The Impetus to Leave

 

Timelines are a useful tool for putting an ancestor's life in perspective. Juxtaposing the key dates in a relative's life alongside the timeline of local, national, or world history can help us understand why past family members made the choices they did. In the case of my second great-grandfather Mateusz Laskowski's children, however, combining the timelines of these siblings may help illustrate why at least this one family came to the conclusion that it was better to leave home for a foreign land rather than stay in unacceptable circumstances.

The impetus to leave, in the case of the three remaining Laskowski children, can be likened to that oft-used phrase, "the straw that broke the camel's back." No one unfortunate event was likely to have unearthed the entire family from the land they called home for generations. Taken together, though, the choice made sense.

Consider this timeline spanning thirteen years of the extended family's life in Żerków in the country that was then called Prussia. Beginning in 1874, four days after Agnes Laskowska celebrated her marriage to Alexius Szumski, her nineteen year old brother Joseph died.

That didn't necessarily usher in any sense of foreboding, though, for by the end of that year, the Szumski family welcomed in their firstborn daughter Victoria. Soon after, more celebrations came with Lorenz's marriage to Anna Blaszczynska in 1878 and Antoni's marriage to Marianna Jankowska the following year.

The year after that, though, everything seemed to change. Five year old Victoria Szumska, Agnes' daughter, died in November. The next summer, the siblings' father Mateusz died. Another half year later, Agnes' infant son Joseph died. Another six months later—and almost exactly a year after the loss of her father—Agnes' own husband, Alexius Szumski, died.

Mercifully, a break in tragedies for the next four years allowed the family some time to recover from their many losses—until their mother, Elżbieta, died in April of 1886. After that, it was Antoni's turn to lose a son, which occurred before baby Joseph turned two months of age in February of 1887.

That same year may have brought the turning point for the growing families of all three of the remaining Laskowski siblings. For one thing, widowed Agnes remarried that year. Though I don't have exact dates of emigration for any of the couples, the possibility must have been on their mind by then.

Reports of dates of travel given in various census records point to the late 1880s for each family's possible travels. Agnes and her new husband welcomed their baby daughter Pelagia into the family in January of 1888 before they left for America. Lorenz and Anna may have preceded them, as their daughter Harriet was said to have been born "at sea" in September, 1886. And once eldest son Antoni settled affairs after his parents' passing, he may well have been traveling ahead by June 1887 to make preparations for his young family to join him in New York City in February 1889.

The decision to make such a drastic move—even with extended family at one's side—must have come at great price. Seeing the combined timelines of each Laskowski sibling concurrently helps envision the many difficulties the extended family faced before coming to that final decision to cut their ties with their homeland.