Exercise #16
Write a word portrait of one of your great grandparents. All the better if you know only one tiny fact: that she lived in Scott County, Tennessee or that he came to the U.S. rather than be conscripted into the Czar's army. Perhaps this word portrait should be a short poem or the beginning of a short story.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Cecylia Pierog - soon to be Cecylia Novak - stood on the steps outside the church, waiting for her cue to come in. She was about to marry Charles, but was thinking of a time before him. Before America, even. A time when she was just a poor Polish farmer's daughter.Her brother August had left home as soon as he finished school. He'd ended up traveling to America and making something of a success of himself there - at least in comparison to her family's poor standard of living. The Pierogs weren't ashamed to be farmers, as a large percentage of Jablonka's families had at least started out the same way. No, but it sure wasn't an easy life.
After some years, August came home, with an agenda. He wanted to take their other sister, Anne, back to America with him. There was just one problem: Anne didn't want to go. Cecylia saw her chance. "I'll go," she said eagerly, with all the family standing around. "I'd love to go."
And so, with pretty much unanimous agreement, it was decided that Cecylia would travel with August back to America. First to Danzig, by train, and then from there on to America on the Estonia.
Coming into port at Ellis Island was an experience of a lifetime. The Statue of Liberty, the skyscrapers, the sheer amount of people... it was breathtaking, awe-inspiring.
The world seemed to spin around her as if in a whirlwind. Going through the paperwork with Immigration, finding their way to Grand Central station to get on their train to Chicago... it all happened so fast that it left her feeling slightly light-headed.
Things slowed down a bit when they got back to August's home in Chicago, and Cecylia had to decide what to do with her life from here on in. She hadn't been there long when she met Charles - who had come to America from Slovakia. But a rural area of Slovakia only 20 miles away from her own hometown of Jablonka.
Meeting Charles, their courtship, his coming to August to ask for her hand in marriage, all of these things flashed through Cecylia's mind as she stood there on the steps of the church, waiting for her cue. Her life up to now had been an adventure of sorts - at least a bigger adventure than the farmer's daughter had originally envisioned for herself. She wondered what the next 30 years would bring.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Most of the above is true; however, my Great Grandmother died before I was even born, so her thoughts and feelings are my imagination. I know that she got married in a church because I've seen the few photographs that my grandmother (Cecilia's daughter) has left. But she's also on Ellis Island's database, as the following screenshots show:
The ship's manifest
Passenger Record
The actual ship she sailed on.
Funnily enough, our family stayed in the 17th Street area of Chicago for a long time afterward. My aunt Clara - one of Cecilia's daughters - lived in a house just a couple of blocks down from Uncle August's address shown in the ship manifest until her death in 1997. Her daughter, Celia (Cecilia's granddaughter and namesake) continued to live there until her death in 2003.
