Frances Katula Cheslik.

I’m pretty sure my great grandmother Frances Cheslik was born in New York. Her parents, Anton and Josephine Katula, emigrated from Poland in April 1881. Frances was born in New York in September, 1882, so the family lived in New York for at least a year and a half. Another daughter was born in 1887 in Minnesota, so they had migrated there by then. I don’t know why they stayed here so long before moving to Minnesota, which I think was their destination all along.

The Katulas took a ship from Hamburg via Liverpool to New York in 1881. Passenger list showing Anton and Josephine and their 3 eldest children (Frances’s older siblings). I can’t make out the spelling of those names, but the younger two appear to be twins.

1920 Census, the entry for Edward Cheslik lists his mother’s birthplace as New York.

I haven’t been able to find a birth certificate for Frances to verify any of this, though there is a record of her christening in Minnesota—at age 20, which is odd, but maybe she was marrying someone in a different church?—which lists her birthplace as New York. Census records sometimes show her birthplace as New York, other times Minnesota.

I’m not really doing genealogy here, or not in much detail, I don’t have the patience or time for it, but I’m writing about my grandfather, Edward Cheslik, and my effort to reconstruct his life, to whatever extent I can, has led me into the story of his ancestors, my ancestors, in Minnesota. And the connection to New York, especially to this neighborhood, my home, gives the story an extra charge and makes me want to know more. Where exactly did they live; what did they do here?

Grandma Lenore with her mother-in-law, Frances Cheslik

My grandparents, Ed and Lenore, Frances Cheslik, and my dad, Scott Cheslik

Frances died in 1961, about 3 months after I was born, which is around the time Ed (her son) disappeared for the last time. It’s not likely she ever saw me.