Born at Sea?

 

Lacking actual documentation, there is no easier way to get a snapshot of where a migrating family wandered over the decades than to look at census reports for their children's places of birth. That, at least, helped me estimate the date of arrival of the Polish immigrant family of a man once known as Lorenz Laskowski.

Younger brother of my great-grandfather Antoni Laskowski, Lorenz was apparently the first of the three remaining Laskowski siblings to actually sail for America. The reason I can figure this, despite three different dates given for the family's immigration in various census records, is owing to the birth of Lorenz's two eldest children. Joseph, the eldest, was born in Żerków in 1885. The family's next child, however, was Harriet, who according to census records was born at sea in 1886. What better clue could a researcher hope for than that?

Tracing the migration dates of Lorenz Laskowski from tiny Żerków to bustling New York City was not all that easy. Mostly, it was complicated by the not unpredictable adaptation of his name to Lawrence Laskoski sometime after his arrival in America. As of yet, I haven't found any record of naturalization—with a search using both forms of his name—despite his claim on the 1900 census that he had at least begun the process.

That, however, is not a concern for me, seeing how the same census gave his date of arrival in this country to be 1884—supposedly followed a year later by his wife Anna and his daughter Harriet, who in the same document was said to have been born at sea in September of 1886. Do the math here, folks. Those numbers can't be telling the right story.

But finding any verification by cross-checking Harriet's own paper trail proves challenging. After locating that 1900 census detail about her birth in September of 1886, the next record I can find is her November 1915 New York State Affidavit for License to Marry John Joseph Loughlin. Her name is clearly shown as Harriet R. Laskoska, following the Polish custom of changing surname endings to the letter "a" for women, and reporting her parents to be Lawrence and Anna, with the mother's maiden name spelled— incredibly—as it should be: Blaszczynska.

And yet, after that point, all records for the Loughlin couple show John's wife to be named Henrietta—even in the few cases where her maiden name of Laskoska was also included. Did John Loughlin suddenly remarry another woman with the same maiden name before the 1920 census was taken? I find no such marriage record, nor any record of Harriet dying or divorcing him before that date. Perhaps that is a mystery for another day—a tempting rabbit trail, though not part of our research goal for this month—but strangely, I have three different DNA matches (at two different companies, no less) who descend from this mystery Henrietta.

I'd say we are observing yet another of those undocumented name changes which my paternal ancestors seem quite adept at pulling off. Unfortunately, even if that is so, I still am lacking any documentation on when Harriet was actually born, and riding on that detail—key to this month's inquiry—when Lorenz and Anna and their fledgling family decided to leave Żerków and seek their fortune in a land said to have streets paved in gold. Or, at least, a place with less sickness and death than the home they left behind.