name as “Wauske” rather than Łącka.

Figure 2: Extract from marriage record for Władysław Olsanowic (sic) and Mary Klaus, North Tonawanda, New York, 21 November 1916.

A minor source of concern for me in discovering the marriage record for Andrew and Mary Klaus was the fact that his mother’s name was recorded as Anna Słowik, rather than Franciszka Liguz. Needless to say, those names aren’t even close. However, I’m still confident that I’m tracking the right Klaus family in Polish records. For one thing, Andrew’s date of birth was reported on his death record as 26 November 1866 (Figure 3), which was an important clue.³

Figure 3: Death certificate for Andro (sic) Klaus, 14 June 1914, with date of birth and father’s name highlighted.³

Additionally, I’m confident in my identification of Andrew’s birth location as the village of Maniów that’s presently located in Dąbrowa County, Małopolska.  All the records for his children who were baptized at St. Stanislaus parish mentioned some variant of “Maniów,” and there were only 2 places by that name in Galicia, according to Jan Bigo’s 1918 index,.⁴ However, there were also places called Maniowy and Maniawa, which could arguably have been intended. When faced with a problem like this, the best way to get around it is to keep digging for documentation that references place of birth. In this case, Fr. Kasprzak at St. Stan’s did me a huge favor by recording a slightly different reference to Andrew’s birthplace on the baptismal record for his son, Edward (Figure 4).⁵

Figure 4: Extract from baptismal record from St. Stanislaus parish, Buffalo, New York, for Edward Klaus, born 11 September 1899, with father’s place of birth underlined in red.⁵

On this record, Andrzej Klaus is noted to be from Szczeciny, and in context with the previous references to Maniów, this can be understood to be a reference to Szczucin, the parish which served the village of Maniów.

Records for this parish, and other parishes in the Diocese of Tarnów, are indexed at Family Search. Granted, this index is far from perfect; in my experience, it contains many inaccuracies and also seems to miss some records. However, a search for Andrew or Andreas (the Latin form of the name) Klaus, born between 1863 and 1867 — not even specifying the father’s name or the precise place of birth — returns only one result that is not only close, it’s nearly perfect: the birth of the Andrzej Klaus whose baptismal record I referenced in my last post (Figure 5):

Figure 5: Search result for Andreas Klaus in index to Tarnów Roman Catholic Diocese Church Books, 1612-1900 at FamilySearch.

The actual record shows a date of birth of 25 November 1865, with baptism one day later, which is a very close match with the birth date that Mary Klaus reported on Andrew’s death certificate, 26 November 1866. The father’s name, Jacobus or Jakub, also matches. So the only problem is that the mother’s name, Franciszka Liguz, doesn’t match the mother’s name, Anna Słowik, that Andrew reported on his marriage record. This brings me to the first new discovery I made after finding this marriage record.

Discovery #1: The marriage record of Tomasz Klaus and Wiktoria Rak

Our ancestors didn’t migrate alone — typically they followed other family members, friends, or neighbors, who had successfully settled in a new place, in a phenomenon known as chain migration. However, until recently I had not found any evidence of other members of the Klaus family living near Andrew and Mary. Since the discovery of this marriage record, I took a closer look at the marriage records for St. Stan’s in Buffalo and discovered the record for Andrew’s brother, Tomasz Klaus, to Wiktoria Rak (Figures 6a and b):⁶

Figure 6a: Marriage record from St. Stanislaus parish, Buffalo, New York, for Tomasz Klaus and Wiktorya Rak, 20 November 1900, page 1.

In this record, the groom is reported to have been born in “Mielecka Wola,” consistent with his known place of birth in Wola Mielecka in present-day Mielec County, Podkarpackie province.

Figure 6b: Marriage record from St. Stanislaus parish, Buffalo, New York, for Tomasz Klaus and Wiktorya Rak, 20 November 1900, page 2.

The bride, Wiktoria Rak, was born in Jasło, which is the seat of Jasło County in Podkarpackie province. Perhaps not coincidentally, Jasło is very close to her sister-in-law Mary Klaus’s place of birth in Kołaczyce. Tomasz’s parents were recorded as Jakób Klaus and Franciszka Słowik, which is especially interesting in light of the fact that the same maiden name, Słowik, was recorded on Andrew Klaus’s marriage record in 1891. However, in this case, Tomasz reported her given name as Franciszka, consistent with the actual name of Andrew Klaus’s mother, Franciszka Liguz.

Will the Real Franciszka Klaus Please Stand Up?

So why does the name Słowik keep cropping up? Is it possible that Andrew and Tomasz were step-brothers? What do the records in Poland say about Tomasz’s mother? Well, the answer to that is a little complicated. Wola Mielecka, where Tomasz was born, originally belonged to the parish of Książnice, although a new parish, Divine Providence, was recently founded in Wola Mielecka itself. Records from Wola Mielecka, originally created in Książnice, but which currently belong to the new parish, are indexed in Geneteka under the parish name Książnice-Wola Mielecka. A search of birth records for children of Jakub and Franciszka Klaus produces the birth record for Tomasz Klaus in 1872 — but his mother’s name was reported to be Franciszka Nygus (Figure 7). So now how do we reconcile that surname with the surnames of Liguz and Słowik already discovered?

Figure 7: Geneteka search result for birth records mentioning names Jakub Klaus and Franciszka in Książnice-Wola Mielecka between 1786-1915.

A check of the death records which mention the same couple is very enlightening (Figure 8):

Figure 8: Geneteka search result for death records mentioning names Jakub Klaus and Franciszka in Książnice-Wola Mielecka between 1787-1970.

Hovering the cursor over the “i” in the “Uwagi” (Remarks) column reveals that the Helena Klaus who died on 15 August 1878 was born in 1875, suggesting that this is the same Helena Klaus whose mother was reported to be Franciszka Nygus. We can therefore conclude that it was merely an error on the part of the priest when he recorded Franciszka’s name as “Nygus” rather than “Liguz” on Helena’s birth record. It’s clear that Józef, Helena, Paweł, and Tomasz must all be siblings to Andrew Klaus.

It’s still possible that Anna Słowik was Jakub Klaus’s second wife, and stepmother to the Klaus children, which would explain why both Andrew and Tomasz reported that surname on their marriage records in Buffalo. Marriage and death records from Poland will be very helpful here, but I haven’t had a chance to discover any yet. Available evidence suggests that Jakub and Franciszka probably married in Szczucin, rather than Książnice-Wola Mielecka, and unfortunately, records for Szczucin are not yet indexed in Geneteka. Despite its name, FamilySearch’s index to Tarnów Roman Catholic Diocese Church Books, 1612-1900 seems to contain only baptismal records, rather than any marriages or deaths, so Jakub Klaus’s marriage record(s) cannot be discovered there, either. I recently ordered the microfilms for Maniów/Szczucin, but have not had a chance to view them yet because of the limited summer hours of operation of my local Family History Center. So, this question remains on the back burner for now.

I’m still seeking evidence for Tomasz/Thomas and Wiktoria/Victoria Klaus in U.S. records. A probable match for Thomas is buried at St. Stanislaus Cemetery. His Find-A-Grave memorial lacked his years of birth and death, but a quick phone call to the cemetery informed me that he died on 28 December 1911 at the age of 33 years, 5 months, 23 days, and that he was buried from Corpus Christi Church. His age at death suggests a birth date of 5 July 1878. The 1878 birth is a bit off from the 1872 date of birth for Tomasz Klaus in the Geneteka index, but a widow grieving the loss of her husband at a young age might have remembered him to be even younger still by a few years. Thomas and Victoria also show up in the 1910 census, but one would never find them with too restrictive a search, because Thomas’s reported age (and date of birth calculated from that) is wildly inaccurate (Figure 9):

Figure 9: Extract from 1910 U.S. census showing Thomas and Victoria Klaus in the household of John Skowronski (previous page).

Thomas and Victoria were reported to be living at or near 49 Beck Street in Buffalo, in the household of John and Stella Skowronski and their children. John was reported to be an immigrant from German Poland, while his wife Stella was a Russian Pole. Living with them were several boarders — Stanley Pietrykowski, Walter Ciesielski, Andrew Lisica, and Anthony Skowronski, and Joseph Wypych — whose relationships to the family are unclear. Although Anthony’s surname suggests a relationship to head-of-household John Skowronski, Anthony is marked as a Russian Pole, suggesting that something is amiss in the recording. Things become even more bizarre on the second page. Thomas and Victoria Klaus are correctly noted to be Austrian Poles, yet they are marked as brother and sister to head of household John Skowronski. It’s possible that some relationship might nonetheless exist (e.g. Victoria and Stella Skowronski might be sisters) but the fact that they’re purportedly from different partitions of Poland is odd. Also living in this household were the family of Albert and Alice Rak and their children. Albert and Alice are also marked as brother and sister to head of household John Skowronski, and again, any actual relationship is unclear. Albert Rak was marked as an Austrian Pole, and from his surname, it’s almost certain that he’s a relative of Victoria (née Rak) Klaus, possibly a brother.

Getting back to the entry for Thomas and Victoria, they were reported to be ages 22 and 18, respectively, yet it was noted that they’d been married for 10 years. The suggested marriage year of 1900 fits with their 1900 marriage record from St. Stan’s, but they were unlikely to have been 12 and 8 at the time of their marriage. At this point, there are so many problems with this census record that one cannot help but wonder if the census taker had been hitting the bars prior to his visit to Beck Street. Thomas was reported to have arrived in 1882. However, he would have been just 10 years old at that time, so if this date is accurate (and there is good reason to doubt that) he would have to have traveled with some family member other than his brother Andrew, who didn’t arrive until 1889. He was naturalized, and working as a laborer at street work. Victoria was reported to have arrived in 1897, and was employed in 1910 as a washerwoman for a private family. There were no children from this marriage.

So, there are quite a few avenues for further research to document Thomas Klaus’s story. However, in my next post, I’ll write about a new discovery that sheds light on Andrew and Mary’s Klaus’s story, and also some negative evidence that offers insight into their family history. Stay tuned!

Sources:

¹ Roman Catholic Church, St. Stanislaus parish (Buffalo, Erie, New York, USA), Church records, 1873-1917, Marriages, 1891, #26, record for Andrzej Klaus and Marya Łączka, accessed 7 August 2017.

²New York, County Marriages, 1847-1848; 1908-1936, Wladyslaw Olsanowic and Mary Klaus, 21 Nov 1916; citing county clerk’s office, Niagara, New York, United States; FHL microfilm 897,558. accessed on 7 August 2017.

3 North Tonawanda, Niagara, New York, city clerk’s office, 1914, #82, death certificate for Andro Klaus, 14 June 1914.

⁴ Jan Bigo, Najnowszy Skorowidz Wszystkich Miejscowości z Przysiółkami
w Królestwie Galicyi, Wielkiem Księstwie Krakowskiem i Księstwie Bukowińskiem
z uwzględnieniem wszystkich dotąd zaszłych zmian terytoryalnych kraju
z oznaczeniem, (Lwów, 1918), p. 100, http://www.mtg-malopolska.org.pl/, accessed 7 August 2017.

⁵ Roman Catholic Church, St. Stanislaus Parish (Buffalo, Erie, New York, USA), Church records, 1873-1917, Baptisms, 1899, #396, record for Edward Klaus, accessed 7 August 2017.

⁶ 1910 U.S. census, population schedule, (images and transcription), Buffalo, Erie, New York, E.D. 76, Sheet 3A, citing Thomas and Victoria Klaus in John Skowronski household, FamilySearch, https://familysearch.org, accessed 8 August 2017.

© Julie Roberts Szczepankiewicz 2017