Welcome to Our Family Site

Poland - Rzeczpospolita Polska

Our Families

We are the chosen. In each family there is one who seems called to find the ancestors. To put flesh on their bones and make them live again. To tell the family story and to feel that somehow they know and approve. Doing genealogy is not a cold gathering of facts but, instead, breathing life into all who have gone before. We are the story tellers of the tribe. All tribes have one. We have been called, as it were, by our genes. Those who have gone before cry out to us: Tell our story. So, we do. In finding them, we somehow find ourselves. How many graves have I stood before now and cried? I have lost count. How many times have I told the ancestors, 'You have a wonderful family; you would be proud of us.'. How many times have I walked up to a grave and felt somehow there was love there for me? I cannot say. It goes beyond just documenting facts. It goes to who I am, and why I do the things I do.

Franciszek Malinowski

Franciszek was born on Oct 4 1879 in Jozefow, Poland. He married Stanislawa Wachowska in 1907 and Franciszek immigrated alone in 1913.They had Four children: Edmund, Zygmunt, Eugenia and Walter. Franciszek and Stanislawa were divorced about 1930. Franciszek died in Detroit in 1961.

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Tomasz Malinowski

Franciszek's younger brother Tomasz Malinowski was born in Saniki, Poland on Sept 13 1886. He immigrated in 1907. He married his brother's ex-wife on Oct 25, 1935. Tomasz and Stanislawa had two children; Irena Halina and Leszek. Tomasz died on May 1, 1975 in Pittsburgh, Pa.

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Stanislawa Wachowska

Stanislawa Wachowska was born on March 31, 1888 in Warszawa, Poland. She married Franciszek Malinowski in 1907 and later married Tomasz Malinowski on Oct 25, 1935. Stanislawa had six children: Edmund, Zygmunt, Eugenia, Walter, Irena and Leszek. She died on July 2, 1970 in Detroit, Michigan.

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ANCESTRAL HOMES

Through the pine woods lay the village of Zlakow Koscielny, the birthplace of Kacper and Josef Malinowski. Zlakow Koscielny was a poor village with a population of three or four hundred people. The terrain consisted of low hills that are noticeable as hills largely because Poland, whose name is derived from the Polish word “pole” (POH-leh) for field, is almost entirely flat, stretching into mountains almost exclusively along the southern border. “When we were in Poland,” Bapci would say, “it wasn’t called Poland.” It would have been called Austria-Hungary and the next village over would have been called Russia. From Warsaw she sailed along the Vistula River to Gdansk, the principal Polish port on the Baltic Sea, and from Gdansk to France, where the passengers were examined to see if they were ill or had lice before they boarded a boat for New York, Her journey from Warsaw seemed interminable, and by the time the train from New York reached Pittsburgh, it must have seemed final. Every aspect of her world had changed. “We live here now,” she would say like so many immigrants. “Poland is poor. Why would you want to go back there?”

FAMILY PHOTOS

Stop and think about the importance of family history and photos...how can we share memories from one generation to the next. Family photos connect us to those who came before. By letting your children see your photos from the past and present, they become connected to their own story. They know the ancestor who came before them helped shape the world and the person they see today. As time moves on, it is the memories of the loved ones we will cherish documenting the most. Family photos can manifest emotions that words cannot. It is important to understand the environment that surrounds our ancestor's lives if you truly want to appreciate what they went through. These photos are the windows into the lives of our ancestors. But each person who leaves carries with them an enormous amount of memories that are lost forever, and those memories are irretrievable and irreplaceable. How many times, therefore, does an old photograph, the only existing image of great-grandfather or great-grandmother,cease to be a person forever , with a name and a history, and becomes just another anonymous portrait in the drawer sling of oblivion...

Photos

The Bones of My Bone

The bones here are bones of my bone and flesh of my flesh. It goes to doing something about it. It goes to pride in what our ancestors were able to accomplish. How they contributed to what we are today. It goes to respecting their hardships and losses, their never giving in or giving up, their resoluteness to go on and build a life for their family. It goes to deep pride that the fathers fought and some died to make and keep us a nation. It goes to a deep and immense understanding that they were doing it for us. It is of equal pride and love that our mothers struggled to give us birth, without them we could not exist, and so we love each one, as far back as we can reach. That we might be born who we are. That we might remember them. So we do. With love and caring and scribing each fact of their existence, because we are they and they are the sum of who we are. So, as a scribe called, I tell the story of my family. It is up to that one called in the next generation to answer the call and take my place in the long line of family storytellers. That is why I do my family genealogy, and that is what calls those young and old to step up and restore the memory or greet those who we had never known before.