Growing Your Tree: The Bien Family Story

You can only continue to grow your family tree if you keep working on it. A genealogist's work is truly never done, especially in this day and age when more and more records are being digitized and more and more people are becoming interested in genealogy. Keep searching for your family online, you might be surprised what you find.

Today one of my cousins on my mother's side is celebrating her birthday. So I am publishing newly found information on yet another branch of my family tree, the Bien family, to share with her and everyone else who is interested. But first, here is the marriage photo of Casimir J. Bien and Anna Stankiewicz:

Anna Stankiewicz & Casimir J. Bien
Wedding Photo

When I first began this quest, over eighteen years ago, we didn't have much information to go on for the Bien side of the family. Even though I visited my Grandpa Casey and two of his sisters in Chicago, they only knew that their grandfather Bien's name was Andrew and that he was born in Bychawa, Poland, which is a town near Lublin. They didn't know his wife's name, even though one of my aunts had visited Bychawa in the 1970s. In the past six months, I have spent hours researching digitized records from Poland newly indexed and posted online. Thanks to that research, I was able to increase our Bien line of the family tree by three full generations. I found several birth, marriage, and death records and had them translated from handwritten cursive cyrillic. The following pedigree chart is the result of that work. Please note that you can click on the image, then right click and select "open image in new tab" so you will be able to zoom in and read the chart.

Also, today I'd like to share the family story about the Bien family that my Aunt Charlotte told me back when I started my genealogy research in the early 1990s.

THE BIEN FAMILY STORY
(As told to me by Charlotte Bien, daughter of Casimir J. Bien and Anna Stankiewicz. Once again, as in the Nawodylo family story, a few of the facts presented here are incorrect (such as the year Casimir came to the U.S.) according to my research.)

Casimir Bien's father was Andrew (she knew this from his death certificate but it didn't have his mother's name on it). Andrew had been married before, but his first wife died. He had a son from this marriage named Jan (which translates to John) Bien, who was Casimir's half-brother. Jan Bien and his wife had five kids named Joseph, Michaelina, Stasia, Olek and Mieczu.

Casimir came to the US in 1909 when he was 19 years old. He married Anna Stankiewicz at St. Ann's Church in Chicago in 1912. Constantine "Casey" Bien was born in 1913. He and Anna bought their own house in Chicago in 1940. The address was 5649 S. Richmond, Chicago, IL 60632. When Casey Bien got married, he had photos taken with his bride and wedding party in the back yard of that house.

According to my aunt, the Bien name was never shortened. When she went to Poland, she found Biens all over. Many were relatives, but some were NOT related. One story is that when Stella Bienkowski, wife of Vincent Stankiewicz (Anna's brother), went to get her citizenship papers  ... she had come to the US when she was 9 years old ... and Casimir Bien went with her to be a witness, they "threw him out" or didn't want to take his testimony because they thought that he was in her family because Bien and Bienkowski were such close names.

Casimir Bien had three sisters: Antonina Guziak (she had two kids, but the story is that her husband poisoned them), Marysia, and Karolka (translated Caroline) Janusz (she had seven kids, but we don't know their names).

My Aunt Charlotte and her husband went to Poland for the first time in 1971. It was during communist rule, so they couldn't get records, only names. Marysia and Karolka were both dead by then. But Antonina was still living. (It was hush-hush, that she had no kids but maybe had had two kids who were supposedly poisoned by her husband). My aunt went to some building in the area (Lublin), like an office building, and they were asking about Casimir Bien. A girl who was there took them to Bychawa ... this is where Aunt Charlotte thinks they were all from since Antonina was still there. The girl took them to a farm or something with a huge gate over her head (they had a horse and driver). There was a woman by a well and the girl went over and said something to her. The woman said, "So let her ask." The woman seemed gruff, but also scared. Turns out she had spent 4 years in a concentration camp. My aunt asked about Antonina's brothers and sisters but Antonina was scared and would not talk much. However, she did say that she was indeed Casimir's youngest sister. They all hugged.

Later, my aunt went back to Poland because she had promised that she would visit Antonina again. It was 1973 and one of my aunt's daughters and son went with her. Then her husband and another daughter came later to meet them there. This was June, July, August ... and they all came back together.

Casimir had attended church in Bychawa. My aunt and her husband visited this church. They presented (and donated) a pletan (what you hold under the host when distributing it to the people) at a Mass there.

This is all of the information that my Aunt Charlotte told me about the Bien family.

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NOTE: The pedigree chart lists different villages/towns as birthplaces for the Biens, but most of these villages are near Bychawa, Poland, and are recorded in the Bychawa Roman Catholic parish or Targowisko Roman Catholic parish records. My research of these records in Poland has corroborated some of the information that my aunt had, but I also found out that some of it is incorrect. I will tell more about this in an upcoming post.

* Please comment and let me know what you think about all this! Also, if you're a cousin or relative, I would love it if you would add any stories that you know or have been told about the Bien family and ask any questions that you may have for me.