Comparing Notes

Sometimes, when we aren’t certain of our recollection of an event, we can check out our memories with others who were there by comparing notes.

When it comes to figuring out my paternal grandfather’s story, I don’t have that liberty; I wasn’t around yet—not even at the point at which he died.

Of course, I’ve done my due diligence in plying my older relatives with wearying questions—questions which, thankfully, my brother and my cousin have been patient enough to do their best in answering.

But I still want more. So I’ve agonized over every spot and blot jotted down in census records of the era in which Anton and Mary Laskowski lived—and, in particular, those years in which they took in their married daughter Sophie’s own household.

There was just a brief window in which to capture this household, actually: in the 1905 New York State census, and five years later in the 1910 federal census. After that, not only were Sophie and her family moved out of her parents’ Brooklyn apartment, but gone also was any trace of that married name—whether Puhalski, or Puchalski, or any of the other poorly-rendered versions of that Polish surname.

To compare notes in a case like this, then, all I've got to muddle this one out is the documentation left behind by impartial third parties. It all comes down to the detail-capturing prowess of state enumerator, John F. Lupien, and federal enumerator, Charles H. McMahon. Or, more likely, to their handwriting perseverance in the grueling course of their duties on June 1, 1905, or April 15, 1910.

That, however, introduces some problems of its own. While I can be certain of Anton and Mary’s daughter Sophie in the 1905 state census, it isn’t exactly clear what Sophie’s husband’s given name actually was. Whatever it was, it was evidently marked out and, in a different handwriting, the name Thomas was inserted.

Why the change? It’s not that the Polish version of our English Thomas was that challenging; according to one handy Polish-to-English name chart, the Polish version of Thomas would have been rendered as Tomasz—not much different than other European versions of the name.

What makes this difficult for me is what we find when we compare these 1905 notes with those of our 1910 enumerator. In that subsequent document, gone was the Thomas. In its place was inserted the given name, Theodore—the English equivalent of what, in Polish, would have been Teodor.

How could Thomas be mistaken for Theodore? Even rendered with a thick foreign accent, Tomasz would not be easily confused for Teodor.

It’s what followed that given name, however, that causes me the most concern. I guess I should have presumed that the ears which heard “Thomas” in one case and “Theodore” in the other, would never have gotten it right when it comes to Polish surnames. For, in the case of the 1905 record, the verdict was delivered as Puhalaski, while the 1910 decision was rendered as Puhalski—or, maybe, given the strategic placement of one frustrating ink blot, Pukalski.

Granted, the ears of English-speaking enumerators never did seem to mix well with foreign accents. And it’s not, necessarily, the issue over whether that surname was Puhalaski or Puhalski. What I really need to know is: was Sophie’s husband Thomas Puhalaski one and the same with Theodore Puhalski? More to the point, which one should I be pursuing, when he—or they—are mysteriously replaced by one John T. McCann? For that, my friend, becomes the next quest, once Sophie and family move out of Brooklyn and into their new digs in Queens in time for the 1915 state census.


Above: Excerpts from the 1905 and 1910 United States Census records showing the Brooklyn, New York, household of Anton and Mary Laskowski. Images courtesy Ancestry.com.