The Laczka Family
- Jakob Laczka (born 1862, Strójcow) = Marianna Wdowiak (born 1861, Tonia)
- John (1892-1968) – arrived Ellis Island 1909 age 17
- Thaddeus Laczka (1919-1994)
- Thaddeus Laczka (1947-)
- Thaddeus Laczka (1919-1994)
- Aniela “Nellie” (1893-1983) – arrived 1907 age 14 = Joseph Skrzyniarz
- Stanislaw (1895-1978) – arrived 1912 age 17
- Honorata (1897-1939) – all three girls arrived together in 1921 – age 24
- Maria (1900 -1986) age 21
- Julia (1902-?) age 19
- John (1892-1968) – arrived Ellis Island 1909 age 17
1907
In early September of 1907 14 year-old Aniela Laczka (Lowchka) left her tiny village of Strójcow (Stroychov) in Austrian occupied Poland for the 600 mile train trip to the bustling seaport of Hamburg, Germany. She was 5′ 1″, fair skinned with blonde hair and brown eyes. Accompanying her was Wojciech (Vocheck) “Albert” Socha, 37, a tenant farmer from the neighboring and equally tiny village of Palów (Pavlev) and Johann Ankiewicz, 17, from her village.
They were about to make a 3000 mile ocean voyage to New York City and then on to Springfield, Massachusetts. The purpose of their trip was find work in the booming New England mills of the Northeast and leave what used to be Poland forever.
The German port city of Hamburg itself at 800,000 people might have been quite a site for a teenage girl from a village of 200.
On Thursday, September 19 1907 they boarded the SS Kaiserin Auguste Victoria. The ship was to make port at Southampton, England and Cherbourg, France and then on to New York.
The ship’s manifest for that day.
Nellie’s Backstory
Five years earlier in 1902 Nellie’s father, Jakob Laczka, came to America through Ellis Island to work in upstate New York mills. In the course of those five years he saved enough money to return to Strójcow (Stroychov) to begin to extract the rest of his family to America. More about that journey and why it needed to happen here.
Her escort, Wojciech Socha or “Albert” as he came to be known was not new to America nor Massachusetts. This was his second trip to America. He and Jan Wdowiak, Nellie’s uncle, originally arrived thirteen years earlier back in 1894. It was Jan who got her father, Jakob, his first job in America in New York Mills. Now Wojciech got Aniela her job in Massachusetts and was escorting her to it.
So why wouldn’t her father first send her older brother, John, to be first child to America? Probably because most eastern European boys finished their education at 17 but girls were not deemed needing an education beyond basic reading and writing. So 14 year old Nellie lied about her age to skirt around US child labor laws and came first.
1908 – Return to Poland and then America for Good
Sometime between the fall of 1907 and March of 1908 Nellie made that difficult ocean voyage back to Poland because Tuesday, March 31, 1908 finds her in the port city of Bremen, Germany this time ready to board the Kronprinzessin Cecilie to America. This time she is the escort travelling with six of her neighbors, all in their teens.
Courage comes in many forms. Consider that a 14 year-old girl from a tiny farming village in Poland with no English and little education guided six of her neighbors on a 4,000 mile journey to America carrying $22 ($550 today) that is one example. To skirt around the newly created child labor laws of Massachusetts she lied about her age, her father’s name and whom she was meeting in Massachusetts. (She gave her seven year old sister’s name.)
Nellie appears on line 27 of the ship’s manifest.
1910 – The Rag Sorter
On Friday May 3, 1910 Alger P Blaine, Enumerator for the United States Census stepped up to a boarding house at 19 Falmouth Avenue in Springfield, Massachusetts run by Stanley Weirzbicki and family to, well, enumerate. Count Nellie and neighbors in their first US Census.
Among the 16 people living there was Aniela Laczka who gave her real age this time as 16. She gave her occupation as a rag sorter at the paper mill. She told the census taker that she had been out of work for half of 1909.
Among others, Nellie lived with two other girls, Anna and Victoria, both 18, who also sorted rags at the paper mill. Anna Chrznan carried the same exact name Aniela’s grandmother so may have been her cousin.
1910 Nellie’s Day
Each morning in the Indian Orchard neighborhood of Springfield, Massachusetts teens Aniela Laczka, Victoria Gradalska and Anna Chrznan left this boarding house full of Polish speaking people to begin a 12 hour day at the mill.
They’d walk down Falmouth Avenue to Parker Avenue and turn left to get the streetcar at Main for the Collins Paper Mill in Wilbraham four miles away.
Immaculate Conception Polish Roman Catholic Church
At the block before Main Street they’d pass the Immaculate Conception Polish Roman Catholic Church. Nellie became a parishioner two years earlier in 1908 and remained so for the next 75 years until her death in 1983.
The church served as more than a place for the faithful. It was the center of Polish life. They came for mass but also for the connection to people who spoke their language, ate their food and understood their ordeal in such a foreign place as Springfield, America. The Poles in America heaped a lot of anger at the corrupt Roman Catholic church back home where priests were abusive and often charged already poor people for services like baptisms and confession.
What Is a Rag Sorter?
Collins Paper Mill in North Wilbraham, four miles to the east of Indian Orchard was a major player in the paper business. Collins made fine writing paper with a high rag content. “Rag” in this case meant cotton and linen fiber. The more cotton and linen fiber wound into the wood pulp the stronger and smoother the paper. Years later Collins was one of two mills in the whole country that supplied the paper that made up US currency.
Rag pickers would scour the landscape for unwanted clothes and linens and sell what they found to the papermakers. The papermakers would clean and bleach these rags multiple times to make the fibers suitable to introduce into their paper.
But before these rags could processed they needed to be “sorted.”
From a University of Maine project called Women in Maine’s Paper Industry:
Rag sorters went through discarded clothing, removing buttons, seams and hems. The work was dirty and tiring, as they stood throughout their twelve-hour work days (sometimes thirteen or fourteen hours) in one place as they sorted the rags. Women worked in separate areas of the mill from the men, although they had some male supervisors.
Rag sorting was considered a woman’s job. Reasons given were that women seemed more tuned to this highly detailed and tedious work. Another reason given was that women would otherwise compete with men for the better paying jobs. Sometimes a man would forbid his wife from taking a job in a mill at all in fear that she might take his job.
1913 Marriage
On Tuesday, November 4, 1913 22 year-old Josef Skrzyniarz (Skerzh-ni-arz) and 20 year-old Aniela Laczka were married by the Reverend J. M. Tomilowski. They were to remain married to each other the rest of their lives
1920
June 27, 1920 finds Nellie, now 27, at a boarding house at 535 Main Street just around the corner from her former place. Living in a building with 12 other people she told the census taker that she was single with no children. That was a lie.
Aniela was married almost seven years with four children all under seven, the youngest one month old. Neither her husband nor her four children appear in the census.
The likely reason is that Nellie worked as did her husband. A married woman could not easily get a job, especially a married woman with four children. So Josef and the kids laid low while the census taker was there. More than likely someone in the house cared for the children.
Thirteen years in she still could not speak English. In fact only one person of all 13 of the household spoke English, and that was the landlord’s ten year old daughter.
Nellie worked as a spinner in the Mill #8, a jute mill for Ludlow Manufacturing Associates in Ludlow. Ludlow Manufacturing was was one of the biggest mills in the region and the only jute mill for miles.
A spinner in Ludlow Manufacturing.
“Jute” was a plant imported from the Calcutta area of India that was spun into burlap and carpet backing.
1930
April 23, 1930 finds Nellie, Josef and their six children in a two family house at 53 Weston Street in Wilbraham only a few blocks from the first place she lived in 1908. The rent was $12 a month (about $168 today) and they owned a radio.
Joseph was a laborer at the jute mill and Nellie, now 38, was at home with all six kids ranging from 16 to six. She and Joseph now speak English.
She and Josef were to live in this house for the rest of their lives; Aniela for next 53 years until her death in 1983.
1930s to 1970s
The 50 years from the 1930s to the 1980s seem mostly uneventful as the family melted into the pot and children produced grandchildren and grandchildren produced great-grandchildren.
Joseph continued to work for the Ludlow Manufacturing Company until the late 1930s. 1953 finds Joseph working for the Springfield Armory. Famous for the Springfield Rifle, the Armory is weapons manufacturer with roots dating back to the American Revolution. He may have landed that job during World War II.
Joseph died in 1973 followed by Nellie ten years later
1983
Aniela Laczka lived until 89 leaving 6 children, 16 grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren in 1983. There are still people named Skrzyniarz in Wilbraham in 2018, 100 years after she landed at Ellis Island.
1969 Epilog
In 1969 one of Nellie’s grandchildren, Ann Skrzyniarz, 16, appears on page 52 of the 1969 Minnechaug Regional High School Yearbook as a member of the cheerleading squad (far right).
The distance travelled seems immeasurable.
